For my fifteenth Halloween I dressed as a Diet Pepsi can. I drank it daily for ten years, at my peak I drank two liters of this Nutrasweetened liquid daily. I was a sweetener junkie. Ten years ago I chose to eat a macrobiotic diet for one summer to lose weight. I gave up all sugar and sweeteners, after an agonizing withdrawal I was successful. At the end of the summer both refined sugar and Nutrasweet tasted like chemical sludge. Lately there has been attention in the media about the negative effects of refined sugar on health, many claim it’s causing the obesity epidemic in the United States. This has caused many people to turn to artificial sweeteners. New sweetners such as Splenda, xylitol, and malitol are now gaining popularity. None, though, has anywhere near the popularity of Nutrasweet. What could have happened to my health if I’d continued imbibing mass quantities of Nutrasweet?
Nutrasweet is the brand name for a sweetener called aspartame, discovered accidentally in 1965 when a chemical researcher licked his fingers. Aspartame is made from the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine, as the methyl ester. In the body it breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. On the shelf it decomposes into methanol. It occurs as a white powder that though equivalent in calories to sugar, is two hundred times sweeter.
Aspartame is used as a sweetener in products aimed at dieters or diabetics as it has no calories in the amounts used, and no affect on blood sugar. It is most commonly found in diet sodas and drinks, confections, dry mixes, cereals, frozen desserts, fruit-like products (e.g. Jell-O), juice beverages, yogurt, dairy products, pharmaceuticals, gum, and breath mints. It is also sold by itself, for use in baking and home sweetening. Some common brand names for aspartame are: Nutrasweet, Equal, Indulge, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure.
Because there is so much money being made off of aspartame-containing products, and because it has a monopoly on the artificial sweetener game, information on the health effects of aspartame is obfuscated by the claims of the people making money from it. They (all of them) claim that only phenylketonurics, people with a priori sensitivity to phenylalanine, are caused any harm by aspartame. Even snopes.com, a website dedicated to overturning urban legends, claims that aspartame being dangerous is false. It is documented that Monsanto (the chemical company responsible for the spread of aspartame) hired PR representatives to infiltrate the internet and spread the word that aspartame is non-toxic. Most people I’ve asked echo the opinion that aspartame is not damaging in humans. These claims are called into question when 99% of the industry sponsored research on aspartame claims it is safe, whereas 90% of the non-industry sponsored articles claim it is hazardous to health.
Despite the claims of the aspartame peddlers, there are thousands of reports of negative reactions to nutrasweet. Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, a class of substances that damage neurons through paroxysmal overactivity. Phenylalanine is an amino acid that is known to produce seizures and act as a neurotoxin at high levels. The makers of NutraSweet claim that these amino acids are present in most foods in larger levels than in aspartame, and therefore it must be safe. The problem is that when those amino acids occur in foods they don't occur alone, the occur in a nest of other chemicals that support and regulate their usage in the body. There is concern over the effect of aspartame on the brain and nervous system, as well as concern about the formaldehyde in the body resulting from the breakdown of methanol.
Some symptoms people suffer from use of aspartame are headaches, chills, dizziness, hearing loss, anxiety, depression, addiction, memory loss, joint pain, uterine polyps, vomiting, birth defects, heart palpitations, slurred speech, seizures, and brain tumors and cancer, comas, and death. Whether or not one feels symptoms, and the severity of those symptoms are determined by one’s individual physiology. Experts think that it may take up to forty years for aspartame poisoning to show symptoms in some people.
I know that no one who reads this is going to give up Nutrasweet because they think that what I’m saying is hippie bullshit. That’s fine. I don’t want people to give it up. I want people to understand that the information given to them by people selling edible products may not necessarily be based on scientific fact. That the testing and regulation that most people assume take place before foods, beverages, and other edible substance are placed on the market does not always occur. I want you to understand that there are rigorous campaigns by food manufacturers (as well as lobbying in Washington) to reduce the standards around their product. Nutrition scientists can do nothing but sigh and shrug when the information they provide is routinely disregarded in favor of convenience, market whims, and mass transport.
I want people to understand that there are actually people out there whose job it is to get between the information provided by the educators, researchers, scientists, and clinicians and the consumer. Their job is to spread misinformation about food. If you think this is not true – check out the obesity and disease rates here in the U.S. and think carefully about why our food supply is so different from those countries that don’t have such health problems. Want a hint? The prevalence of manufactured foods.
Nutrasweet is the brand name for a sweetener called aspartame, discovered accidentally in 1965 when a chemical researcher licked his fingers. Aspartame is made from the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine, as the methyl ester. In the body it breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. On the shelf it decomposes into methanol. It occurs as a white powder that though equivalent in calories to sugar, is two hundred times sweeter.
Aspartame is used as a sweetener in products aimed at dieters or diabetics as it has no calories in the amounts used, and no affect on blood sugar. It is most commonly found in diet sodas and drinks, confections, dry mixes, cereals, frozen desserts, fruit-like products (e.g. Jell-O), juice beverages, yogurt, dairy products, pharmaceuticals, gum, and breath mints. It is also sold by itself, for use in baking and home sweetening. Some common brand names for aspartame are: Nutrasweet, Equal, Indulge, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure.
Because there is so much money being made off of aspartame-containing products, and because it has a monopoly on the artificial sweetener game, information on the health effects of aspartame is obfuscated by the claims of the people making money from it. They (all of them) claim that only phenylketonurics, people with a priori sensitivity to phenylalanine, are caused any harm by aspartame. Even snopes.com, a website dedicated to overturning urban legends, claims that aspartame being dangerous is false. It is documented that Monsanto (the chemical company responsible for the spread of aspartame) hired PR representatives to infiltrate the internet and spread the word that aspartame is non-toxic. Most people I’ve asked echo the opinion that aspartame is not damaging in humans. These claims are called into question when 99% of the industry sponsored research on aspartame claims it is safe, whereas 90% of the non-industry sponsored articles claim it is hazardous to health.
Despite the claims of the aspartame peddlers, there are thousands of reports of negative reactions to nutrasweet. Aspartic acid is an excitotoxin, a class of substances that damage neurons through paroxysmal overactivity. Phenylalanine is an amino acid that is known to produce seizures and act as a neurotoxin at high levels. The makers of NutraSweet claim that these amino acids are present in most foods in larger levels than in aspartame, and therefore it must be safe. The problem is that when those amino acids occur in foods they don't occur alone, the occur in a nest of other chemicals that support and regulate their usage in the body. There is concern over the effect of aspartame on the brain and nervous system, as well as concern about the formaldehyde in the body resulting from the breakdown of methanol.
Some symptoms people suffer from use of aspartame are headaches, chills, dizziness, hearing loss, anxiety, depression, addiction, memory loss, joint pain, uterine polyps, vomiting, birth defects, heart palpitations, slurred speech, seizures, and brain tumors and cancer, comas, and death. Whether or not one feels symptoms, and the severity of those symptoms are determined by one’s individual physiology. Experts think that it may take up to forty years for aspartame poisoning to show symptoms in some people.
I know that no one who reads this is going to give up Nutrasweet because they think that what I’m saying is hippie bullshit. That’s fine. I don’t want people to give it up. I want people to understand that the information given to them by people selling edible products may not necessarily be based on scientific fact. That the testing and regulation that most people assume take place before foods, beverages, and other edible substance are placed on the market does not always occur. I want you to understand that there are rigorous campaigns by food manufacturers (as well as lobbying in Washington) to reduce the standards around their product. Nutrition scientists can do nothing but sigh and shrug when the information they provide is routinely disregarded in favor of convenience, market whims, and mass transport.
I want people to understand that there are actually people out there whose job it is to get between the information provided by the educators, researchers, scientists, and clinicians and the consumer. Their job is to spread misinformation about food. If you think this is not true – check out the obesity and disease rates here in the U.S. and think carefully about why our food supply is so different from those countries that don’t have such health problems. Want a hint? The prevalence of manufactured foods.
posted by LazySusan at 9:06 AM
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