Aspartame:

Sinister or just sweet?

By Doug Clifford

In today’s health conscious world, product manufacturers are constantly looking for ways to add nutritional value to food while simultaneously reducing calories. A discovery that has aided them in their quest is what is commonly known as Aspartame.
This artificial sweetener is important to health enthusiasts because it is used in many protein supplements, diet foods, low calorie drinks and other items we love that would otherwise carry a lot more calories.
Aspartame is a high-intensity, non-nutritive sweetener. You don’t need much of it to sweeten something and upon consumption it won’t provide any energy.
Unfortunately for Aspartame, it has been the target of a lot bad publicity. I’m not sure whether it’s due to competition from other sweeteners, or just plain misinformation. For those of you who fear using certain products, because they contain aspartame, sit back and relax. BodyFitness has some pretty sweet information for you! 

Aspartame was discovered almost 30 years ago. The fact it was about 200 times sweeter than sugar made it an instant hit with food manufacturers. They found they needed very little to sweeten their products, plus they could significantly cut the calorie content.
However, somehow this sweetener began to become linked to things such as cancer and even DNA mutations. There was a lot of negative hype and not a shred of evidence. More than 100 governments tested Aspartame and found it safe.
Surveys in the US, Canada, Germany and Finland show that those who regularly consume Aspartame generally consume only 10% of the recommended daily limit. Therefore, the population in general consumes only a tenth (or less) of what the government regards as a safe amount. Either the tests were very wrong or Aspartame’s bad reputation is way out of line.
Aspartame consists of two, linked amino acids - L-phenylalanine and L-aspartic acid. It is the L-phenylalanine that has attracted the most flak for aspartame from those inclined to jump to conclusions.
There is a rare disorder known as Phenylketonuria (PKU), which is a central nervous system disease characterized by an inability to metabolise excess (note the word “excess”) amounts of L-phenylalanine.
Some people started saying that consuming Aspartame would create this condition. But first of all, L-phenylalanine is found in meat, eggs, milk and almost any other protein source. In addition, it is an essential amino-acid that is metabolised the same as any other amino-acid. Just because some L-phenylalanine is consumed in Aspartame, does not mean it will be metabolised differently to the L-phenylalanine in any other food source. Also, if someone has this rare condition, eating Aspartame will be just as bad as eating any form of protein containing L-phenylalanine. It will not cause PKU.
People with PKU were given the daily recommended maximum dosage of Aspartame for 12 weeks and exhibited no abnormal symptoms. Only one study has been able to cause Aspartame to create nervous system deficit and in order to do that, they had to give mice 550 times (that is 55,000% of) the daily recommended dose for a human being. Let’s get this straight. An animal 100^th the size of a human (1% of the size), was given 550 times as much as a human should consume (55,000%...550 X 100). That is equivalent to giving a human 55,000 times the daily recommended amount. After administering doses like that, I’m surprised the mouse didn’t just explode. Of course something will go wrong when you give an animal the size of a mouse a dose 550 times greater than a human would consume. It wouldn’t take a scientist to figure that out.
Another charge put to the test was Aspartame’s alleged ability to alter DNA. This may be due to the aspartic acid in Aspartame. Aspartic Acid is an amino acid that the body uses to create new DNA and acts as a neurotransmitter. In order to test this theory, scientists combined Aspartame with another artificial sweetener and gave subjects a daily dosage seven times the maximum recommended. This study found no evidence of toxicity.
When you are next enjoying a product sweetened with Aspartame, don’t be afraid you are going to mutate into something else, or get cancer. If the body does happen to build up an abundance of aspartic acid, it burns it up as energy.
Next is a scare tactic that could only have been used by a competitor of Aspartame. It is based on a half-truth and facts that have been twisted and distorted. Some unscrupulous party went out and released the information that Aspartame is converted into formaldehyde in your system. This is only part of the equation.
What happens is the methyl group from aspartame is metabolised into methanol (an alcohol), then oxidized into formaldehyde, which is further oxidized into carbon dioxide. It is not as if the formaldehyde is the end product. It is part of the process and does not stay in that form.
In addition, your system breaks down many sugars into methanol, then formaldehyde and then carbon dioxide. Tomato juice produces six times the methanol that a can of diet soda does. Does that mean tomato juice will also cause you to die of formaldehyde poisoning?
Detailed studies have been conducted to determine how ingestion influences plasma levels of aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol and formaldehyde. During the studies, adults were given up to four times the recommended daily amount of Aspartame. Neither their plasma aspartate concentrations nor their blood levels of formaldehyde changed.
Since we mentioned methanol, we’ll take a look at that too. methanol is a monohydric alcohol, which means that it has one hydroxyl group. Aspartame does convert to methanol during its ingestion process, which is why some people think it may be unsafe. However, as mentioned in the above paragraph, there is more methanol in tomato juice than in a can of diet soda. Fruit juices such as orange juice, apple juice and grape juice all contain more methanol than aspartame.
Methanol is poisonous only when consumed in very large quantities, namely hundreds of grams. The average soft drink (which accounts for 70% of the consumption of Aspartame) contains only 0.024 grams. That is 24 thousandths of a gram. So, for every 42 sodas you drink, you consume 1g of methanol. Now, if you are able to consume an amount equivalent to 100g (the equivalent of 4200 sodas) in a day, then you probably deserve to get methanol poisoning and the world is better off without you. The important thing is, Aspartame does not contain enough methanol to be dangerous to your health.
The food industry evaluates sweeteners for many attributes, including sensory qualities (such as sweet taste, lack of bitterness and odour), safety, compatibility with other food ingredients and stability in different food environments. So, not only are governments ensuring aspartame is safe, so is the food industry itself. The food industry is not going to put out a product unless their testing proves it is safe. Food manufacturers test aspartame as rigidly as the FDA (US Federal Drug Administration) does and the FDA has retested Aspartame 26 times since its original approval.
The next time you are looking for protein powders or some other supplement, do not be afraid to purchase a product containing Aspartame. The same goes for when you are at the grocery store searching through the low-cal substitutes for your favourite foods.
Aspartame has been tested rigidly by over 100 regulatory commissions worldwide. It has been passed all safety issues with flying colours. Like most other things, it is perfectly safe when used as it was intended. So, enjoy your great tasting, low-calorie food products without fearing you are going to be pickled by formaldehyde, poisoned by methanol, or given a terminal cancer.
Now you can have that sweet snack and enjoy it too!