D
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Although I haven't actually been asked to talk about aspartame, I thought it would be a decent topic to discuss, considering the recent 'bad rep' it's recieved by a lot of people.
Incase people don't actually know what aspartame is used for, it's an ingredient that is used frequently in 'diet' beverages and sugar free products as a sweetner, in the absence of sugar. So if you look on the back of a can of diet coke for example, you will see aspartame listed in the ingredients.
Now, despite aspartame being very extensively studied, there is still a huge fear over the safety of aspartame and the main fear is that you will just get cancer and die if you drink a can of diet coke, which is ridiculous. This comes largely from research on rodents where they were fed aspartame and they started to devloped tumors, however the amounts were huge and just unrealistic.
However, some people have a condition called phenylketonuria, which essentially prevents the metabolism of phenylalanine, which is a problem because aspartame is a methyl ester of two amino acids, one of which being L-phenylalanine (& L-aspartic acid). This is where the consumption of aspartame would be a problem, as it can cause kidney problems.
If you do not have phenylketonuria, aspartame consumption is not something to be greatly concerned with. There is an upper limit for, but with realistic consumption of products containing aspartame, you are likely going to be fine.
Despite this thread, don't go and start consuming like 15litres of diet coke while you wash down some sugar-free jelly, because that will eventually be problematic.
Hope this is useful information.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12180494
"The safety testing of aspartame has gone well beyond that required to evaluate the safety of a food additive. When all the research on aspartame, including evaluations in both the premarketing and postmarketing periods, is examined as a whole, it is clear that aspartame is safe, and there are no unresolved questions regarding its safety under conditions of intended use."
"Thus, the weight of scientific evidence confirms that, even in amounts many times what people typically consume, aspartame is safe for its intended uses as a sweetener and flavor enhancer."
Incase people don't actually know what aspartame is used for, it's an ingredient that is used frequently in 'diet' beverages and sugar free products as a sweetner, in the absence of sugar. So if you look on the back of a can of diet coke for example, you will see aspartame listed in the ingredients.
Now, despite aspartame being very extensively studied, there is still a huge fear over the safety of aspartame and the main fear is that you will just get cancer and die if you drink a can of diet coke, which is ridiculous. This comes largely from research on rodents where they were fed aspartame and they started to devloped tumors, however the amounts were huge and just unrealistic.
However, some people have a condition called phenylketonuria, which essentially prevents the metabolism of phenylalanine, which is a problem because aspartame is a methyl ester of two amino acids, one of which being L-phenylalanine (& L-aspartic acid). This is where the consumption of aspartame would be a problem, as it can cause kidney problems.
If you do not have phenylketonuria, aspartame consumption is not something to be greatly concerned with. There is an upper limit for, but with realistic consumption of products containing aspartame, you are likely going to be fine.
Despite this thread, don't go and start consuming like 15litres of diet coke while you wash down some sugar-free jelly, because that will eventually be problematic.
Hope this is useful information.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12180494
"The safety testing of aspartame has gone well beyond that required to evaluate the safety of a food additive. When all the research on aspartame, including evaluations in both the premarketing and postmarketing periods, is examined as a whole, it is clear that aspartame is safe, and there are no unresolved questions regarding its safety under conditions of intended use."
"Thus, the weight of scientific evidence confirms that, even in amounts many times what people typically consume, aspartame is safe for its intended uses as a sweetener and flavor enhancer."
