Finally some doubts about aspartame as food additive are coming out on mass media. It is some years I warn my friends about the danger of aspartame. However, I have been very rarely successful convincing them that aspartame is bad. They go on drinking Cola Zero, Cola Diet and eating diet products. Take care of your brains, friends. I am not the only one warning you. Read here and give a look to this documentary. First episode here, or watch it full on youtube
Discuss Biology
October 28, 2009 at 11:25 pm |
I have always stayed away from aspartame because I have a variant of phenylketonuria (you may have seen warnings for phenylketonurics on labels that list aspartame).
October 29, 2009 at 12:12 am |
I don’t like aspartame: diarrhea, nausea and that strange taste in the mouth are far worst than sugar effects.
October 29, 2009 at 9:28 pm |
The video shown is outdated and its contents are totally rejected by science given my 2008 discoveries that supporting aspartame safety (see http://blog.rv.net/2009/09/green-tea-a-natural-alternative-to-sugary-sodas/#comments). Aspartame is perfectly safe; it is perhaps the most studied substance in history. There is, however, an internet conspiracy theory attributing 90+ problems to aspartame and likely this video is part of that movement. But this is just a conspiracy theory without real or current scientific merit. Aspartame is approved for use as a sweetener by all the world’s relevant regulatory authorities. For more about the underlying internet conspiracy theory against aspartame see Snopes comments: http://search.atomz.com/search/?sp-q=aspartame&sp-a=00062d45-sp00000000&sp-advanced=1&sp-p=all&sp-w-control=1&sp-w=alike&sp-date-range=-1&sp-x=any&sp-c=100&sp-m=1&sp-s=0.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries. The author has a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and at Vanderbilt University and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into retirement.)
October 30, 2009 at 10:56 am |
Dr Garst, thank you very much for this scientific reply. But what about these 3 articles from Dr Soffritti?
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18226064?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=1
.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16507461?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=4
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17805418?itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum&ordinalpos=2
October 30, 2009 at 5:29 pm |
It is one thing to say that aspartame is ok to ingest in moderation, as some people may say (that wouldn’t be me), but to say that it is “perfectly safe” is absolutely irresponsible. I can’t tell you how many people I have “run into” that say they have had some sort of malady the could not get rid of, finally they stop ingesting aspartame, and suddenly it goes away! I know this is not scientific, but there are so many of these stories out there, how can they all be coincidence and be ignored? When you go to bed at night and no snow is on the ground, and wake up in the morning and snow is on the ground, you can deduce that during the night it snowed, even though you didn’t see it snow. The truth is, nothing is more powerful to an individual than a personal anecdote because people aren’t going to ingest something that made them sick, regardless of the “science” behind it. I know that aspartame is well-studied, but just because it has been studied so much, does not mean that the results of those studies proport its safety. In fact, I submit, the reason it has been studied so much, is because there have been so many complaints of its reactions submitted to the FDA. I can’t speak for anyone else, but this doesn’t help me alleviate my concerns about it. For the record, I couldn’t care less what snopes says. Snopes.com is just a dumb website that provides people an opportunity to type any “rumor” that they have heard, and the all-powerful snopes will tell you whether it is true or false. It will then provide websites that support its position. Big deal. Anyone can do this. Some people say there is this “internet conspiracy” about the dangers of aspartame. With all that I have seen, I can just as well say there is an “internet conspiracy” proporting the safety of aspartame. For me, I would never touch the stuff!
To check out some of the many, many, symptoms attributed to aspartame submitted to the FDA, as well as the number of complaints of each symptom listed and the number of complaints from products containing aspartame (keep in mind this is from April 1995)go to:
http://www.sweetpoison.com/articles/92-aspartame-symptoms-FDA.gif
http://blog.jeremycorreia.com/?p=231
http://www.drsoszka.com/food-allergies/diet-soda-deception-2/
October 30, 2009 at 5:32 pm |
Loranablog:
Thanks for writing back. I’m glad you asked, because in the minds of some these Soffritti papers demonstrate aspartame concerns. However, these papers should be totally dismissed. Your top Soffritti link is dismissed, because the others are invalid. Please read my comments at the first link I provided in my earlier writing. In the first paragraph to that website, I basically establish why the Soffritti et al (European Ramazzini Foundation, ERF) papers are invalid science, based on discoveries I reported in 2008. While all the details cannot be provided here, I can and have documented to regulatory agencies that the Soffritti paper’s conclusions were invalid, because their experiments were very poorly designed and very poorly executed. To understand why you need to realize that aspartame is hydrolyzed to methanol and its oxidation product formic acid (formate) from that methanol is reduced to a methyl group and detoxified by the vitamin folic acid (folate). Not only did they not appreciate this fact (they didn’t even mention it), but they made three phenomenally fatal errors, because of their ignorance of this well-known established fact. First their rats were folate deficient even before their experiments began, because their diet was demonstrably deficient in folate. Second, as their experiment progressed they made just their treated rats even more deficient in folate, because only these treated animals were provided the aspartame; aspartame’s methanol constituent was continuously depleting folate, but only in the treated animals–it is bad science to design experiments that deplete any vitamin without controlling (duplicating) that occurrence in the control rats too. The control rats should have been provided the same methanol dosing. Lastly, their rat strain (Sprague-Dawley) is notoriously susceptible to age-related folate deficiency; their experiments lasted until their rats died. Such an experimental design is never used in toxicology for good reasons. It allows unknown factors to become important. In this case this time frame was about twice the time at which folate deficiency has been demonstrated by other scientists to occur in this susceptible rat strain.
The above facts are in the process of being provided to the publishing journal; they should force the journal to rescind these papers. But even if you don’t believe the points above since they haven’t been published yet, then believe this! All the ERF work has been strongly rejected very recently also because all their rats in all their studies (aspartame and many other compounds) were likely infected; (see this 2009 paper, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19430000?ordinalpos=2&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum). The consequence of that infection is that everything the ERF has reported are artifacts of their animals being infected. This should not be a surprise. The preexisting, treatment-worsening folate deficiency in known age-related deficient rats clarify not only the fatal flaws in the ERF experimental design, but much more. Based on likely differing thresholds (and times) for infection and for tumor development to appear, their rat’s folate deficiency could independently explain both their rat’s infection and perhaps activation of latent viruses uniquely linked to their rat strain’s development of leukemia/lymphoma.
I invite you to return to the first link I provided in my earlier writing and read my third reality, namely how folate and related issues explain virtually all real or alleged human problems with aspartame. Virtually all aspartame issues in humans are explained by personal issues of the user, not aspartame. Moreover, none of the physicians (and a few scientists) that have taken a stand against aspartame have ever even inquired into the folate status of sensitive patients or taken into account the folate issue in their animal experiments. Yet the critical involvement of folate in methanol metabolism has been known for forty years.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
October 30, 2009 at 6:22 pm |
Honestly, I couldn’t care less if some of the rats, or more importantly, some people are folate deficient, and that that is what causes the adverse reactions to aspartame. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt people who are folate deficient know they are, and if this is the case, wouldn’t that mean that aspartame would be dangerous for them? Even if they do know they are folate deficient, it would still be dangerous for them, especially since they would not know that aspartame could harm them ( of course, just because I know aspartame can harm me as a phenylketonuric, does not mean it isn’t dangerous to me) so how can you possibly say that aspartame is “perfectly safe” given what you have said? Whether or not it actually is the aspartame itself that makes them sick doesn’t matter. The point is that when some people ingest aspartame, they have gotten sick. I suppose you dispute that it’s really not the high concentration of phenylalanine in aspartame that can harm me as a phenylketonuric, but what can harm me is a lack of an enzyme to break it down. Tomato, tomato. If you do think this, than you are simply splitting hairs. If aspartame is “perfectly safe” why are there warnings for people like me on labels where aspartame is listed? The point is, enzyme or not, ingesting aspartame may cause me to suffer brain damage, and there have been many different adverse effects attributed to aspartame and submitted to the FDA. Whether or not all these people are folate deficient makes no difference.
October 30, 2009 at 8:11 pm |
Yoda:
Yoda you either seriously misunderstand or intentionally ignore what I am trying to say. People, like you, that have phenylketonuria constitute a special risk group. Aspartame contains the natural and vital amino acid phenylalanine. For most people phenylalanine poses no concern at all, but actually is a vital nutrient. But because you cannot detoxify it properly, it poses a neurological hazard to you. For you and your risk group a warning is posted on the aspartame label. But for the vast majority of us, aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed. I might add, there is no scientific documentation to the contrary. Yelling loudly or posting scientifically meaningless arguments doesn’t change that fact either.
Science has long established that folic acid (folate)-based metabolism is how many natural and synthetic substances are both naturally recycled and detoxified simultaneously. Folate is involved in the metabolism of both methanol and ethanol. While methanol produces formate, the natural substrate for the folate system to make health requiring methyl groups, the latter produces acetaldehyde, which is a powerful inhibitor of many aspects of the folate system. Normal dietary intake of methanol poses no risk in the presence of sufficient folate. But, while ethanol inhibits this process many drugs, including practically all antiepileptic agents deplete folate. This is why 400-600 micrograms of folate is needed daily. Folate and ascorbic acid (vitamin C) are vitamins. Drug depletion of folate poses no more risks than does the ready dietary excretion of ascorbic acid poses for development of scurvy, if adequate vitamins are consumed to compensate for those factors depleting the vitamins.
These things said some people believe aspartame causes headaches and various other noticeable problems for them. I don’t disagree that some people might be susceptible to such problems. But just as folate deficiency caused clear problems for Soffritti’s rats, most people susceptible to any aspartame issue are responding not to aspartame, but to some personal health issues, be it sensitivity to phenylalanine (phenylketonuria) or folate deficiency, folate genetic issues called polymorphisms, or folate-correctable homocysteine accrual. Folate issues, which were rampant in the 1980s and 1990’s when this aspartame controversy arose, have disappeared, because most people now take multiple vitamins.
This folate issue is a far larger issue than phenylketonuria amongst the population, but it is completely abrogated by vitamin intake even amongst those with genetic issues with their folate system. People need to know that natural food sources are simply insufficient to meet our needs; without continuous folate supplements, we are all folate deficient. That means without daily supplements we are all at risk for many folate-linked problems ranging from infection susceptibility all the way to cancer. Folate deficiency is the chief cause of neural tube birth disorders, of ethanol-mediated fetal alcohol syndrome, and it is a very important factor in many cancers, in particular breast cancer. In fact one study suggests “that moderate folate deficiency has a stronger effect on chromosomal instability than BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations found in breast cancer families,” for details see http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16162645?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum.
My point is simply that virtually any personal sensitivity to aspartame (including even those people with phenylketonuria) arises from people’s own personal health issues and has nothing to do with aspartame.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
October 30, 2009 at 10:41 pm |
Ok., I understand. Thank you for the respectful dialogue. Truce.
October 30, 2009 at 11:38 pm |
Dr. Garst, if I have offended you, I am sorry.
November 6, 2009 at 7:34 am |
No offense Yoda.
JEG