What makes aspartame so bad

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Share on Facebook Share on Twitter. Additional Support Provided By:. In fact, chances are good that you or someone you know has consumed an aspartame-containing diet soda within the past 24 hours.

In , one-fifth of all Americans drank a diet soda on any given day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many opponents have claimed that aspartame is actually bad for your health. There are also claims about long-term repercussions of aspartame consumption. Aspartame is sold under the brand names NutraSweet and Equal.

The ingredients of aspartame are aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Both are naturally occurring amino acids. Aspartic acid is produced by your body, and phenylalanine is an essential amino acid that you get from food. When your body processes aspartame, part of it is broken down into methanol.

Consumption of fruit, fruit juice, fermented beverages, and some vegetables also contain or result in methanol production. As of , aspartame was the largest source of methanol in the American diet. Methanol is toxic in large quantities, yet smaller amounts may also be concerning when combined with free methanol because of enhanced absorption.

Free methanol is present in some foods and is also created when aspartame is heated. Free methanol consumed regularly may be a problem because it breaks down into formaldehyde, a known carcinogen and neurotoxin, in the body.

However, the Food Standards Agency in the United Kingdom states that even in children who are high consumers of aspartame, the maximum intake level of methanol is not reached. They also state that since eating fruits and vegetables is known to enhance health, methanol intake from these sources is not a high priority for research. Alan Gaby, MD, reported in Alternative Medicine Review in that aspartame found in commercial products or heated beverages may be a seizure trigger and should be evaluated in cases of difficult seizure management.

A number of regulatory agencies and health-related organizations have weighed in favorably on aspartame.

It found no reason to remove aspartame from the market. The review reported no safety concerns associated with normal or increased intake. At the same time, artificial sweeteners have a long history of controversy. Lab tests showed that massive doses of these two compounds caused cancer and other disorders in laboratory animals. While aspartame is indeed approved by the FDA, the consumer advocate organization Center for Science in the Public Interest has cited numerous studies that suggest problems with the sweetener, including a study by the Harvard School of Public Health.

In , the National Institutes of Health decided saccharin could be removed from the list of cancer-causing substances. Using other sweeteners can help you limit your aspartame intake. Aspartame is most often labeled as containing phenylalanine. According to the American Cancer Society , aspartame is approximately times sweeter than sugar.

So only a very small amount is needed to give food and beverages a sweet flavor. A can of diet soda contains about milligrams of aspartame. Replace four cans of Pepsi with four cans of diet Pepsi, for example, and you drop calories.

Calories aside, excessive consumption of sugar causes far more health problems than aspartame. Largely from a lack of understanding and sometimes wilful misrepresentation of chemistry.

First and foremost, there is the naturalistic fallacy, the common belief that what is "natural" is inherently good, and that anything man-made is inherently bad. Practically, that leads us to think that "natural" substances like sugar are always better than "chemicals" like aspartame. We tend to forget that all foodstuffs have chemical components, whether they are fruits or artificial sweeteners.

Aspartame, which can also be identified as E on food labels, has three constituent parts: phenylalanine, methanol and aspartic acid.

Aside from sounding unappetizing, they can all be toxic at high doses. This has led some so-called natural health practitioners such as Dr. Joseph Mercola, the high priest of quackery, to describe aspartame as "by far the most dangerous substance added to most food today. Mercola and his ilk, the food additive causes a dizzying array of health problems, including brain tumours, epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease and birth defects, none of which is demonstrated in credible research.

Anti-aspartame crusaders point principally to methanol, which is essentially wood alcohol — both poisonous and a carcinogen at high doses. But dosage is what really matters. Aspartame contains tiny amounts of these chemicals, as do many other foods. In fact, there is more "poisonous" methanol in a banana than in a can of Diet Coke, and neither will do any real harm, in the short or long-term.