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aspartame safety

MattPsy, hrmmm well you seem intelligent enough to know that being a 'poison' or 'toxic' is usually a matter of concentration. Why is it ok to ingest a chemical with known toxic metabolites? This is not a 'basic necessary food', it is a food additive that has no nutritional value. It is 100% unnecessary.

To make a comparison, what level of trans-fat is acceptable in a typical donut? I mean, should I really worry about 0.2g? 1g? 2g? where is the cutoff?

(and after answering that, could you tell me the safe limit of aspartame ingestion per day?)
 
you guys know that you can still drink beer right? soda...

benzoic acid is a nearly ubiquitous preservative, as the sodium salt. It gives some people headaches and kinda tastes like shit, but i doubt there is much benzene generated in vivo or via vit. C, it just aint that strong of a reductant...

One would be sure that if you live in a big city, or spend any amount of time near car exhaust (a biker, sitting in traffic, etc), you are breathing in far more benzene from the car exhaust than from the soda
 
lifeisforliving: That's for each person to decide for themselves, once they're aware of the risks.
Just as you know the risks of walking through the city inhaling the fumes from automobiles, you must decide your own acceptable level of exposure.
Personally, i'm not worried at all. But I won't be drinking aspartame flavored drinks anyway cuz I think they don't taste as good as sucrose flavored ones and well, i'm really skinny as is so a bit of extra energy wouldn't go astray. But anyway, if I thought they actually tasted nice I would consume as much as my thirst desired without concern for toxicity. I've got worse shit to worry about than my drink sweetners, tbh.

But - make every person aware of the potential risk and let them decide for themselves. They may well decide that the slight risk involved is favorable over the risk of say, getting diabetes, from high sugar content drinks... it's their choice.

(And while we're being all worried about excitotoxicity and stuff, maybe we should start worrying about the MSG in our food... the DXM in our cough syrups... or the K we might be putting up our noses!)
 
lifeisforliving said:
To make a comparison, what level of trans-fat is acceptable in a typical donut? I mean, should I really worry about 0.2g? 1g? 2g? where is the cutoff?

(and after answering that, could you tell me the safe limit of aspartame ingestion per day?)
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Where is the cut off? - No one knows, or least no one knows with any certainty. Also there is most likely different safety levels for different people (genetics, diet, health, other drugs currently prescribed etc)

^which is fine & I have no problem with the unknown.

I do have a problem with the false & biased safety claims being made by the manufacturers. Aspartame is sold & advertised as a sugar replacement, intended to be all the benefits of sugar minus health problems. That is what makes it worse - people drinking diet soda thinking it is healthy for them.

In otherwords false representation.
 
Aspartame has been known to cause seizures in large concentrations, i.e. drinking a 12 pack of diet soda a day. However, in normal concentrations, you will probably fine.

I know someone who has done studies on this stuff, and he still drinks diet soda daily.

However, if you want to be safe, just stay away from the stuff. I won't drink it as I have an intollerance--it makes me foggy headed and irritated. I think that is a bigger risk than toxicity. I mean, if you were worried about things that could be toxic, you should stop eating doritos, (contains BHT), or anything with preservatives or artifical colors. I mean the sodium benzoate is probably worse for you than the aspartame. I mean, what isn't toxic these days?

Saccharine isn't exactly a better substitute. It isn't as bad as it is painted as due to the fact that all the research done on it was done with the equivalent of drinking pounds in a day (same can be said for the aspartame research--people need to stop using models that do not represent what actually happens--of course things will be toxic in large quantities--water is even toxic in large quantities). However, anyone who is allergic to sulfanomides should not drink saccharine as one of the metabolites of saccharine is a sulfanomide.

Now, either you should stick with actual sugar (which is impossible to find--everything is high fructose corn syrup in this country which causes obeisity and other problems due to the fact that it doesn't increase insulin levels causing it to go straight to the blood), or go with stevia. I love stevia. It is a herb that has a sweet extract. However, make sure you get a formulation without a bitter aftertaste or else it will taste like crap.
 
What's the problem with diet sodas? For one, the aspartame decouples after it hops on the amino acid transporter and floats from your stomach to the brain, producing methanol (whereas if you had methanol in say, tomato juice, a lot of it would be munched up by first pass metabolism). This is then converted into formaldehyde and then destroys neat things like DNA molecules. However, a lot of the rat studies do look fairly good, only showing a marginal increase in cancer with huge amounts.

The other problem with diet soda is that it's basically a pile of highly refined chemicals in water. I bet if you only allowed rats to drink diet (or even regular) soda instead of water for their lifetimes, they'd probably have shorter median lifespans.
 
nuke said:
The other problem with diet soda is that it's basically a pile of highly refined chemicals in water. I bet if you only allowed rats to drink diet (or even regular) soda instead of water for their lifetimes, they'd probably have shorter median lifespans.
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Heh, try working at a fast-food restaurant for a while. "Highly refined chemicals" in _______ is just (post-)industrial society for you. Now we just have to hope that chemicals can be made to reverse the process...

Really, though, the problem isn't so much laziness on anyone's part to develop products that are not so damaging to the human body as that the modern lifestyle generally doesn't allow for time to worry about such trivial things as potential toxicity of a sweetener in such a staple of society as Diet Coke. Something that has been rather painful to learn is that most people do not see Coke v. Diet Coke as sucrose v. aspartame, but as drink v. "diet" drink, as though the word "diet" actually means something (rather than simply being part of a registered trademark). In short, people are worried about their families, their friends, local political scandals, global political scandals, getting to their doctor appointments, getting their Christmas shopping done, walking the dog, picking the kids up from school, whatever, to be worrying about whether that Diet Coke is really a good thing to drink. It isn't so much "I really shouldn't drink this, but I like it so much" as that most people don't even give much thought to the matter, but simply buy and drink it.
 
SynAmnesia said:
go with stevia. I love stevia. It is a herb that has a sweet extract. However, make sure you get a formulation without a bitter aftertaste or else it will taste like crap.
Click to expand...

yay for stevia :)
 
This forum......

is great. I'm new here and must admit, it's nice that a bunch of people can get together and agree to not agree with so much tolerance. It is what I suspect is true because "we" are "ego-suppressed" due to to the "enlightenment factor" that i also suspect is a common thread amongst "us".
That being said, I , personally can sometimes come off as a "holier than thou","keep your mouth shut, muthafluka". "mr. big shot, who do ya think you are kind of a person", but i'll try to keep a damper on that. I'm sorry if i do, my plea is that it's genetic and there is not a lot, save endless psychotherapy, that i can do about it=D .
Now to the subject. My two cents is this. Everything in moderation. Of course, i'm a big hypocrite and i usually don't practice what i preach, but just try to lay off known "synthefood". That is easier said than done. I would be trampled on by my kids if i tried to remove soda from the "essentials" list at the grocery store. However a lot of good points have been made here, I just wish that i had a godly command of the literature to make a true evaluation of aspartame. I see it as many do; releasing a n insignificant amount of methanol that can easily be handled by normal metabolism, and just a bit skewed towards the amino acid contribution from eating a steak for dinner. Of course i know nothing significant to add about the ADME of aspartame, but just have to say that "Splenda" is the synthetic sweetener that scares the bejesus out of me. THis so called"derived from natural sugar" sweetener is Chlorinated out the wazoo (look up the structure), and if it isn't an alkylating, DNA intercalator agent than i'm a monkey's uncle.
 
Tell me....

What is wrong with high fructose corn syrup? It would seem benign as sucrose is just glucose and fructose tethered together. Is the high fructose content a result of hydrolysis and separation of the fructose component then reintroduction of the fructose to the product, or is it from genetic manipulation of corn sugar synthesis? Please forgive if it's a simple question, but aren't we here to learn?
 
I think it and other sugar substitutes actually have health plusses.

Less plaque and tooth decay, less diabetes, less obesity.

It's important to use it wisely though. For example, I will only drink diet coke because the sugar contained in ordinary coke is ludicrous. It's not a big issue for one can, but when you are consuming big bottles then its absurd. But I wouldn't go to the extent of buying nutrasweet to put in my tea/coffee. The same can be said about lots of food additives. I know the industry adds these to their products, that we, the consumer buys. I dont have a problem with this but I would not personally go as far as to buy them and use them on a personal level.

Isn't this a healthy living sorta thread rather than drug discussion?
 
Fructose hits you more rapidly than sucrose, and is more sickly sweeter.

^They are both still similar though.
 
I really don't see the issue with fructose, there's a mole of it in every mole of sucrose afterall, you get the same stuff after sucrose's -O- bridge is broken...
 
MattPsy said:
I really don't see the issue with fructose, there's a mole of it in every mole of sucrose afterall, you get the same stuff after sucrose's -O- bridge is broken...
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However, fructose doesn't need to be metabolized by insulin. Therefore fructose goes straight to the bloodstream. Having something with "high fructose" just causes a sugar rush direct to the organs without any sort of metabolism. ick. Fructose doesn't cause much of an insulin response, so there is no way for the body to deal with the onslaught of all that sugar, so it just sits in the body. I believe that it is the increase of high fructose corn syrup in our diet that is increasing the amount of type 2 diabetes. However, I don't have any papers to back it up so it could be wrong.

Furthermore, many people crave sugar for its seritonin producing properties. Fructose will not increase seritonin levels because it doesn't increase insulin levels. So if you have a craving for sugar and you either eat an apple or a coke, the craving won't go away--you will just want more. Sometimes you need to sate yourself with a little of the exact thing you want--then a lot more of the healthier thing (i.e. a fruit), that will leave you unsatisfied and searching the cupboard for something else to make you feel full.
 
SynAmnesia: I don't know where you're getting your info from, but insulin doesn't metabolise anything.
If anything, fructose takes LONGER to cause "a sugar rush direct to the organs" as you put it, not shorter as you said; it's Glycemic Index is lower than sucrose.
It will not "just sit in the body", it will enter the TCA cycle and produce G3P much like it's other simple saccharide friends.
I can find no evidence toward your statement that insulin induces the release of serotonin either.

mwop mwop.
 
MDMA users have somewhat compromised BBBs.

I personally stay away from anything that makes me feel gross.

My skin will break out horribly after injestion of most artificial sweeteners and I get very cloudy headed. Not good stuff. Stay natural!
 
^ oh yea that one time i ate a pill all sorts of shit went across the BBB afterwards. loperamide, dopa, HGH, a moose, all went straight to my brain. i was soooo high dude
 
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