Aspartame---Safe or not?

[roy_miami]

This seems like a good time of the year to bring this up (New Years resolutions), what do you guys think about the aspartame debate?

I've been dieting on and off for the past year and diet soda has become a huge part of my diet, probably drinking at least 2 litres every other day. At a party over Christmas my friend said I should stay away from aspartame as he read on the internet its pretty dangerous. My argument that night was, in this day and age I doubt these big corporations would risk a huge class action lawsuit by marketing unsafe product. Would Pepsi or Coke be liable if aspartame was found to be unsafe?

After doing some research, its not looking good. From some of the articles I read, they are comparing this debate with the debate on whether or not smoking was unhealthy. 90% of the studies say aspartame is very unhealthy, even deadly. The 10% that say its healthy are all funded by corporations selling aspartame products. The FDA even banned it after its initial study in 1980.

There is a long list of symptoms caused by aspartame, some of which I would like to be able to blame on the drug, like fatigue, thinning hair, poor memory, irritability, memory loss or slurring of speech, but these could all easily be coincidences. I do have two symptoms that seem like they could be real reactions to aspartame. A while back I noticed once in a while my eyes would "flash", like a camera flash or a TV was being unplugged. I had been meaning to see an optometrist about this even before I discovered it could be a reaction to aspartame. The second symptom I have is chest pains quite often in the heart area. Some of the more serious aspartame reactions have to do with vision loss, sometimes blindness, and brain/nervous system issues, sometimes resulting in brain tumors. Testing on rats resulted in a small percentage of the test rats getting brain tumors. Testing on monkeys resulted in the monkeys having seizures after prolonged testing. The seizures stopped when the testing was stopped.

As I said, diet soda is a big part of my diet and dieting is going to be just that much more difficult if I have to drink water all the time. Also, here in Canada all diet soda is sweetened with aspartame except for Diet Orange Crush, I suspect I'll get pretty sick of it in a few days. In the States, they have non-aspartame diet soda equivalents, Pepsi One for example. Has anybody else done any research on this?

[Johnny Drama]

there was an article about artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, on HowStuffWorks not too long ago. http://health.howstuffworks.com/arti...sweetener6.htm
any way you slice it, though, 2 liters of diet soda every other day just can't be good for you.

[LeapFrog]

Forget the aspartame for a moment...

[ QUOTE ]

A while back I noticed once in a while my eyes would "flash", like a camera flash or a TV was being unplugged. I had been meaning to see an optometrist


[/ QUOTE ]

Probably a good idea for you to go in. This could very well be symptoms of a viterous detachment. I've had this happen in both eyes, you can see flashes of light (blue for me), see floaters (black spots that move across your field of vision and are most visable against a bright background like the sky). By itself this is not a big deal however a small number of cases result in retinal detachment -- this is VERY serious. My optometrist had a case where a farmer had a retinal detachment but didn't come in for a few days due to harvest. He is now blind in that eye... Get checked out.

[ QUOTE ]

The second symptom I have is chest pains quite often in the heart area.


[/ QUOTE ]
Uh I would see a doc. Could very well be acid reflux or whatnot (I also have fun with this), but why take a chance? Don't let God 2 outer you man.

[fluffpop62]

How scary! I have had so many people tell me that I drink more Diet Coke then anyone they know (going to a predominately female college in Southern California - - > EVERYONE drinks diet soda if they drink soda at all). AND my mother's best friend drank inordinate amounts of soda, was one day randomly diagnosed with one of those "octopus" brain tumors (with the tendrils that make them inoperable) and died within literally a few months, and the only potential connection they made was her similar obssession with Diet Coke. I haven't thought about that in a while :/

[roy_miami]

[ QUOTE ]


[ QUOTE ]

The second symptom I have is chest pains quite often in the heart area.


[/ QUOTE ]
Uh I would see a doc. Could very well be acid reflux or whatnot (I also have fun with this), but why take a chance? Don't let God 2 outer you man.

[/ QUOTE ]

I saw a doc about the chest pains, I mentioned it to my parents and they pretty much forced me to go to emergency. I'm 33 so I wasn't too stressed although a friend of mine had died a year earlier from cardiac arrest at age 33 so it was waning on my mind a bit.

[Klompy]

not

[LeapFrog]

[ QUOTE ]

I saw a doc about the chest pains, I mentioned it to my parents and they pretty much forced me to go to emergency. I'm 33 so I wasn't too stressed although a friend of mine had died a year earlier from cardiac arrest at age 33 so it was waning on my mind a bit.

[/ QUOTE ]

Cool man -- sorry to hear about your friend.

[jaminbird]

Anyone ever see the Mythbusters episode where they did the diet coke and mentos thing? I now drink significantly less diet coke due to the scene where they were testing the individual components of diet coke and were dressed like they were handling nuclear waste.

[MaxWeiss]

Aspartame is fine. You (OP) shouldn't worry about it. When it gets hot it breaks down into things which are in fact bad for you, but it's not used in anything that gets hot. Sodas, yogurts, whatever--it's all cold stuff. Once you eat it, your body breaks it down long before (it gets hot and) anything bad happens. I don't know what the "bad" temperature is, so I don't know if anything bad even happens at body temp, or if it takes hotter to do it. I'd avoid putting it in your coffee though, just in case.

If you do get symptoms after having it, it might actually be bad for you but only because you would be lacking in the enzyme for breaking it down, which the vast majority of people have. As a general statement though, it's fine, and don't worry.

[Fedorfan]

[ QUOTE ]
My argument that night was, in this day and age I doubt these big corporations would risk a huge class action lawsuit by marketing unsafe product. Would Pepsi or Coke be liable if aspartame was found to be unsafe?


[/ QUOTE ]

LOL!

Wow i wish i lived in your world, i wish i could believe that big corporations cared about the people who used there products, i also totally believe that followed by caring for the consumer, next most important thing to them is the enviroment.

I've read enough to decide that aspartame just isn't tasty enough for me to take even the smallest risk in consuming it regularly. Also it seems odd to me that the most unhealthy/fattest people always seem to consume huge amounts of diet soda...