alt Hacker NewsAspartame is not that bad? (2022)
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Yeah, it's a frequent target of the naturalistic fallacy. But to me the most honest criticism of it is not liking the taste. Health-wise, almost certainly better than the sugar it's replacing.
It's probably not great if you're drinking dozens of cans of sugar free soda every day.
All I really know is don't take health advice from influencers, especially if they're selling something, and don't take health advice from people who support deregulation (less industry transparency, oversight, and consequences won't make food or anything safer.)
I don't understand how prevalent Aspartame and other artificial sweeteners are when they taste so bad. They don't even taste sweet to me, just "wrong" in a way that permeates my entire mouth.
Is this a genetic thing?
Not mentioned in the article: there is a really obvious biological effect of aspartame: it triggers your sweetness receptors. And you have them in your mouth (duh!) and elsewhere in your body including in your gut.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6288399/
One might imagine that aspartame triggers the receptors in the gut and that this has some effect. Maybe different sweeteners have different effects, too, since they are metabolized differently.
In Italy we have an "indipendent research lab" that become really famous for a study that demonstrates that aspartame may cause cancer. The same institute published few years later a study about 5G emissions that may cause cancer.
An important missed angle is the effect of artificial sweeteners on gut microbiome. They cause intestinal inflammation which is relevant for IBD sufferers. My take is that I don't miss out on much by being conservative with food, as we still don't understand these complex interactions well enough. What's the harm in sticking to a balanced whole diet of ingredients that were available to our ancestors 200years or more ago.
I'll impart my n=1 experience, since I've been using powdered Aspartame (in combination with Stevia) in drinks and baking for almost 20 years, and I've tried almost all available sugar substitutes over the years.
We already know from glycemic index charts that almost all sugar substitutes impact blood glucose to a certain degree, and there are only a few that have no impact. When sucralose became widely available, I bought some to try to bake with, but the carrier was maltodextrin - a starch, which prevented me from using it. Undeterred, I purchased pure sucralose drops in a neutral liquid. The sickly-sweet mouth feel after consuming sucralose is a bit tough to take [0], but that wasn't the worst of it. It actually impacted my blood glucose, and when I read more of the research, sucralose actually did cause an insulin reaction in many people who consumed it ("Several studies have shown that sucralose is not physiologically innocuous").[1]
Then I read how sucralose is produced; literally thousands of pounds of sugar is used and converted to produce a few pounds of sucralose. It's being pushed hard by the industry, and I can only think of the 'vilification' of cheaper sweeteners such as Aspartame by industry, much in the same way that saccharin was vilified by flawed [2] studies in the 1970s - just as Aspartame was being developed as a commercial product.
Alcohol is a class 1 carcinogen, and sugar causes irreparable damage to millions of people around the world. I find it somewhat odd how people react to what appears to be a flawed and dubious Aspartame study, when there are much larger elephants in the room.
[0] https://nationalpost.com/news/world/after-sales-plummet-diet...
When I drink a single can of Diet Coke or anything with aspartame, I get crippling stomach aches and then sudden diarrhea, all within about 2 hrs and very predictable. It's definitely not harmless. This doesn't happen to me with stevia or sucralose, and I know sucralose isn't good for your either.
It's a reliable migraine trigger for meyself, and my nephew. That makes it bad for us.
How does saccharin held in this case?
The one we’re trying to avoid the most in my household is sucralose. Genotoxicity and upregulating inflammation and oxidative stress are bad things. Accumulating unchanged in the environment and resisting biodegradation is a bad thing. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12251854/
Even so, it has a weird aftertaste that lingers on the palette. All sugar-free elixirs I have found to be subpar.
Fact 5 is a false fact. Taking facts 1-4 into consideration with the (0th?) fact that it is considered the most studied ingredient is enough evidence. This is how scientists come to a consensus. Going beyond that is obscene to science.
Honestly I believe there's a puritan streak in the aspartame controversy; you don't deserve to experience sweet taste if you're trying to avoid sugar, you need to suffer for your diet, and it's unfair to have a zero-calorie soda that tastes good.
I could be convinced otherwise by data, but when I'm seeing decades of attempts to prove it's dangerous and none actually pan out, I'm not going to feel bad about drinking a few diet cokes a day.
There's also an ever-escalating sweetness issue. When fresh fruit was plenty sweet enough and you get used to this level of sweetness, everything else seems to taste pretty bland. If this becomes the normal (I suspect it kind of has), everything gets sweetened; yogurts, crackers, bread, etc. The method those things get sweetened could be aspartame, but many will not be.
I don't drink things with Aspartame because it makes me feel queasy. I don't know of any mechanism that causes that effect. Occasionally I encounter something that I would not have expected to contain Aspartame that I notice the feeling before I have even considered the possibility that it might be present. I take that as a sign that it is not psychological.
It might not be bad for you, but it tastes like crap
Sucralose-6-acetate, however, an impurity found in sucralose and produced in vivo from sucralose, is genotoxic.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37246822/
I would avoid sucralose. I have a suspicion it may be responsible for the observed increase in colon cancer in younger age groups.
instant migraine ingredient. Mind so's sucralose and some others for me. shrug as long as they're not universal, will be ok.
I have tried multiple times to find this article after reading it a year or so ago ! thanks for sharing again
migraine trigger for me too
This was a really well written article, I enjoyed it. I had always assumed there were a bunch of hidden cons but it sounds safer than I had assumed
I think it's just human nature. We assume anything good has to have a catch. Diet Coke feels like that to me
> The history of aspartame and the FDA is contentious and sort of infuriating
Is it? They've been dealing with conspiracy theorists on this topic for more than half a century (it was initially approved as a tabletop sweetener back in 1974), including extensive public hearings in the 1980s. There is no more thoroughly studied or litigated food additive in the department's history.
I don't like aspartame because it's sickeningly sweet. I could care less if it's healthy or not.
phenylalanine is DLPA which many people use to deal with chronic fatigue and mild pain management
there's a reason why the President guzzles gallons of it per month
I'm not convinced large amounts of Methanol is harmless but DLPA is harmless, maybe even beneficial
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So basically there's no scientific consensus either way, there's no tradition of using it and there are extreme commercial incentives for harm so it's a no from me
It is bad. Don't belive the hype.
Just the simple fact that it has a sweet taste, but contains no sugar, disturbs the body's natural production of insulin.
> Half of the world’s aspartame is made by Ajinomoto of Tokyo—the same company that first brought us MSG back in 1909.
There is nothing wrong with MSG either