19 Comments Add your own

• 1. matthew  |  February 15th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

  Before anyone else mentions it, I am aware of the hazards of phosphoric acid, the huge amounts of empty sugar carbs, and possible problems with caramel color in regular sodas, like colas.

  The experiment above tested a control group against a group that ate, drank, and lived the same as a test group. The only difference was aspartame added to the drinking water of the test group, in a concentration far less than in diet sodas.

• 2. ayenack  |  February 15th, 2008 at 6:09 pm

  Never have gone for sugar free always just had straight old cola luckily. I don’t drink enough soft drinks these days to make a difference anyway maybe a bottle of Lucozade once in a blue moon but other than that not at all.

  As my mum always everything in moderation.

• 3. Mark Drago  |  February 15th, 2008 at 6:56 pm

  I can’t recommend seltzer and flavored seltzer enough. It is fun to drink, tasty, has no after taste, and the only ingredients are water and CO2. The flavored drinks also have natural flavoring. It’s also really cheap. Buy yourself a 2-liter and commit yourself to drinking the whole thing. By the end of it you’ll love it.

• 4. Lars  |  February 15th, 2008 at 7:28 pm

  The Swedish Environmental Protection Agency recently published a report about sucralose (another sweetener). They found that "untreated municipal wastewater (2 STPs) contained 3 500-7 900 ng sucralose/l" and that "wastewater treatment processes had little effect on sucralose". So Swedish lakes now contains sucralose, great. Maybe eventually we don’t need to add sweeteners at all, we just use the sweet water from our lakes At the moment they don’t know if or how this will effect animals and plants, but they are going investigate it further.

  So I agree with you, it’s probably better to just stick to sugar.

  The report is available here: http://www.naturvardsverket.se/u...

• 5. Russ  |  February 15th, 2008 at 7:57 pm

  I’d have to say the study would be highly questionable unless easily reproduced. The woman is not qualified to run such a study (masters in mathematics), and secondly, is highly biased. She is one of the "Alternative Medicine" folks.

  Note this letter from her is 2004 writing *against* flouridation.

  http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/...

• 6. Saborlas  |  February 15th, 2008 at 7:58 pm

  Having had no few amount of pet rats as a kid, I can tell you that they get cancer by standing downwind of a AA battery. In other words, they’re naturally prone to cancer. So I take any study involving lab rats getting cancer with a few grams of sodium chloride.

• 7. Dave  |  February 15th, 2008 at 9:10 pm

  I saw a co-worker wither away right before my eyes. She drank about 10 cans of diet coke every day.

  Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar, but in order to protect the status quo, the FDA won’t allow venders to call it a sweetener.

  It does not cause cavities or affect blood sugar.

  Just poke around a bit, there is a ton of information about it. If you want to try it, it’s available at any health food store.

• 8. craptaculus  |  February 15th, 2008 at 10:23 pm

  Ugh. Just because you read it online does not mean it’s true. There has simply never been a replicated and peer-reviewed study showing negative health effects from aspartame. If this person’s "experiment" is valid (and not just pictures from a poorly run petshop), she should submit it to a peer-reviewed magazine like Nature or at a university. There are plenty of real scientists who would love to be the one who broke this case. But I doubt this "study" would stand up to real scientific scrutiny. A little common sense should tell you that if aspartame caused the huge deformities at the rate this "study" found, the human cost would be enormous and glaringly obvious. It’s not. Oh, aspartame is not made out of 3 or so toxic chemicals, any more than table salt is toxic because it contains toxic sodium (explodes in water!) and toxic chlorine (gas warfare!).

  Please stop spreading these conspiracy/scare misinformations. There are better things to worry about.

  Dave: Stevia? Why should stevia be safe but aspartame dangerous? Just because stevia is "natural" does not mean it’s safe. Poison ivy is 100% natural. Ricin is 100% natural. Botulism toxin is 100% natural. I’m not saying stevia is dangerous, it is probably perfectly safe, just that aspartame has been studied much much more than stevia.

• 9. wolfger  |  February 16th, 2008 at 2:51 am

  I think it’s kind of funny that people refer to aspartame as "artificial sweetener", but they refer to High Fructose Corn Syrup as natural, which it is definitely NOT. Fact of the matter is, it is very difficult (bordering on impossible) to find a soda made with good old sugar. At least, anywhere here in the USA. Personally, I prefer Splenda (sucralose), which is about as natural as HFCS (which is to say they start with a natural substance and chemically alter it). The truly health conscious, of course, will drink unsweetened purified water… That’s not many people, though.

• 10. Dave  |  February 16th, 2008 at 9:24 am

  Yes, there are peer reviews. In fact, 92% of INDEPENDENT research found problems with aspartame, whereas 100% of INDUSTRY FUNDED research show no problems whatsoever. Hmm….

  Doc Walton puts it all in a nutshell:
  http://www.dorway.com/peerrev.ht...

  I am not blindly health conscious. Please feel free to show me a similar controversy with stevia. Thanks in advance.

• 11. Rob J. Caskey  |  February 16th, 2008 at 9:26 am

  Bunk populist science, period.

• 12. Kirrus  |  February 16th, 2008 at 10:08 am

  My brother had to completely avoid all aspartame related products when we were growing up: they sent him hyper. I mean, like bouncing-off-the-walls, utterly out-of-control hyper. Worst was the sweet black jacks, for some reason…

• 13. craptaculus  |  February 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am

  Dave: My point still stands: no peer-reviewed and replicated studies show that aspartame actually causes problems in humans. If this "experiment" is valid, it should be extremely easy to replicate and half the scientists in the world would be scrambling to do so and get it published. Thousands more would quickly *replicate* the published studies and the question would be settled. Perhaps they’re doing that right now. Perhaps one of the studies listed in the references section will be replicated tomorrow. The FDA may or may not take action (if you believe the conspiracies), but I would and I’d stop using it.

  Because there’s "controversy" about aspartame means nothing. I can find "controversies" about almost any product on the market, from MSG to corn sugar to vitamins to herbal remedies to canola oil. All with conspiracies and a "links" to hundreds of diseases. Most are wrong. If and when stevia gets popular, it’ll get is own conpiracy pages too.

  I’m sure stevia is perfectly safe, but it hasn’t been studied nearly as much as the other artificial sweeteners. Yes, stevia is an artificial sweetener. The only natural sweeteners are sugars. As Bill Maher said, "Milk is only a natural if you’re a small cow". Stevia is not natural, and has not been "proven" safe.

  Here’s your "controversy" on stevia:
  http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedi...
  (I already know about the objections, legitimate and otherwise)

  The "controversies" of stevia and aspartame are actually quite similar, in that there’s not much to back up the "dangers" or either.

• 14. Dave  |  February 16th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

  Did you look at the link? Did you see the list of negative research?

  If there is nothing wrong with nutrasweet, then why does it give me some of the same symptoms as stated on "conspiracy pages"? (e.g. headache, achy muscles)

  Gentle readers, the following is for "craptalicious’s" only:

  Mr. Crap, since you have so much trouble reading, (maybe a harmless aftereffect of aspartame?) here is a video for you to watch. The video made by channel 2 news shows that aspartame causes indigestion, makes your hair grow funny, and even hinders good taste in clothing.

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e... (not for gentle readers)

• 15. matthew  |  February 16th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

  Dave: that may be the scariest thing anyone has ever posted in a comment on my blog. Consider yourselves warned, gentle readers.

• 16. Dave  |  February 16th, 2008 at 4:28 pm

  Sorry Matthew, but I didn’t come here for an argument. I only hope that people edu-fy themselves and seek better alternatives. Even sugar, hfcs, or splenda is better then the brain pickling cocktail that monsanto offers.

• 17. craptaculus  |  February 16th, 2008 at 5:03 pm

  Dave: I did read the list of negative research. Studies need to be replicated to see if they are valid. If I report that aspartame makes mice grow giant tumors, it doesn’t mean much unless someone else can also do it. Also, the individual studies may or may not apply to normal ingestion of aspartame, but instead huge doses, "test tube results" or even just "related" chemicals. It doesn’t mean anything unless it applies to human ingestion of normal amounts.

  Studies need to be replicated to rule out invalid testing procedures, error, researcher bias, or even people just making stuff up. This is why I say my point still stands: no peer-reviewed and replicated studies show that aspartame actually causes problems in humans.

  Your anecdotal story about getting headaches and achy muscles from aspartame is just that: an anecdotal story about getting headaches and achy muscles from aspartame. Anecdotal stories might point out interesting things to scientifically research, but they are not science. 1) you could have an allergy to one or more ingredients, 2) you do not actually *know* that the aspartame gives you that reaction: it could be something else or even psychosomatic; do a double blind experiment to find out.

  Here’s my own anecdotal/psychosomatic story. For years I thought I was addicted to caffeine. If I didn’t get my tea, soda or coffee by 10 in the morning I’d get headaches and generally feel crappy. Then one day I bought some different tea, drank it and felt fine. It wasn’t until the next day that I realized it was caffeine-free. Funny, that.

  We’re obviously done here. Don’t worry matthew, I won’t continue to clutter up your comments.

  The video IS quite scary.

• 18. mvi  |  February 16th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

  That site is just designed to scare, not much real science involved

• 19. Jason Dragon  |  February 28th, 2008 at 7:15 am

  Well aspartame is in MANY more things than just soda. It is a toxin that builds up over time and once you hit a tipping point it gets really bad. Gum and even many toothpastes have huge amounts of this bad stuff. I don’t know why they do it, many have said it is another way to control the population.

  If you want to read about other things that people have been brainwashed to want and that are VERY bad then check this site out. http://www.fluoridealert.org/

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