411 on Sugar Substitutes - Part II

OK Aspartame, YOUR TURN! 

Now here's the scoop on YOU as an artificial sweetener.  Jorge Cruise doesn't like you, either!!!

The familiar blue packet: NutraSweet
How many of you remember when NutraSweet was just hitting the shelves? Finally a sweetener that tasted good and didn't have an aftertaste like our pink packet friend!  Did you ever get the sample gumballs in the mail which were made with NutraSweet rather than sugar?  I do!  And I was so excited when the diet soft drinks were being made with aspartame rather than saccharin! I sure drank my fair share of them!

So what's the deal with aspartame? Safe or not safe?  Well, kind of like our pink packet friend. It depends on who you ask and where you get your information. Don't know if you were aware, I surely wasn't until I started doing some reading.  But NutraSweet was discovered by accident back in 1965 by a chemist working for a pharmaceutical company. I had NO idea! Kind of like how Post-It notes were discovered, only you don't eat post-its..but I digress!
Now here's a product that's around 200 times sweeter than sugar and great sweetener to have at the table. It can't really be used for cooking or baking because although safe (cough) (cough) when heated, it loses some of the sweetness.

So what are the dangers?  Have you ever dissected a frog in school? What were they preserved in?  FORMALDEHYDE!!  What in the WORLD does that have to do with the price of eggs in China...or aspartame?  Read on.....

There are three ingredients that make up aspartame: 1) 40% aspartic acid  2) 50% phenylalanine  3) 10% methanol (wood alcohol).  There are tons of web sites which give very detailed information on these ingredients and how bad they are for you.  The one which disgusts me the most is behind door number 3!  From what I have found out by reading through a number of websites, once aspartame enters the small intestine the methanol is released and metabolized to formaldehyde and to formic acid (normally found in the sting of red ants).

Now if you go out to the aspartame.org FAQ's about dangers of aspartame you will read that there's no danger at all and the Internet is full of a bunch of unsubstantiated reports. One of the dangers I read about was loss of memory, but I can't remember if I've had that problem or not.  :-)

Well, the FAQ goes on to say that even the National Multiple Sclerosis Society had said: "These stories that claim aspartame is the cause of a variety of illnesses, including MS, lupus, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease, birth defects, Desert Storm syndrome, brain tumors, and seizures.  However, please bear in mind the following:

• The claims are not documented
• There is no evidence for "epidemics" of multiple sclerosis, lupus, and some of the other diseases as claimed in the articles'

 Funny thing!  When I go out to the MS home page to see if those comments came from their site this is what I find:
"No scientific evidence supports the claims on several Web sites that aspartame, an artificial sweetener used in many diet soft drinks and other foods, causes MS"  So MS said specifically that there's no evidence that aspartame causes MS, but says nothing regarding lupus, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson disease, birth defects, etc. So why would aspartame.org add more to MS' actual quote?

So folks! WHO DO YOU BELIEVE?   That's the big question!  Do you believe the unsubstantiated web sites that are trying desperately to discredit aspartame, or do you believe the company who says there's nothing wrong with the product and is trying to sell it to you?    HMMMM. It's up to YOU, but if you ask me, I'll tell you that I'm not ready to be embalmed, yet.

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