8 ms·

Aspartame and formaldehyde

14 points by ecaradec 16y ago

Osiris 16y ago
I've heard from people, including my wife, that Aspartame causes cancer. We had a 'discussion' earlier about supplements where I argued that I wouldn't spend money on anything that didn't have scientific studies to show a statistically significant impact by the supplement. It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in science.
- Yaggo 16y ago
  > It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in science. Me too. Still I have some sympathy for them, because science is not on-off type of thing. You can't just research if particular substance is safe or dangerous. You must know what you are searching for. You must figure out a level for "safe exposure". Thus it can take long time (even decades) before substance x is found and agreed to be harmful. Considering the history of human evolution and huge changes in our diet and chemical environment in the last 50 years, it's perfectly acceptable to be skeptical, until proven otherwise. Bisphenol A makes good example.
  - Bjoern 16y ago
    This reminds me of Paracelsus famous quote. "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."
- electromagnetic 16y ago
  My problem with the Aspartame studies is that the control group on average lived for a shorter duration. The test group always lived longer so without dying of heart disease the next prime killer is cancer. I have yet to see a fixed time limit test (IE when the first mouse dies, kill them all and do the autopsies rather than wait for them to drop one by one). If Aspartame causes cancer it should be significantly visible in the subject animals. However they're living longer and dying of naturally occurring cancers, IIRC one study gave a 20% increase in longevity in the test group that was being fed ridiculous quantities of aspartame (equivalent to pounds a day for humans) but this was never mentioned or pointed out as being a relevant variable.
nhebb 16y ago
Having Type II Diabetes I probably consume more Aspartame than I should, so it's nice to see misinformation like this debunked. I have talked to other diabetics who have even had physicians warn them about Aspartame. There is so much bad information dominating the SERP's that I prefix all my medical searches with "site:mayoclinic.com"
ukdm 16y ago
I rely heavily on aspartame-filled drinks because I have rejected most other drinks as not suitable to drink throughout a working day. I've attempted to drink normal sugar-filled soft drinks and felt terrible after a few days. That's based on 3 cans a day. The amount of sugar is just too much for me to handle. I can drink water, but it is quite boring. I actually find drinking just water stops quenching my thirst and my mouth dries out progressively. Drinking fruit juice is also not going to work as it is very acidic, and I just can't handle more than a couple of glasses. A mix of these drinks is fine, but not ideal. I just want a constant I can drink without preparatiog. Diet soda fits all the criteria for me. It has a taste, unlike water, contains caffeine (diet coke is my poison), and rehydrates. I can also drink it all day without any real side-effects. The downside being the aspartame and phenylalnine it contains which may or may not be an issue depending on what you read. I do limit myself to 3 cans per day, but then aspartame is contained in other things I consume every day. The most frequent of which is sugar free gum. If there are any alternatives to aspartame-using diet drinks, sugar filled drinks, or just plain water I should be trying I'd appreciate some suggestions.
- Bjoern 16y ago
  You should get rid of the sugary and aspartame filled drinks alltogether. Also fruit juice is bad as it has no fiber anymore and will just make you obese. Sugar based stuff just gives you a "high" and the aspartame stuff is really disputed. There is really nothing wrong with water or tea. Try especially a nice green tea or some other good chinese flavors. If you must how about use stevia in low amounts for sweetening. It is also not without issues but time has shown that is ok when not consumed overly.
  - randallsquared 16y ago
    * You should get rid of [...] aspartame filled drinks alltogether.* But, why? Except for a few periods of a few months, when I chose to go off caffeine or limited my intake for other reasons, I've been drinking several liters a day of aspartame-and-caffeine-containing drinks since 1996. I've yet to identify any related effects: my teeth aren't great, but haven't been eaten away by acid; I'm overweight, but less than I have been at times since 1990; I don't find dehydration to be a problem. Some of my friends drink similarly large quantities, and none of them have shown any apparent effects, either. This, of course, is mere anecdote, but surely if there were really a serious problem then there'd be an epidemic of some problem easily traced to aspartame, given that millions of people drink liters per day of diet colas and other drinks?
binarymax 16y ago
Whether or not it has been proven to be unhealthy, I personally feel very strange after consuming even the smallest amount of aspartame. I become nervous and jittery, and feel an odd sensation in my jaw that tempts me to grind my teeth. Others may not have the same symptoms as me, but I steer well clear of anything containing the chemical.
- almost 16y ago
  That sounds like caffeine to me!
  - binarymax 16y ago
    It happens even when I consume non-caffeinated drinks with aspartame
- OpieCunningham 16y ago
  I have mild flu-like symptoms a day after consuming aspartame. I'd be interested in knowing which of the studies reviewed in the meta study were funded by corporations incentivized by aspartame.
freshfey 16y ago
The problem is that a lot of people worry about their aspartame intake although their diet sucks and they don't exercise at all. Aspartame in this case is your least problem. If you get 90% of your nutrition right, then you can worry about the amounts of aspartame in your soda. I'm interested in the current state of stevia as it is a real (maybe hyped) alternative sweetener.
volomike 16y ago
Then how come I get really bad headaches when eating the stuff, but not with sugar, HFCS, or saccharin?
- jdewald 16y ago
  There's obviously no way for anyone to claim that you specifically don't, but one of the studies I looked at (and there have been others) specifically used patients who believed they got headaches from aspartame. They turned out to be more likely to get one from the placebo control than from aspartame.
khafra 16y ago
Allow me to quote at length from ET Jaynes' book, "Probability: The Logic of Science." > A common error, when judging the effects of radioactivity or the toxicity of some substance, is to assume a linear response model without threshold (that is, without a dose rate below which there is no ill eect). Presumably there is no threshold effect for cumulative poisons like heavy metal ions (mercury, lead), which are eliminated only very slowly if at all. > But for virtually every organic substance (such as saccharin or cyclamates), the existence of a finite metabolic rate means that there must exist a finite threshold dose rate, below which the substance is decomposed, eliminated, or chemically altered so rapidly that it has no ill effects. If this were not true, the human race could never have survived to the present time, in view of all the things we have been eating. > Indeed, every mouthful of food you and I have ever taken contained many billions of kinds of complex molecules whose structure and physiological effects have never been determined, and many millions of which would be toxic or fatal in large doses. We cannot doubt that we are daily ingesting thousands of substances that are far more dangerous than saccharin, but in amounts that are safe, because they are far below the various thresholds of toxicity. But at present there is hardly any substance except some common drugs, for which we actually know the threshold.

14 points by ecaradec 16y ago

I've heard from people, including my wife, that Aspartame causes cancer. We had a 'discussion' earlier about supplements where I argued that I wouldn't spend money on anything that didn't have scientific studies to show a statistically significant impact by the supplement. It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in science.

Yaggo 16y ago
> It really bothers me when people trust more in word-of-mouth than they do in science. Me too. Still I have some sympathy for them, because science is not on-off type of thing. You can't just research if particular substance is safe or dangerous. You must know what you are searching for. You must figure out a level for "safe exposure". Thus it can take long time (even decades) before substance x is found and agreed to be harmful. Considering the history of human evolution and huge changes in our diet and chemical environment in the last 50 years, it's perfectly acceptable to be skeptical, until proven otherwise. Bisphenol A makes good example.
- Bjoern 16y ago
  This reminds me of Paracelsus famous quote. "All things are poison and nothing is without poison, only the dose permits something not to be poisonous."
electromagnetic 16y ago
My problem with the Aspartame studies is that the control group on average lived for a shorter duration. The test group always lived longer so without dying of heart disease the next prime killer is cancer. I have yet to see a fixed time limit test (IE when the first mouse dies, kill them all and do the autopsies rather than wait for them to drop one by one). If Aspartame causes cancer it should be significantly visible in the subject animals. However they're living longer and dying of naturally occurring cancers, IIRC one study gave a 20% increase in longevity in the test group that was being fed ridiculous quantities of aspartame (equivalent to pounds a day for humans) but this was never mentioned or pointed out as being a relevant variable.

nhebb 16y ago

Having Type II Diabetes I probably consume more Aspartame than I should, so it's nice to see misinformation like this debunked. I have talked to other diabetics who have even had physicians warn them about Aspartame. There is so much bad information dominating the SERP's that I prefix all my medical searches with "site:mayoclinic.com"

ukdm 16y ago

I rely heavily on aspartame-filled drinks because I have rejected most other drinks as not suitable to drink throughout a working day. I've attempted to drink normal sugar-filled soft drinks and felt terrible after a few days. That's based on 3 cans a day. The amount of sugar is just too much for me to handle. I can drink water, but it is quite boring. I actually find drinking just water stops quenching my thirst and my mouth dries out progressively. Drinking fruit juice is also not going to work as it is very acidic, and I just can't handle more than a couple of glasses. A mix of these drinks is fine, but not ideal. I just want a constant I can drink without preparatiog. Diet soda fits all the criteria for me. It has a taste, unlike water, contains caffeine (diet coke is my poison), and rehydrates. I can also drink it all day without any real side-effects. The downside being the aspartame and phenylalnine it contains which may or may not be an issue depending on what you read. I do limit myself to 3 cans per day, but then aspartame is contained in other things I consume every day. The most frequent of which is sugar free gum. If there are any alternatives to aspartame-using diet drinks, sugar filled drinks, or just plain water I should be trying I'd appreciate some suggestions.

Bjoern 16y ago
You should get rid of the sugary and aspartame filled drinks alltogether. Also fruit juice is bad as it has no fiber anymore and will just make you obese. Sugar based stuff just gives you a "high" and the aspartame stuff is really disputed. There is really nothing wrong with water or tea. Try especially a nice green tea or some other good chinese flavors. If you must how about use stevia in low amounts for sweetening. It is also not without issues but time has shown that is ok when not consumed overly.
- randallsquared 16y ago
  * You should get rid of [...] aspartame filled drinks alltogether.* But, why? Except for a few periods of a few months, when I chose to go off caffeine or limited my intake for other reasons, I've been drinking several liters a day of aspartame-and-caffeine-containing drinks since 1996. I've yet to identify any related effects: my teeth aren't great, but haven't been eaten away by acid; I'm overweight, but less than I have been at times since 1990; I don't find dehydration to be a problem. Some of my friends drink similarly large quantities, and none of them have shown any apparent effects, either. This, of course, is mere anecdote, but surely if there were really a serious problem then there'd be an epidemic of some problem easily traced to aspartame, given that millions of people drink liters per day of diet colas and other drinks?

binarymax 16y ago

Whether or not it has been proven to be unhealthy, I personally feel very strange after consuming even the smallest amount of aspartame. I become nervous and jittery, and feel an odd sensation in my jaw that tempts me to grind my teeth. Others may not have the same symptoms as me, but I steer well clear of anything containing the chemical.

almost 16y ago
That sounds like caffeine to me!
- binarymax 16y ago
  It happens even when I consume non-caffeinated drinks with aspartame
OpieCunningham 16y ago
I have mild flu-like symptoms a day after consuming aspartame. I'd be interested in knowing which of the studies reviewed in the meta study were funded by corporations incentivized by aspartame.

freshfey 16y ago

The problem is that a lot of people worry about their aspartame intake although their diet sucks and they don't exercise at all. Aspartame in this case is your least problem. If you get 90% of your nutrition right, then you can worry about the amounts of aspartame in your soda. I'm interested in the current state of stevia as it is a real (maybe hyped) alternative sweetener.

volomike 16y ago

Then how come I get really bad headaches when eating the stuff, but not with sugar, HFCS, or saccharin?

jdewald 16y ago
There's obviously no way for anyone to claim that you specifically don't, but one of the studies I looked at (and there have been others) specifically used patients who believed they got headaches from aspartame. They turned out to be more likely to get one from the placebo control than from aspartame.

khafra 16y ago

Allow me to quote at length from ET Jaynes' book, "Probability: The Logic of Science." > A common error, when judging the effects of radioactivity or the toxicity of some substance, is to assume a linear response model without threshold (that is, without a dose rate below which there is no ill eect). Presumably there is no threshold effect for cumulative poisons like heavy metal ions (mercury, lead), which are eliminated only very slowly if at all. > But for virtually every organic substance (such as saccharin or cyclamates), the existence of a finite metabolic rate means that there must exist a finite threshold dose rate, below which the substance is decomposed, eliminated, or chemically altered so rapidly that it has no ill effects. If this were not true, the human race could never have survived to the present time, in view of all the things we have been eating. > Indeed, every mouthful of food you and I have ever taken contained many billions of kinds of complex molecules whose structure and physiological effects have never been determined, and many millions of which would be toxic or fatal in large doses. We cannot doubt that we are daily ingesting thousands of substances that are far more dangerous than saccharin, but in amounts that are safe, because they are far below the various thresholds of toxicity. But at present there is hardly any substance except some common drugs, for which we actually know the threshold.