Artificial Sweetener - Why Blame Aspartame?

Aspartame is the most commonly used sugar substitute among the weight conscious and diabetic community. They don't do this without the fear raised by many about its consumption linked to causation of health hazards ranging from simple ones like headache and serious ones like cancer, multiple sclerosis and lupus etc.

Does it really cause the above problems as feared by many or doesn't it? This question has baffled many who yearn to consume them. People never hesitate to ask a doctor the same.

Aspartame is a non-saccharide molecule containing amino acids phenyl-alanine and aspartic acid. After consumption, it undergoes breakdown in the body and releases phenyl alanine, aspartic acid and methanol. In people other than the few who have a rare disease called phenylketonuria, amino acids, phenyl alanine and aspartic acid are safe to consume. These are present in large quantities in our regular diet and are necessary for the body.

The important component here is methanol. This is surely a bad compound for the body if consumed in large quantities. Methanol gets converted to a proven dangerous compound called formaldehyde. The fear about aspartame is directly linked to this compound, formaldehyde.

Most of the studies conducted on aspartame do not put forth the fact that aspartame is dangerous as it produces formaldehyde. The reason for this is the fact that the amount of methanol produced after consumption of aspartame is extremely small. Such small doses of methanol added into the body, doesn't actually do anything to the body. In fact our body produces formaldehyde 1000s of times greater in quantity than what aspartame produces. Hence, the formaldehyde produced by the consumption of aspartame is not enough to produce any sort of effects on the body.

One study had subjects consuming aspartame of about 200mg per kg body weight which is more than 40 times greater than its average consumption. Even this dose had no effects, no methanol poisoning or increase in baseline formaldehyde levels in the body.

Even American cancer society which conducted studies involving more than 500,000 adults did not prove aspartame to have link or causation of any sort of cancer.

Another concern was about gaining weight due to aspartame which is used with the intention to lose some. This was also disproved by many studies. Most of the cases where weight gain was noticed was due to the consumption of bad and enormous amounts of calories while consuming diet beverages containing aspartame. This happened in people who believed that only substituting sugary beverages with diet ones would reduce weight, ignoring the total calorie intake.

There were many studies on aspartame causing headache. However, there was no conclusive result so as to rule out or link the consumption to cause headache.

The European food safety authority, after investigating through a number of studies, concluded in 2013 that aspartame is safe to consume in amounts of usual quantities. There are a number of studies published on the internet about its safety, then why blame aspartame.

References:

1.     https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/aspartame.html

2.     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22301929

3.     https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19056571

4.     https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00000426.htm

5.     http://n.neurology.org/content/44/10/1787.short