Is the "jury still out" on Aspertame causing health problems like cancer?
Personally I'm not worried about aspartame. I consume it in small amounts and am not overly concerned, but this statement goes beyond the facts I'm aware of.
Update: I found a source, the FDA says that: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/additional...
I had heard that about. Msg, but not aspartame. Til!
Not exactly. I agree the term is racist, and that racist sentiment may way spur disinformation on MSG. But the fear actually began in 1968, during the beginnings of the modern 'health food' movement, with a letter written in the New England Journal of Medicine by a man named Robert Ho Man Kwok describing his supposed symptoms from eating MSG. The body of follow up research showing no such effects is much less interesting to people than the scary story that started it all.
[0] https://news.colgate.edu/magazine/2019/02/06/the-strange-cas...
MSG should be used as sparingly as possible (a pinch or less) and there are many kinds for specific ingredients, such as the original one made by Ajinomoto and more specialized ones for meats or vegetables only.
Frequent diet soft drink consumption was uniquely associated with white race, former smoking, hypertension, elevated blood sugar, lower HDL, elevated triglycerides, increased waist circumference, BMI, peripheral vascular disease, previous cardiac disease, and the metabolic syndrome. Frequent regular soft drink consumption was uniquely associated with male sex, black race, current smoking, carbohydrate consumption, greater diastolic BP, and lower prevalences of diabetes and hypercholesterolemia.
On the other hand, it was published in 2012 and the study was conducted in America, so almost all non-diet sodas were sweetened with either 100% HFCS or cane sugar/HFCS mix. It's harder to replicate today considering that most non-diet sodas has also added aspartame (or other high-intensity sweeteners) to the sweetener mix.
Intuitively, it would make sense that the introduction of such an artificial and alien chemical into the diet would have some kind of negative effect, for whatever that's worth. I say that as a fairly heavy user of sweeteners.
Also, artificial sweeteners help people who have obesity problems, being obese will reduce your life expectancy by up to 15 years, drinking diet soda hasn't killed anyone.
Diet Coke mythology You can’t discuss diet sodas for very long before someone brings up the old saw the diet sodas cause weight gain. The theory was that the sweetness induces hunger and you eat more actual food to satisfy it.
In 2008 Fowler and Williams[5] published a paper noting a correlation between obesity and diet soda consumption. A correlation, not causation. But in 2009, Chen and Appel [6] monitored 810 adults for 18 months, recording their beverage intake. They found weight gain from sugar sweetened beverages and but no weight gain from artificially sweetened beverages.
Finally, in 2012, Maersk and Belza [7] compared satiety scores for milk, sugar sweetened beverages and artificially sweetened beverages, and found no evidence that artificially sweetened beverages increased appetite or energy intake, concluding that “diet colas had effects similar to water.”
Regarding unfounded rumors that artificially sweetened beverages had some neurological effect, a panel of 10 experts examined all the current literature [8] and concluded:
The data from the extensive investigations into the possibility of neurotoxic effects of aspartame, in general, do not support the hypothesis that aspartame in the human diet will affect nervous system function, learning or behavior. Epidemiological studies on aspartame include several case-control studies and one well-conducted prospective epidemiological study with a large cohort, in which the consumption of aspartame was measured. The studies provide no evidence to support an association between aspartame and cancer in any tissue. The weight of existing evidence is that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a nonnutritive sweetener.
So aspartame is safe before and after it degrades into the component amino acids, but for the best taste, you should check each package’s expiration date.
They do taste amazing but I'm skeptical to anything unnatural.
Safety aside, I read some research once which indicated artificial sweeteners impact the body’s own insulin response and suppress the feeling of being full. This resonated with me because when I have diet sodas I always feel like eating. Nowadays I stick to water or if I want to treat myself, soda with real sugar.