Taylor Swift just announced a sponsorship deal with the love of her live Diet Coke. Infowars.com feels that she should be made aware of the dangers of aspartame the main sweetener in diet coke which is linked to many adverse health effects. Please get this video to Taylor Swift and hopefully she can educate herself and her fans.
The top 10 worst Sources of Aspartame
If you think you are making a healthier option because you chose to have diet soda over a regular soda drink, its time to think again. Crafty advertising may have given the term “sugar free” an impression of healthy alternative, but the truth of the matter is that chemical sweeteners are far from healthy.
Despite the dismissive stand of aspartame producers that aspartame is safe for human consumption, various studies over the years have shown that aspartame is actually linked to headaches, migraines, dizziness, tumors and even cancer. The U.S. FDA made public 92 symptoms attributed to aspartame from submitted complaints. Despite its questionable effect, aspartame was approved for use in 1981 and still continues to be so today. Ironically, aspartame was never tested in humans before its approval. Its use in over 6,000 products and by 250 million people has made the public its unwitting guinea pig in a grand experiment 40 years in the making.
Stocking up on diet foods is the best way to gain weight. Latest research on aspartame has revealed that it actually increases the risk of weight gain. Being 200 times sweeter than sugar, aspartame appears to be the perfect answer to dieting since it contains only a few calories while still having the sweet taste of sugar. Unfortunately, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, major components of aspartame, trigger the release of insulin and leptins. The latter are hormones that stimulate storage of body fat.
Moreover, large doses of phenylalanine lower serotonin levels and lead to food cravings. Since both real and artificial sweeteners stimulate the taste buds, they affect the same taste and pleasure pathways in the brain. Artificial sweeteners, however, merely activate but do not satiate the pleasure-related region of the brain, proving to be an inferior system in preventing sugarcravings. In the Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, researcher Qing Yang – a faculty at the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology- published findings that revealed artificial sweeteners more likely to cause weight gain than weight loss.
This is over and above the fact that aspartame is also highly addictive. The phenylalanine and methanol components increase the dopamine levels in the brain and cause a certain high. This further creates an addiction that is only made worse by the release of methyl alcohol or methanol, which is considered a narcotic. Keeping this in mind, it’s time we reconsider the “health benefits” aspartame is supposed to give.
Products containing aspartame
The following are well-known products that use aspartame:
Diet sodas
Diet Coca Cola (all varieties)Coca Cola Zero (all varieties)Diet Pepsi (all varieties)Pepsi Max (all varieties)Diet Irn Bru (all varieties)Lilt Zero (all varieties)Sprite Zero (all varieties)Tango (all varieties)Tango no added sugar (all varieties)7up Free (all varieties)Lucozade Sport (all varieties)Schweppes Slimline Drinks (all varieties)Fanta Zero (all varieties)Fanta OrangeDr Pepper ZeroOasis Summer Fruits Extra LightOasis Citrus Punch
Yogurts
Muller Light Cherry
Muller Light Blueberry
Muller Light Raspberry
Muller Light Banana and Custard
Danone Activia Cherry
Weight Watchers Fromage Frais
Weight Watchers Toffee and Vanilla
Chewing gum
Wrigleys Airwaves (all varieties)
Wrigleys Orbit (all varieties)
Wrigleys Extra (all varieties)
Cooking sauces
Uncle Ben’s Sweet and Sour Light
Crisps
Walkers Sensations Sweet Thai Chilli
Walkers Sensations Lime and Thai Spices
Walkers Prawn Cocktail
Tabletop sweeteners
CanderelSilver Spoon Sweetness and LightSilver Spoon Light Granulated Sugar
Drink powders
Cadburys Highlights (all varieties)Options Hot Chocolate Drink (all varieties)
Flavored water
Sugar-free products
Cereals
The above mentioned popular products are just a few of many that contain aspartame. Despitethe rising reports of aspartame’s toxicity, a re-investigation by the FDA as well as of key regulatory bodies worldwide doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. We can only protect ourselves by making a conscious choice to check the label of every product we buy at the grocery store.
If you have complaints regarding aspartame, don’t be shy in making your complaint known. The last thing you want to be is a face in a crowd lining up before a government office that doesn’t have your interest at heart.
Our research demonstrated the lack of conclusive evidence as to the danger or safety of aspartame, and the necessity for more independent studies to ensure the health and wellbeing of consumers.
This topic is of significant interest because of the popularity of artificially-sweetened products within Western markets, and in particular the high consumption of aspartame in diet carbonated drinks within Australia. We chose this item as it had broad links to different areas studied within the course, including seizures, depression and pharmacological effects on the brain, but also because of its pertinence to our group: young women being the second highest consumers of aspartame-laden beverages (second only to sufferers of diabetes).
Aspartame is an white, odourless, powdered methyl ester comprised of aspartic acid and phenylalanine; hence its IUPAC name N-(L-?-Aspartyl)-L-phenylalanine,1-methyl ester (Figure 1). It is ~200 times sweeter than sucrose. While having a similar caloric profile to sucrose, its intensity of sweetness renders calorie intake negliable. It is slightly soluble in water (3×10-2 g mL-1 at ph 3 and 25oC). Solubility increases with high and low pH and heating, but various types of degredation also occur- in particularly strong acidic or alkaline conditions, aspartame may be used to produce methanol, or free amino acids via hydrolysis.
Aspartame was ‘discovered’ in 1965 when chemist James Schattler, while using aspartame in the development of an anti-ulcer drug, found it had a sweet flavour (ibid, p. 1806). At the time, Schattler was working for the G.D. Searle & Co. (now owned pharmaceutical giant Pfizer), who quickly patented it and put it up for approval for the consumable market by the Food and Drug Administration. While made legal in 1974, it was not until 1981 that Searle were permitted to market Aspartame in dry goods, and then in carbonated drinks in 1983 (GOA 1987, p. 2).
During the delay in marketing-approval, the FDA assessed the quality of Searle’s findings, as well as those of a 1975-1980 Public Board of Inquiry. While the PBI concluded that “aspartame did not cause brain damage… studies did not conclusively show that aspartame did not cause brain tumours” (ibid, p. 3). In the 1987 United States General Accounting Office’s review of Aspartame’s approval, scientists indicated “neurological function, brain tumours, seizures, headaches, and adverse effects on children and pregnant women” (ibid, p. 3) as being key areas which needed further investigation before approval could be given. While approval was given without addressing these concerns, research in all aforementioned issues continues.
Neurotoxicity:
After consumption, aspartame metabolises into two common amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, and methanol. While these can be harmful in large amounts, they are also naturally occurring in many of the foods we eat. In fact, foods such as milk, tomato juice and chicken have much higher amounts of these chemicals than aspartame. The chemical which has had the most focus from a neuroscientific perspective is phenylalanine, which is a Large Neutral Amino Acid (LNAA). Studies have focused on how consumption of it impacts upon the ratio of phenylalanine to other LNAAs, and whether this leads to inhibition of other important LNAAs and enzymes in the brain, such as decreased catecholamine, serotonin and dopamine concentrations. There are two fates for phenylalanine: firstly, some is metabolized in the liver to tyrosine, essential for the synthesis of important neurotransmitters such as dopamine (Figure 2a); secondly, phenylalanine readily crosses the blood brain barrier (BBB) by competing for binding on the NAAT, a co-transporter of phenylalanine, tryptopahn (precursor for serotonin) and other amino acids (Figure 2b and 2c). At high concentrations, the competitive binding of phenylalanine results in lower concentrations of dopamine hence disturbing its negative feedback pathway (Figure 2d). However, studies such as those by Stegink et al. (1996), show that while consumption of aspartame leads to a small increase in phenylalanine to LNAA ratio, it is not significant enough to cause any adverse effects. (Humphries, Pretorius & Naude, 2008)
High concentrations of phenylalanine will bind more effectively to NAAT, rather than tyrosine, hence leading to lower concentrations of dopamine. There are two pathways of uptake of phenylalanine in the body: (a) firstly, some phenylalanine is hydrolysed into tyrosine in the liver; and (b) secondly, phenylalanine will compete with tyrosine, methionine and other amino acids for binding on the NAAT and transported across the BBB. (c) Tyrosine must enter the BBB via NAAT since it cannot be synthesized in the brain. (d) Inside the brain, tyrosine is converted to dopamine. (Humphries, Pretorius & Naude, 2008, p. 453)
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