The Truth about Aspartame

The artificial sweetener aspartame is falsely accused of being the cause of nearly every disease.

You should follow me on twitter here.

Skeptoid #127
November 11, 2008
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As a kid I remember hearing that the artificial sweetener aspartame would neutralize your digestive enzymes, and anything else you ate that day would turn to fat. Although this makes no sense biochemically at any level, it sounded scientific enough to me and I was satisfied with it — at least enough to justify my dislike for its awful flavor. It turns out that my fat-producing claim was about the mildest of many arguments made by a growing anti-aspartame movement, and biochemically-nonsensical as it was, it was among the sanest of the arguments. Take a look at websites such as AspartameKills.com, SweetPoison.com, and Dark-Truth.org, and you'll see that a whole new breed of aspartame opponents has taken activism to a whole new level. Here are a few quotes from those web sites:

Thank you Montel Williams for having the fortitude to say: "Multiple Sclerosis is often misdiagnosed, and that it could be aspartame poisoning"

NutraSweet® killed my mother and has killed and/or wounded millions of innocent people in the US and abroad.

Aspartame converts to formaldehyde in vivo in the bodies of laboratory rats.

ARTIFICIAL SWEETENER, ASPARTAME, (EQUAL, NUTRASWEET) LINKED TO BREAST CANCER AND GULF WAR SYNDROME.

Did O J Simpson Have a Reaction to Aspartame that led to the deaths of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman?

THE FDA, THE INTERNATIONAL FOOD INFORMATION COUNCIL (IFIC), PUBLIC VOICE AND OTHERS ARE SCAM NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS AND PAWNS OF THE NUTRA-SWEET COMPANY.

After more than twenty years of aspartame use, the number of its victims is rapidly piling up, and people are figuring out for themselves that aspartame is at the root of their health problems. Patients are teaching their doctors about this nutritional peril, and they are healing themselves with little to no support from traditional medicine.

Donald Rumsfeld disregarded safety issues and used his political muscle to get Aspartame approved.

The Nazi Scientist's Poison Projects: Poison adults with Aspartame

Because of your and/or your forbearers [sic] exposure to toxics like Aspartame, a summation of immune, mitochondrial, DNA, and MtDNA (genetic) damage has occurred in your body that has made your body unable to deal with chemical insults.

The doctor that was in charge of the lab to study Aspartame, reported that the substance was too toxic and he mysteriously dissappeared [sic] and all the paper work somehow was destroyed.

The Nazis actually won the war. They just pretended to lose so that we wouldn't notice them take over our government.

Well, that's enough for now. And if you haven't heard those, you've almost certainly received one of several hoax emails that people have been forwarding around since 1995, according to Snopes.com, giving an equally long list of untrue claims about aspartame being the cause of nearly every illness. One is even falsely attributed to Dr. Dean Edell. Suffice it to say that every possible kind of attack is made against aspartame: Pseudoscientific attacks where they throw out whole dictionaries of scientific sounding nonsense; guilt by association attacks where they mention aspartame alongside Adolf Hitler and Donald Rumsfeld; non-sequiturs like pointing out the evils of the corporate structure of pharmaceutical companies as if that is support for how and why an "aspartame detoxification" program will "heal" you of all disease; and even Bible quotations attacking aspartame. The anti-aspartame lobby appears to include everyone from alternative treatment vendors trying to sell their products, to fully delusional conspiracy theorists. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a retired surgeon turned anti-pharmaceutical author and activist, believes aspartame is part of a massive government mind-control plot:

We're developing a society because of all these different toxins known to affect brain function. We're seeing a society that not only has a lot more people of lower IQ, but a lot fewer people of higher IQ. In other words a dumbing down, a chemical dumbing down, of society. ...That leaves them dependent on government because they can't excel. ...So, you know, you can kind of piece it together as to why they are so insistent on spending so many hundreds of millions of dollars of propaganda money to dumb down society.

Discovered in 1965 at Searle (now Pfizer), aspartame is an artificial sweetener, aspartyl-phenylalanine-1-methyl ester. Chemistry types call it a methyl ester of the dipeptide of the amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine. It is 180 times as sweet as sugar, which is why it's such an effective low-calorie sweetener: It's needed in only miniscule amounts. Partly in response to all the anti-aspartame craziness out there, a group of scientists from the NutraSweet company published a 2002 review of dozens of studies and clinical trials performed worldwide in the journal Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, which made the following conclusions:

Over 20 years have elapsed since aspartame was approved by regulatory agencies as a sweetener and flavor enhancer. The safety of aspartame and its metabolic constituents was established through extensive toxicology studies in laboratory animals, using much greater doses than people could possibly consume. ...Several scientific issues continued to be raised after approval, largely as a concern for theoretical toxicity from its metabolic components — the amino acids, aspartate and phenylalanine, and methanol — even though dietary exposure to these components is much greater than from aspartame. Nonetheless, additional research, including evaluations of possible associations between aspartame and headaches, seizures, behavior, cognition, and mood as well as allergic-type reactions and use by potentially sensitive subpopulations, has continued after approval. ...The safety testing of aspartame has gone well beyond that required to evaluate the safety of a food additive. When all the research on aspartame is examined as a whole, it is clear that aspartame is safe, and there are no unresolved questions regarding its safety under conditions of intended use.

And yet the claims persist unabated. Here are a few more, addressed point-by-point:

When you hear claims that are supported only by a fringe minority that's in opposition to the scientific consensus, you have good reason to be skeptical right off the bat, but it doesn't mean it's not worth looking into. Aspartame has been looked into ad nauseum even after its approval, and found safe at every try; so at some point you have to depart from rationality to continue supporting the claims made against it. Enjoy your diet Dr. Pepper, it's not going to hurt you; if it was, I'd have been dead decades ago.

You should follow me on twitter here.

Brian Dunning
Brian Dunning

© 2008 Skeptoid.com

References & Further Reading

Aaronovitch, D. Voodoo History: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Modern History. New York: Riverhead, 2010.

Butchko, H., Stargel, W., Comer, C., Mayhew, D., Benninger, C., Blackburn, G., de Sonneville, L., Geha, R., Hertelendy, Z., Koestner, A., Leon, A., Liepa, G., McMartin, K., Mendenhall, C., Munro, I., Novotny, E., Renwick, A., Schiffman, S., Schomer, D. "Aspartame: review of safety." Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 1 Apr. 2002, Volume 35, Number 2 Pt 2: S1-93.

Magnuson, B.A., Burdock, G.A., Doull, J., Kroes, R.M., Marsh, G.M., Pariza, M.W., Spencer, P.S., Waddell, W.J., Walk.er, R., Williams, G.M. "Aspartame: a safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies." Critical Reviews in Toxicology. 1 Jan. 2007, Volume 37, Number 8: 629-727.

Rulis, A.M., Levitt, J.A. "FDA's food ingredient approval process: Safety assurance based on scientific assessment." Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 1 Feb. 2009, Volume 53, Number 1: 20-31.

Stegink, L.D. "The aspartame story: a model for the clinical testing of a food additive." The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 1 Jul. 1987, Volume 46, Number 1: 204-215.

Reference this article:
Dunning, Brian. "The Truth about Aspartame." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc., 11 Nov 2008. Web. 9 Feb 2010. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4127>

Discuss!

5 most recent comments | Show all 71 comments

Remember, you should always read with skepticism the comments of anyone too lame to put their real name & city.

Linda,

The ant poison story is a joke, literally.

http://www.snopes.com/humor/iftrue/antpoison.asp

The appearance of this article on a site called "The Spoof!" along with its disclaimer that "The story as represented above is written as a satire or parody. It is fictitious," should provide most readers with sufficient clues for discerning that the article is, in fact, a spoof.
Unfortunately, the mistaking of parody for factual information is representative of the dubious quality of much of the anti-aspartame information to be found on the Internet.

Max, Boston, MA
October 07, 2009 1:06pm

Is it so important that you mock people with pain? Are you that sadistic and in need of confirmation that you feel you need to dismiss someone else to justify your position? Just because western medical science does not recognize fibromyalgia does not mean it is not real pain. It means they don't know what it is or what causes it so it is instantly mental. Salem Witch Trial mentality. We can't explain it so you're the one screwed up. It is pure arrogance to believe that we know everything and that science has been able to explain every symptom of every disease experienced by humankind. Today's medicine can't cure Cancer, Aids, Heart Disease, Arthritis, High Blood Pressure, Diabetes or even the common cold. Medical Science will just feed you medications to "manage" your disease until you die. Yup, we know it all. Perhaps we should separate the world into the geniuses and the non-geniuses. I choose to live with the later. They are open to the possibilities.

Rob, SLC, Utah
October 27, 2009 9:59am

"Just because western medical science does not recognize fibromyalgia does not mean it is not real pain."

I don't think anyone argues that fibromyalgia sufferers experience pain, but the lack of a common physical factors indicative of a specific "disease" makes one wonder if the cause is not physical, but psychological.

"...so it is instantly mental."

It was considered an actual physical condition for some time, so it wasn't instantly dismissed.

"It is pure arrogance to believe that we know everything and that science has been able to explain every symptom of every disease experienced by humankind."

Straw man argument. No one believes science has been able to explain everything, but it is the most likely means by which an explanation will be found.

"Today's medicine can't cure Cancer, Aids, Heart Disease, Arthritis, High Blood Pressure, Diabetes or even the common cold."

But they have created the most effective means of treating those illnesses, and isn't always with pills, contrary to popular belief

"Perhaps we should separate the world into the geniuses and the non-geniuses. I choose to live with the later (sic). They are open to the possibilities."

The "genuises" are as open to possibilities as the believer, the only difference is that the geniuses expect you to provide evidence for your claims.

Lewayne, Near Des Moines
November 09, 2009 4:27pm

As I said before somewhere on this site, I love the "they can't even cure the common cold" argument. It somehow makes the assumption that just because a condition isn't severe, it must therefore be very easy to treat.

Plus, of course, that it ignores the actual achievements of modern medicine, and the obvious fact that alternative medicine hasn't cured the common cold either:D.

Safe-Keeper, Bergen, Norway
January 27, 2010 11:02am

From first-hand experience, I can attest to the fact that aspartame most definitely causes physical problems. My migraines & vision problems completely resolved after eliminating aspartame (in sugar-free gum and Centrum chewable vitamins) from my diet. The aspartame in Diet Coke caused severe panic attacks in a family member. After discontinuing use, all symptoms disappeared.

READ LABELS CAREFULLY - DO NOT PURCHASE PRODUCTS WITH ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS!

Julie, Ohio
February 06, 2010 9:07pm

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