I’ll get off the food kick for now, but please take this last post on the matter to heart (literally, I’m afraid).
From Mark Hyman, M.D.’s Ultrametabolism
Steer Clear of Artificial Sweeteners Aspartame (NutraSweet), neotame, acesulfame potassium, saccharin, sucralose, and dihydrochalcones … a significant component of our diets. …
Questions remain about their safety, including both short- and long-term health risks. One of the side effects we know these sweeteners have is stimulation of hunger through the cephalic, or brain-phase, insulin response. …
A number of studies have shown that aspartame ingestion may actually lead to increased food and calorie intake. This is likely because artificial sweeteners make your body produce insulin by making it think sugar is on the way. As a consequence, your body tells you to eat more sugar to balance your insulin level. Artificial sweeteners do nothing to help in this regard. They do not act as sugar and do not balance your insulin. As a result you end up with excess insulin in your body, so you end up eating more food to take care of this problem. … What’s worse, it can lead to insulin resistance, which has many serious health consequences. [Emphasis mine]
But the problems with artificial sweeteners, don’t stop there. Animal and human studies show that aspartame may disrupt brain chemistry and induce neurophysiological changes (altered brain chemistry …) that might increase seizure risk, depression, and headaches. …
… While 100 percent of the industry-funded studies conclude aspartame is safe, 92 percent of independently funded research identified aspartame as a potential cause of adverse effects.
Insulin resistance … has also been associated with every major disease related to aging, including cancer, dementia, heart disease, and, of course, diabetes. [Emphasis mine]
And, of course, you shouldn’t be drinking soda with high-fructose corn syrup either. Soft drinks should be a treat (like when the older among us were kids). They should not be a daily regimen. Please heed. The beverage industry is the tobacco industry of our time and the threat to your health is every bit as significant.
Jeez Ken, thanks for being the turd in the punchbowl of good feelings I had from drinking diet soda (I called it pop back in Springfield, Illinois).
I drink 3 or 4 cans (and just think of the energy require to make the cans and transport them) a week, and after many 30 years, I’m still in good shape. Only 48 oz. a week for me, compared with the 48 oz. a day, and more, that many people guzzle, makes me believe that I’m at lower risk than many.
My daughter, and other kids I know, have told me “diet soda is bad for you.” So, at least some of the young ones are getting the message.
I can’t go back to beer. It makes me fat and stupid.
Actually for the last few years, I’ve been mostly drinking water with Bragg’s (raw & unfiltered) apple cider vinegar. It’s pretty good. No one has suggested it’s bad for me. The Seventh Day Adventist health food store says it’s actually healthful in many ways. But everyone that I’ve told about it says it sounds disgusting and that drinking water with vinegar is among the strangest things they’ve heard about.
Your long post deserved a long reply.
Now, when can I borrow your new car?
As the author of The Healing Powers of Vinegar, got to say lose the soda. I replaced it with water and herbal teas. Much better for the body. No caffeine (java in moderation, 1 cup a day for me) is better for you, too. And your teeth will love you.
http://www.calorey.blogspot.com
The Writng Gourmet
Newmexiken:
The actual facts do not support your thesis, but in your defense the sweeterner connection to diabetes is a thesis being studied. More than likely, however, other issues play a more important role. Also aspartame is definitely not one of the sweeteners implicated in this issue, because it is digested completely before even entering tissues into two peptides and methanol, none of which impact this matter–all the other sweeteners are actually absorbed. This actually makes aspartame the safest sweetener, especially when the following points are noted.
Your other comments about aspartame safety are outdated and thoroughly rejected by science. There are two poorly understood realities. The first reality is that all aspartame research prior to 2009 is seriously and fatally flawed (and hence so is all criticism of aspartame based on such science). It was all done in a scientifically unacceptable manner as was established in preliminary work presented at the Society of Toxicology (Seattle, USA) and the American Chemical Society (New Orleans, USA) national meetings in 2008. Full comments are currently being preparing for regular publication. At those locations it was demonstrated that inappropriate controls were used in all aspartame research starting with the original Searle work and extending through the oft-cited Soffritti et al work published over the past several years (and even other work thereafter). The standard control-versus-treated animal experiments are simply invalid for aspartame, because aspartame is hydrolyzed to methanol and methanol (actually through its oxidation products formaldehyde and formate) has long been known to deplete a vitamin, namely folic acid. No properly done experiment can deplete a vitamin, but all experiments to date claiming problems have done just that! Hence, both controlled and treated groups of animals must be provided either the appropriate microgram amounts of folic acid supplement to counter methanol-induced loss OR both controlled and treated groups of animals must be provided the same intake of methanol, one directly and the other from aspartame. (However, the latter is an experimentally more challenging option.) This blatant and continuous error in virtually all aspartame research invalidates all claims of harm from aspartame. That said various other studies found “no effect” from aspartame. Such animal studies were either of such short duration that folate depletion was not evidenced or equally likely were performed with corn/soybean or other diets rich in folate, such that they would not be expected to show any effect.
The second reality is that this same underlying folate issue explains human problems attributed by critics to aspartame (and perhaps to MSG). The folate enzyme system metabolizes the common dietary ingredient methanol and methanol’s oxidation products formaldehyde and formate, which are innate metabolites of many substances. Although required only in 400-600 microgram quantities, many people are folate deficient both because some people refuse to take vitamin supplements and avoid folate fortified grain products (donuts, etc), but also because some people (~20%) have genetic problems that increase their need for folate above that required by others. You should realize the adverse effects claimed by antiaspartame critics can be systematically linked far better to shortage of this vitamin (and possibly also the connected B12). This includes “migraines, dizziness, shaking and tremors, seizures, mental confusion, change in mood, Alzheimer’s and permanent blindness or other issues” linked to aspartame. A simple review of the primary literature at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/ will show these issues are far better connected to folate and specifically folate deficiency, folate genetics issues, and homocysteine accrual than to aspartame [for example, type “folate,headache” without the quotes into the search line and find 43 references compared with “aspartame,headache” without the quotes for which there are 33 references.] Folate deficiency also underlies birth defects, many cancers (including breast cancer), and other conditions, so people susceptible to headaches from aspartame might actually be susceptible to many other more threatening health-related issues associated with this folate deficiency. But it is these underlying folate issues and not aspartame that explain much of this mostly internet issue. The antiaspartame critics just don’t understand the issues involved, preferring instead to manufacture a controversy where none exists. And this continues even after I showed the fallacy of all rodent aspartame research.
For either animal or man the consequences of the folate deficiency that result are the incorporation of structurally weak uridylate (uracil, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uracil) bases in DNA in place of stronger thymidylate (methyluridylate called thymine, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thymine) and/or the accrual of toxic homocysteine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homocysteine), most likely because of insufficient methylation of homocysteine to afford methionine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methionine). Much has been written about the “excitotoxic” amino acids that form the aspartame framework (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) by aspartame critics. However, those excitotoxic amino acids occur at far greater concentrations in everyday food, so neither of these amino acids are issues for most people. However, what seems to be consistently missed by the antiaspartame critics (including Blaylock) is that homocysteine is a far stronger excitotoxin than any constituent of aspartame (or oral MSG). (For a better understanding of the relationships involved and how science knows about the connection between the DNA and homocysteine in this issue, download http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/cgi/reprint/14/12/2999 and study Figure 1 at the top of page 3000. Note too that the methanol from aspartame or from many other sources is oxidized to formaldehyde and that to formic acid and that is converted to the 10-formyltetrahydrofolate (10-formylTHF) at the bottom of the upper right circle.)
In summary, there is no valid science questioning aspartame’s safety, but there is substantial direct and indirect evidence that any personal issues with aspartame reflect not aspartame per se, but a personal folate deficiency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate_deficiency), folate polymorphism genetic issues, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenetetrahydrofolate_reductase), and/or issues with related biochemistry linked to vitamin B12 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12). There is no data supporting any adverse effect for aspartame that cannot simply and completely be explained by the folate deficiency, folate genetics, and the homocysteine paradigm. This new information only suggests aspartame is even safer, now that what I have reported above is known to all the regulatory authorities. Given these new, stronger indications of safety, science no longer has any reason to doubt the safety of aspartame. And the European equivalent of the US FDA on April 20 just again validated the safety of aspartame, http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1211902454309.htm.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
mailto:jegarst@totacc.com
(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries and have made not one penny from my opposition, unlike many antiaspartame critics who sell books and offer irrelevant treatment. Their clearly stated goals are lawsuits, where none are justified. The author has an undergraduate degree in chemistry (with emphasis in organic and biological chemistry) from the University of Kansas, a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and two postdoctoral fellowships at Vanderbilt University (physiology-pharmacology (mentor moved), then nutritional toxicology) and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, UIUC) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into semi-retirement.)
It’s not my thesis; it’s the thesis of Mark Hyman, M.D., Dr. Garst. Your lack of careful attention to detail suggests your research may also be suspect, but I’ve let your comment be posted anyway.
What then is the agenda that prompts you to troll the internet to defend artificial sweeteners? Do you think Americans are well nourished by soft drinks?