Pepsi To Stop Using Aspartame

An anonymous reader writes: Pepsi believes sales of diet soda are falling because of aspartame and how the general public thinks it's a dangerous substance to consume. Even though the FDA describes aspartame as “one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved,” Pepsi has decided to stop using it. Aspartame removal is being turned into a marketing campaign of sorts, with "Now Aspartame Free" printed on cans.

Comments

Aspartame got an unfair bad reputation

[iONiUM]

There are two major reasons why people incorrectly think aspartame causes cancer:

1. In 1975 a bad study was released saying aspartame caused brain and other cancers. This study became “legend”, and is what everyone thinks about aspartame, but it is not true. There is even an article on Wikipedia specifically about this controversy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame_controversy
2. In 1998, a hoax was released saying aspartame caused all sorts of serious diseases, and people believed it: http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htm. It’s also on snopes http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp

Due to the 1975 study, studies were launched and FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut" (http://web.archive.org/web/20071214170430/www.fda.gov/fdac/features/1999/699_sugar.html)

1. The European Food Safety Authority concluded in its 2013 re-evaluation that aspartame and its breakdown products are safe for human consumption at current levels of exposure (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/3496.htm)
2. As do other independent studies (http://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10408440701516184)
3. The national cancer institute has cleared aspartame as having no links to cancer (http://web.archive.org/web/20090212130028/http://cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/AspartameQandA)

There are many more scientific studies on it by national governments showing it’s safe as well:

• UK https://www.food.gov.uk/science/additives/aspartame/
• Canada http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/addit/sweeten-edulcor/aspartame-eng.php
• Australia / New Zealand http://www.foodstandards.gov.au/consumer/additives/aspartame/pages/default.aspx

Re:danger vs taste

[ShanghaiBill]

That's because they're usually ordering it with a Double Big Mac combo ;)

Nope, it is because diet soda makes you fat. It promotes the wrong kind of gut bacteria. The sweet taste also triggers insulin production, when causes hunger when the sugar that the tongue predicted doesn't show up in the stomach. So people end up eating even more to compensate. Sales of Diet Pepsi are falling because people are becoming more educated about just how unhealthy that crap is. If you are thirsty, try tap water.

Re:Since when

[Mal-2]

Since when is Sucralose better than Aspartame?

Ask someone with phenylketonuria. I once went to a restaurant with a group, one of whom has this disorder. When he ordered a drink, he specifically said "NOT diet, I can't have phenylalanine". They brought him Diet Coke. He drank enough that some time (maybe twenty minutes) later, he had a freak-out and would have gotten all of us tossed out if he hadn't had enough sense to explain to us what he thought was about to happen. The restaurant quickly reversed tack to make sure they weren't going to get sued, while one of the people in the group had to drive him to a hospital to make sure he'd be OK.

Re:danger vs taste

[orasio]

Overweight person here, but not from McD.

When I go to mac donalds, I get a hamburger and a diet soda (I don't really care for the fries).
Makes sense for me, a 500-600 calorie meal. I't a nice lunch, tastes good (all beef, even MCD, is awesome this side of the world), and even has lettuce and tomato.

In your example, that double big mac has 700 calories. Not a diet meal, but not that excessive. It even has a lot of lettuce, which is good against blood sugar spikes, esp. a good thing for most fat people. A diet coke is zero cal,, but a large coke in the US add 300 calories, reaching 1000 which is too much for a single meal. You are right that large fries, at 500, are not a good idea, though.

Re:artificial sweeteners spike insulin

[kosh271]

Performing a quick search - Aspartame does NOT induce an insulin response:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...
From the abstract "The indicated increased clearance rate of plasma Phe after albumin may be caused by the significant increase of insulin, on which aspartame had no effect."

Could you cite your source where Aspartame does induce an insulin response?

Re:Xylitol to the rescue?

[bluefoxlucid]

1g of Xylitol is enough to kill 3 dogs in half an hour. It's the kind of stuff most people can't keep in their house. If you spill your soda, your dog runs over, laps at it, and then is dead in half an hour.

Re:danger vs taste

[thaylin]

oh really?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

just the taste of a sweetner can trigger insulin production, and therefore is triggered with aspartame.

Re:danger vs taste

[itzly]

Yes, there is a positive correlation between drinking diet sodas and being overweight.

And part of that correlation is due to the fact that there's a correlation between being overweight and having type 2 diabetes, and switching to diet sodas is an easy first step to help control T2D.

Re:danger vs taste

[Coren22]

That would be because sugar is a portion of the carbohydrate total. Therefore, it already has a % daily value.

My Pure Leaf Extra Sweet tea I am having with lunch shows:

Total Carb. 28g 9%
    Sugars 28g

Those 28g of Carbs is 28g of sugar (as it is sweetened with sugar, not HFCS)