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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.
I have no idea if Sucralose is any safer ... but I know that I am one of the lucky few who gets to enjoy an adverse reaction to aspartame. From a purely anecdotal view, if I drink diet drinks with aspartame regularly, after a few days to a week I start to lose my balance and just generally feel run down. Sucralose has not produced any negative effects for me as yet.
TomB
"You can't take the sky from me..."
The problem is that artificial sweeteners create an insulin response even though they are calorie free.
The insulin causes two things: 1) it tells cells to uptake sugar from your blood, which leaves you slightly hypoglycemic, since the insulin response is out of proportion to the actual sugar load consumed (particularly on an empty stomach). 2) chronically elevated insulin leads to insulin resistance (the precursor to metabolic syndrome which makes you fat, diabetic, hypertensive, etc).
This is the real reason we need to stop using most artificial sweeteners. Stevia and Erythritol have not been shown to cause this insulin response. It doesn't mean they aren't also bad. Only that for now, the jury is still out and they appear to be safe. Stevia in particular has been associated with something of an opposite effect, where it seems to improve insulin response in people who consume it.
Now for the popular reason they're getting rid of it:
Aspartame itself appears to have neurological effects as well, which in sufficient quantities causes problems. I personally know that any more than 20 oz of Diet Coke starts making me feel "odd" for lack of a better way to put it. It's not the caffeine. I don't get the effect from non-aspartame caffeinated drinks.
This seems like a relatively minor reason to stop using aspartame unless you're consuming vast quantities. Regardless, people think it's a neurotoxin and can't have that. (Forget about all the other benzene additives, colorants... even caffeine itself is a toxin).
Anyway, glad to see they are doing away with it. Here's hoping they don't use use Sucralose, which is even worse than Aspartame at producing a phantom insulin spike. (And people get upset at the chlorine... but say nothing about drinking chlorinated water or soaking in hot tubs).
Asking people to think is like asking them to buy you a new car
Nice idea. Now instead of putting in teeth-rotting sugar or another weird tasting artificial sweetener, try Xylitol. Not only is it good for the teeth and health (less than 50% calories of sugar), but unlike most or all of the alternative sweeteners, it also TASTES like real sugar. I bought some for myself to put on cereal, and also unlike other sweeteners, it doesn't have that bitter aftertaste.
I bought this one from the UK, but for the US, this one looks good.
Only a small percentage of people find trouble with it (it can have a laxative affect if you take too much for the first few days). Still 4.8/5 from 106 reviews (no 1 or 2 star) is mightily impressive if you ask me.
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I still drink regular soda as part of my diet, but instead of once a day it's more like once a month. I can't stand diet soda, and will only occasionally have it.
But diet soda is certainly better from a nutrition standpoint. The sheer volume of sugar in regular soda I think is the reason I developed Non-Alchoholic Fatty Liver Disease, and is probably why my cholesterol/triglyceride count is so high without statin drugs. I'll be able to test that theory after another 6 months or so because I've been off of high sugar foods for about 6 months so far, and the cholesterol/triglyceride figures have already dropped even on a low dose of lovastatin.
Except that if you actually go and find sources other than a sensationalist news article, you'll find several scientific studies that show that this is bullshit. Insulin production is triggered by the presence of glucose, and does not occur with the presence of aspartame even in high concentrations.
Last I heard, the saccharin mess was a combination of two things:
1) They used insanely high doses for that study too, if you replaced the saccharin with sugar you would've killed the rats rather quickly.
2) The findings that DID occur were later proven to be specific to rat metabolism that did NOT apply to monkeys including the "human" subvariant.
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Aspartame does break down into poison. One of the components it breaks down into is methanol. Wood alcohol. The stuff that makes you blind. Drinking the amount of aspartame found in 14 cases of pop every day would fill your system with a large amount of methanol. No question that's going to have negative effects.
The amount of methanol actually found in *normal* consumption of diet sodas, however, is similar to the amount found in things like fruit juice. If your body can deal with fruit juice, it can deal with aspartame-sweetened drinks. As always, it's the dose that makes the poison.
Yes, there is a positive correlation between drinking diet sodas and being overweight. But that's an expected correlation, not a causation. Seriously, what sort of person who's not prone (for whatever reasons) to weight gain is suddenly going to decide, "You know, I want to switch from normal pepsi to diet."? The people who start drinking diet are the ones having trouble with weight gain already. The problem is, a can of pepsi is 150 calories. That's the amount of calories in 1/3 cup of raisins. Yeah, it helps somewhat with your calorie consumption, but it's not the big picture on its own.
"...but Republicans plan to come back with a new plan, where they just slash the tires on all the ambulances."
The study shows that just the taste of a sweetener can cause on insulin boost, it has nothing to do with the type. The insulin response was BEFORE ingestion, so why would the type of sweetener matter?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
Tomato juice breaks down into more methanol than your soda.
Aspartame doesn't cause methanol poisoning.