No Danger of Aspartame Use

Listen to a lot of people out there and you will quickly become afraid of aspartame. Aspartame leads to cancer, brain tumors, multiple sclerosis and a whole array of other horrendous diseases and conditions, they say. Aspartame is a poison that anti-aspartame activists believe should be completely eradicated.

In 2005 one of the most important studies making these claims was completed by the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) in Bologna, Italy. They claimed that their long-running study they claim proves that aspartame use leads to an increase in cancer. This of course runs completely counter to what the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been saying since it first approved aspartame back in 1981 that aspartame is completely safe for consumption. This study has, for many, proved to be the final nail in the coffin showing that aspartame is dangerous.

The FDA wanted to properly study this report done by the ERF, and asked to view the data used in the study in order to examine it for themselves. The ERF, however, would not give them all of the data, thus making it impossible for the FDA perform a full examination of the results garnered in the ERF study. However, from the data that the FDA was able to look at they have found the study to be highly flawed and cannot support its conclusion that aspartame is a carcinogen. One has to wonder why, if the study was done properly and its results are so conclusive the ERF wouldn’t just give the FDA all of its data but, oh well.

Many tests were performed on aspartame before it was approved by the FDA for public consumption back in 1981. The sweetener had first been developed all the way back in 1965, and it had to go through a number of rigorous tests before the FDA would approve it, including one test where rats were given 100 times the amount of aspartame that a normal person would ingest. There was absolutely no increase of cancer in the rats after taking this much aspartame, yet still claims are made that aspartame leads to cancer, as well as there being many other aspartame side effects.

Let’s look at the facts. All studies of aspartame have shown that when metabolized by the body, aspartame breaks down into three elements: phenylalanine (about 50% of the total), aspartic acid (about 40% of the total) and methanol (about 10% of the total). Both phenylalanine and aspartic acid are both amino acids which play an important role in our body’s normal functioning and all three of these elements are found commonly in all sorts of food, so where is the danger of aspartame?

Of these three basic elements the only one that sounds potentially dangerous is methanol. Methanol is a toxin when taken in large quantities, however in such miniscule amounts as are to be found in aspartame, and it is something that is already common in our diets. An apple, for example, has several times the amount of methanol that you are going to find in aspartame, as well as most other fruits and many other foods besides. There is nothing to fear from the methanol to be found in aspartame.

There is one real danger of aspartame, though, and one that the FDA recognizes, and this danger comes from phenylalanine. To most of us, phenylalanine is an essential amino acid that is transformed into tyrosine, an amino acid that performs many vital functions in our bodies. However 1 in 15,000 people suffer from a condition known as phenylketuronia: this is something that is present from birth and effects their ability to properly metabolize phenylalanine. When the body is unable to turn phenylalanine into tyrosine, phenylalanine can cause a number of dangerous side effects. The FDA requires all products that contain phenylalanine to include a warningfor phenylketuronics, however the vast majority of us have nothing to fear from it.

Let’s face it: for the most part there is nothing dangerous about aspartame. Americans have been using it for over 25 years now and there has been no significant proof whatsoever that there are any major health risks to it, aside from the aforementioned danger to phenylketuronics. And considering what tiny amounts of phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol are to be found in products using aspartame, if these things are really dangerous to us then we have much more to fear from the rest of our diets than we do from a diet soda.