Is Aspartame Killing Us?

Image: Breaking News [Cartoon]. (n.d.) Retrieved from https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/is-aspartame-safe/. 

Aspartame or C₁₄H₁₈N₂O₅ as chemists would like to refer to it, is present in many more products than people are aware. It is best known for it's presence in diet sodas since it is a low calorie sweetener that is 180-200 times more sweeter than typical sucrose or sugar ^[1]. In fact, aspartame is present in over 6000 products world-wide^[2]. There are many myths that surround aspartame and whether or not it is healthy for you compared to regular "naturally" occurring sugars. Many anti-aspartame activists claim that there is a significant link between aspartame and cancer, seizures, depression, MS, birth defects^[3]...the list goes on. Naturally, this common misunderstanding began on the Internet in an email hoax conducted by the fictitious woman Nancy Markle^[4]. All these accusations have not been validated in the lab. People believe that since aspartame is synthetically created, either chemically or enzymatically^[2], it must be terrible for you, this is not actually true. There is no lethal limit to aspartame but instead a recommended dose to stay below, 4000 mg/kg*day^[2]. To quantify this number, each can of diet coke contains 180mg of aspartame, the average male weighs 83kg, this means that in order to reach the daily maximum a person would have to drink 1845 cans a day. If this was the maximum dose for sugar, a person would have to drink only 33 cans. Since aspartame is extremely sweet compared to sucrose, the amount needed to achieve the same level of sweetness is minimal. Natural alternative such as honey and agave syrup still contain more calories and require more of the substance to obtain the sweetness of aspartame. If someone is wanting to lower their sugar and caloric intake, yet still consume soda, then diet beverages containing aspartame is a good option. Since aspartame is present in a vast range of products and the health effects are negligible, I say if you can stand the taste of aspartame, go ahead and enjoy it!






[1] Kat Eschner. (2017). “Aspartame Causes Cancer” Was a Classic Internet Hoax | Smart News | Smithsonian. Retrieved January 29, 2018, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/aspartame-causes-cancer-was-classic-fake-news-180961880/
[2]Massachusetts Medical Society, R. J. (1983). The New England journal of medicine. New England Journal of Medicine (USA). Massachusetts Medical Society. Retrieved from http://agris.fao.org/agris-search/search.do?recordID=US8466072
[3] Toxnet. (2011). HSDB: ASPARTAME. Retrieved January 29, 2018, from https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search2/f?./temp/~F2XL69:1
[4] Marcin, J. (2017). The Truth About Aspartame Side Effects. Healthline. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/aspartame-side-effects