Aspartame: is it really sweet poison?

[viking22]

I have a sweet tooth and consume diet drinks quite often. I also often have meal replacement products such as Met-Rx which contain aspartame and other sweeteners.

I find it helps me keep to my diet and stay lean. But a friend sent me this link suggesting aspartame was responsible for a whole host of health conditions.

Has anyone experienced any benefit from giving up aspartame?

 

[picard]

this stuff is very unhealthy. I can't recall the negative effects of this chemical. Sugar is best thing.

 

[Juice09]

I really hope not.

I stopped drinking soda last year, but I couldn't get by just drinking water. So I replaced it with artificially sweetened water like crystal light.

Recently I found out about aspartame and have come to the realization that I'm probably not being any healthier drinking crystal light than I am drinking Pepsi.

I know the dangers but I still consume it. I just try to limit the amount I put into my body.

 

[Throttle]

the FDA has repeatedly stated that there are no proven ill side effects to any artificial sweetener that it has approved. do you trust the FDA? (i tend to but your view may be different.)

the people who claim it is awful blame it for everything, so it's hard to sort out what it's real side effects are. i've been drinking aspartame sweetened stuff my whole life and staying away from it doesn't seem to change anything. again, your mileage may vary.

my concern, personally, is that by disconnecting the taste of sweet from calories, you're totally messing up your body's already pretty sloppy ability to judge calories from taste and texture. there's some indication that people who drink diet soda consume just as many calories as those who drink an equivalent amount of sugar soda, suggesting that diet soda drinkers bodies think they're getting a certain amount of sugar, but aren't fooled for long, and instruct the body to go find the missing calories in other food and drink.

but that's pretty speculative on my part.