How Toxic is Aspartame?

The artificial sweetener aspartame is used in more than 6,000 products worldwide, including Diet Coke products. It used to be part of Diet Pepsi, too, until the company swapped it out for another artificial sweetener, which is a Splenda blend. That was done in response to consumer demand. Splenda is also toxic, but that is a story for another day.

Is PepsiCo Embracing a New Healthier Side?

The move to take aspartame out of Diet Pepsi is only one of Pepsi's recent "healthy" moves. They also announced plans for several thousand "Hello Goodness" vending machines in 2016, which will replace the standard soda, candy and chips, with healthier options, such as hummus cups.

Also in the works for 2016 is an organic Gatorade formulation and ironically, a non-GMO labeled line of Tropicana juices. The irony lies in the fact that Pepsi spent nearly $10 million in lobbying efforts from 2013 to 2015, to defeat legislation calling for mandatory state and federal labeling of products containing GMO ingredients.

Only five organizations spent more to defeat the measures than Pepsi. Pepsi even spent more than Monsanto, as reported by The Motley Fool.

Why Americans Don't Want Aspartame:

As more research links aspartame to health risks, increasing numbers of people are looking to avoid it in their diets. That's why Pepsi was proactive in removing it from their diet soda.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved aspartame, for use in dry foods in 1981 and as a general artificial sweetener in 1996.
Unlike other artificial sweeteners that move through the body without being digested, aspartame can be metabolized by your body and exerts a number of concerning effects.

Aspartame has been found to increase hunger ratings compared to glucose or water and is associated with heightened motivation to eat. It is ironic for a substance that is used in "diet" products, to be found to actually increase weight gain.

Aspartame also exerts changes on the microbial composition in your gut, the consequences of which are unknown. Emerging evidence suggests gut microbes play a role in metabolic diseases that aspartame is known to increase, pointing to alteration of gut microbial composition as one of its mechanisms disease.

Independent Studies Link Aspartame with Depression, Headaches & Other Adverse Effects:

A 2004 BMJ study gave aspartame a "clean bill of health", in part because 100% of the studies were industry-funded. In an editorial response published in BMJ in 2005, it's revealed that 92% of independently funded studies found aspartame may cause adverse effects, including depression and headaches.

A recent study also found the administration of aspartame to rats resulted in detectable methanol (wood alcohol) even after 24 hours, which might be responsible for inducing oxidative stress in the brain. The phenylalanine methyl bond in aspartame, called a methyl ester, is very weak, which allows the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol. If you recall from some old movies, drinking wood alcohol will cause blindness.

When aspartame is in liquid form, it breaks down into methyl alcohol, or methanol, which is then converted into formaldehyde and represents the root of the problem with aspartame.

Why Aspartame May Be Toxic:

Both animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to detoxify a variety of chemicals.

Peroxisome contains catalase, which is an enzyme that helps to detoxify methanol once it is turned into formaldehyde. Other chemicals in the peroxisome then convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless, but this last step occurs only in non-human animals.

When methanol enters the peroxisome of every animal except humans, it gets into that mechanism. Humans do have the same number of peroxisomes in comparable cells as animals, but human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into harmless formic acid.

Unfortunately, there are some locations in the human body, particularly in the lining of the blood vessels of your body, especially in your brain, that are loaded with alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH) that converts methanol to formaldehyde.

How Aspartame May Harm Your Brain and More:

Symptoms from methanol poisoning are many, and include headaches, ear buzzing, dizziness, nausea, gastrointestinal disturbances, weakness, vertigo, chills, memory lapses, numbness and shooting pains in the extremities, behavioral disturbances and neuritis.

The most well-known problems from methanol poisoning are vision problems including misty vision, progressive contraction of visual fields, blurring of vision, obscuration of vision, retinal damage and blindness. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that causes retinal damage, interferes with DNA replication and may cause birth defects.

Not surprisingly, the most comprehensive and longest human study looking at aspartame toxicity found a clear association between aspartame consumption and non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and leukemia.

Aspartame appears to exert a number of additional neurological effects as well.

Do you still want to consume aspartame?

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