Aspartame - My First Artificial Sweetener

Why somebody have ever dislike Aspartame ?

J. M. Schlatter, a chemist who discovered Aspartame in 1965 was never expect that he was about to faced one of the most complicated controversy in world history about setting aspartame as a safe sweetener replacement.  FDA first approval in 1974 has experience so many resistance even hoax conspiracy.

There are so many journal and research regarding the side effects of Aspartame which has been cancelled due the lack of methodology and evidence of its carcinogenicity. Therefore,  we are not circling around that debate anymore.

Referring to Joint Expert Committee on Food and Additives (JECFA) of WHO and FAO, the ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) of aspartame that has been determined by body weight base is 40 mg/kg, while FDA was setting the ADI number of 50 mg/kg.  Getting reference from 1,5 liter of a particular diet soda distributed in my country, which contain 42 mg x 6 serving number = 225 mg/bottle, a 50 kg person could take 9 to 11 bottle or swallow 13.5 to 16.5 liter of zero sugar soda per day.  Of course, we are not talking about the caffeine content and effects in the soda, and we don't elaborate any danger of such amount of soda that someone ever take in a day.  It is just emphasizing that safety limit of consuming aspartame is quite wide.
   

Absorption characteristic

Although this non-saccharides sweetener is rapidly absorbed in our small intestine, no trace will be found in our blood stream. Aspartame breaks down very rapidly into substances, which are: methanol, phenylalanine, and aspartic acid.  Please not to worry about the content of methanol, because even in some fruit juices, we can find higher methanol concentrations, rather than the quantity resulted from aspartame in any served beverages.

So far, only 1 circumstance need to be reminded to all the aspartame takers, which is the danger of phenylalanine content to those who have phenylketonuria (PKU) disease.  However, the PKU syndrome usually happen since new born baby stage and is inherited from one generation to another. That is why the products that contain aspartame as one of its ingredients, will state a warning about the existence of phenylalanine in their product label.

The other phobias regarding aspartame

I recognize at least 3 major points that have been disputed for a very tiring debate and resulted no concern to be needed, which are: 

1. triggering cancer,
2. Neurological symptoms,
3. weight gaining and obesity

The answers are no.  Aspartame doesn't trigger any cancer, but sugar cane in certain dosage could develop an early stage of cancer into its next level.  Aspartame doesn't cause hallucination, mood swings, headache, or seizures.  Aspartame doesn't increase your appetite or create any starvation that lead you to obesity.  But aspartame does keep your blood glucose level and at the end will keep you away from weight gain, arteriosclerosis, diabetic retinopathy, protein leakage from kidney, etc.  So that in other words, aspartame would have indirect but significant effect of maintaining our cardiovascular healthier, rather than using saccharides sweetener like sugar cane.  Controlling sugar and carbohydrate consumption are the same as balancing the energy that enter our body. A long over-supply of energy could burn your internal system and organ, while the lack of it will damage the circulation as well but just in the different way.  The weakness of aspartame is that it doesn't have a good heat resistant. 
 

Another well known artificial sweetener I will talk about later is sucralose.  It is more advanced than aspartame with some minor effects.