OK I was wrong it wasn’t tons but only 2000 cans of diet coke that was fed to the poor rats. The only thing that seemed to make some sense, was anything hitting your stomach other then water sets off a responce looking for additional food [hunger responce].Also it’s an excitotoxin that increases dopamine production & alertness. Add in the psychic feeling of saved calories gives one the ok to eat more.
Alright, so I ended up causing quite a stir with my post about artificial sweeteners yesterday, and today I’m back to share some research as promised. When talking artificial sweeteners, there are generally two major concerns:
1. Safety
2. Fat Loss
Let’s discuss the research surrounding both. First up, safety.
1. Butchko HH et al. Aspartame: review of safety. Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2002 Apr;35(2 Pt 2):S1-93.
In this 2002 paper, over 20 years since the food additive was approved by the FDA, a comprehensive review of all aspartame research to date concluded that aspartame is indeed safe when consumed by normal humans in acceptable amounts (more on acceptable amounts in a minute).
2. Magnuson BA, Burdock GA, Doull J, et al. (2007). Aspartame: a safety evaluation based on current use levels, regulations, and toxicological and epidemiological studies. Crit. Rev. Toxicol. 37 (8): 629-727.
Now more than 25 years later, another safety evaluation found that the weight of existing scientific evidence indicates that aspartame is safe at current levels of consumption as a non-nutritive sweetener.
3. Gallus S; Scotti L, Negri E, Talamini R, Franceschi S, Montella M, Giacosa A, Dal Maso L, La Vecchia C. (January 2007). Artificial sweeteners and cancer risk in a network of case-control studies. Annals of Oncology 18 (1): 40-44.
This study analyzing over 15 years of research showed a clear cut “lack of association between saccharin, aspartame and other sweeteners and the risk of several common cancers”
4. Lim U, Subar AF, Mouw T, et al. Consumption of aspartame-containing beverages and incidence of hematopoietic and brain malignancies. Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers Prevention 2006; 15.
In 2006, the US National Cancer Institute concluded in a study of over a HALF MILLION men and women aged 50 to 69 that there was no statistically significant link between aspartame consumption and leukemias, lymphomas or brain tumors.
A study of over a half million HUMANS showing no statistically significant link between aspartame and cancer, and three other 15-25 year comprehensive reviews of ALL the available research, all finding that aspartame is indeed safe when consumed in acceptable amounts.
That sure seems to ring more factual than someone’s “conspiracy” website to me.
Now, I could have sat here and listed out a couple hundred papers showing no statistical significance, but instead I chose to list the review papers who already included that data in their 20+ year review.
So, you’re probably wondering what’s “acceptable”?
You’re bound to find this interesting…
Based on all available research, scientists first determine the maximum amount of a food ingredient that can be safely consumed daily over a person’s lifetime. Then, just in case they screwed up by 10,000%, they divide this number by 100 and call that the ADI (acceptable daily intake).
Just in case you didn’t get that, the ADI is actually 100 TIMES LESS than what has been scientifically determined to be safe, as an extremely conservative precautionary measure.
So what’s the ADI for aspartame?
The ADI for aspartame has been set at 50mg/kg of body weight (again, this is 100 times less than what has been determined safe).
But to even reach the ultra conservative ADI, a 150-pound adult would have to consume about 20 12-oz. diet carbonated soft drinks, or 33 8-oz. servings of powdered soft drink, or 42 4-oz. servings of gelatin, or 97 packets of tabletop sweetener each and every day.
And people are still worrying about safety issues based on a couple studies done on RATS being fed the aspartame equivalent of up to 2,000 cans of Diet Coke daily. No, that is NOT a misprint.
Before going any further, let me just clarify my recommendations.
1. I do not think non-nutritive sweeteners, particularly aspartame as it’s perhaps the most studied nutrient of all time, are the devil.
2. Despite the ADI, I do not recommend anyone drink 20 diet soft drinks or use 97 packets of Equal daily.
3. If you are drinking a caffeinated beverage, such as Diet Coke, etc, then I would recommend you limit your intake to one can per day.
4. If going with something non-caffeinated, you can be a little more liberal, but the bulk of your daily fluid intake should still come in the form of good old fashion water.
5. In Summary: Drink at least a half gallon of water daily, but feel free to enjoy other non-calorie drinks in moderation (1-3 beverages per day)
6. Lastly, if you personally as an individual experience adverse reactions like headaches, dizziness, etc, due to the use of aspartame, then don’t use it. Just realize that you fall into .0000001% of the population and shouldn’t preach your personal experience as truth for all. One of my friends is allergic to chocolate, but she doesn’t go around telling everyone else that it’s poison.
So it looks like my recommendations are actually 1,000 times less than what has been determined safe, and I’m pretty comfortable making that recommendation.
Alright, this post is already going longer than I anticipated, so I’m going to save the research on non-nutritive sweeteners and weight loss for tomorrow.
At least 100 comments and I’ll be back tomorrow with that data (which you’ll probably find even more interesting).
In clarity and moderation,
Joel
P.S. My friend Isabel kind of bashes artificial sweeteners in the below video, and while I do NOT agree with that stance, I do agree with just about everything else she shares for losing up to 10% of your unwanted body fat in the next 30 days. You can check it out here for some eye-opening, actionable tips:
How to lose up to 10% of your unwanted body fat in the next 30 days <——- Click here
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277 comments - add yours
Hi, It’s obvious from all the emails that we are frustrated from all the contradictory info coming out all the time from various scientists, dieticians ,coaches etc. It’s hard to feel like a yo-yo- trying to keep on a healthy diet with so much misinformation around. I hope you are right, because I really enjoy having my diet drink once or twice a day, and want to feel Im not harming myself. thanks, let’s see what else you have for us tomorrow!@
Ah ha I’ll let all the coworkers know. They will be so happy to start using their sweetners again! I don’t use the stuff since I just drink water for the most part.
Thanks Joel!
@Tim – PEople DO take rat poison in small amounts! what do you think generic warfarin is for people with hypertension!
@Kevin –
Crystal Light has aspartame in it – you have to be careful. Almost every single calorie free beverage has artificial sweeteners in it, with the beautiful exception of the ones sweetened with stevia (truvia, purevia, rebiana). Thank you coca cola and pepsi for bringing us Vitamin Water 10 and Sobe Life Water (naturally sweetened)
Thanks for the research Joel. No offense to anyone, I have been doing a lot of research on artificial sweeteners for a long time, and as a matter of personal opinion I won’t touch the stuff with a barge poll because of the stuff I have read. It really is worth delving around on the internet to get some info on the subject. There is one Doctor I particularly trust he, isn’t your normal doctor. He believes in healing people through nutrition and that most of the diseases we face today stems from poor nutrition. I have read the effects of artificial sweeteners and what they can do, ranging from disorders of the eye, ears, weight disorders :) yes it doesn’t help in your weight loss efforts, skin allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, urinary disturbances. These are real disorders that people have experienced with things such a aspartame. Sugar is no better anyway, personally I would stick to the real natural stuff such as raw honey in moderation of course.
Again this is just my opinion from what I have read myself, and don’t want to offend anyone. I have the greatest respect for you Joel :) I enjoy your newsletters and it’s always good to have a bit of a debate :) If everyone agreed there would be no debate.
Cheers for now.
My concern with artificial sweeteners has more to do with what “trigger effects’ that they might have in our bodies. Does the taste of sweetness spike insulin levels and signal to our bodies to store any incoming calories as body fat? I have heard that this may be the case. Also, does consuming a drink (or whatever)that has zero calories. a free-be so to speak, green-light some of us to consume more calories in other areas of our diet?
The going rate for ALL human beings aquiring some kind of cancer is 4 in 10… 4 IN 10, that means 40 of the 100 posters needed for joel to continue his comments tomorrow are going to be diagnosed with cancer sometime in their life.
How much do you think consumption of artificial sweetener is going to raise that percentage statistically high enough? alot? i doubt it! a little? yes i agree with that, a little, but not alot.
With baseline cancer rates already high enough very few things (outside of living inside a nuclear power plant core) will raise that baseline cancer rate to a higher statistically noticeable rate.
So when most of you are arguing over whether your going to get cancer or not, the truth is, a great percentage of us already will get cancer and we should probably stop arguing about stupid things like aspartame and just go on an live our lives…because life is not worth living if your scared of a packet of equal
The issue is not if something is safe “in general” or unsafe “in general”. Every person has his or her own story, his or his own family medical history. Yes, aspertane is capable of being inappropriate to some people and perfectly tame for others. I was told my acupuncturist that even some of the chinese meds that she knows would not be appropritate for me, knowing my medical history.
Okay, moderation and safe amounts, but if you know water is harmless, and the chemicals can do you harm why risk harm’s way. The media tells you sweet is better . . . than, say bittersweet. In the Middle East there are pastries that are so filled with honey, you have to drink a pulverrised ground coffee without anything added to counteract the confection. Even then, one pastry is considered enough with one demi-tasse of the pulverised ground coffee.
The fact is sweet for North America is an addiction of sorts that has to be understood for what it is. You don’t necessarily need it, but it’s nice sometimes. Plain yoghurt, for instance is cold, tart, and refreshing, but not sweet. Add ground flax seed, bran, shelled sunflower seeds, maybe ground walnuts, just a teaspoon of each, say with fresh fruit. You get the “sweetness” of the fruit, and mix of carbs and proteins from the rest.
The bottom line, though, for me, is if you know something is natural, and too much of it doesn’t promote good nutrition, one piece will do. Etcetera, etcetera and solorth
My thought is, if you aren’t drinking water or green tea then it should probably be beer. Ha!
Regardless of what we read or are told, we are all going to believe what we want to believe. For every “pro-aspertame” belief there will always be an equal and opposite “anti-aspertame” belief. Maybe the best thing you can do is to reserve your judgement until you alone have done research in both directions. Until that happens, do not take one nutritionists word as the be all end all, and also don’t completely discount what he says just because you have prematurely formed an opinion.
I’d like to know how many oncologists stay completely away from artificial sweeteners? I wonder if there has ever been a poll regarding this?
Isn’t Crystal light sweetened with Aspartame?
Drinking diet beverages more than on cheat days? Finally the answer! Thank You!
Liquid Aspartame upon reaching 85 degrees converts into the following:
Methanol (wood alcohol), highly toxic, also found in some fruits & vegetables like tomatoes. However, methanol is never found in natural foods without ethanol & pectin, its “antidotes”. (prevents conversion to formaldehyde)
Formaldehyde (embalming fluid) & formic acid (same chemical as fire ant venom), both deadly toxins.
Phenylalanine and aspartic acid, while found in nature, but never by themselves without other amino acids that prevent rapid digestion and passing the blood-brain barrier and acting as excito-toxins.
THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A STUDY DISPROVING THE ABOVE. NEVER!!!
Take it to your nearest chem lab and check it out for yourself.
Dr. Blaylock, one of the most respected neurosurgeons in the country says: “The ingredients in NutraSweet [aspartame] literally stimulate the neurons of the brain to death causing brain damage of varying degrees.”
FDA denied aspartame approval for over 8 years until the newly appointed FDA commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes overruled the final scientic review panel.
None dare call it a conspiracy? Check out the history of it’s approval.
The thing is, some artificial sweeteners are found to stimulate the secretion of insulin even though there are no calories coming in. Think about it: insulin is supposed to remove glucose out of the blood after ingesting a load of sugar, so if something stimulates insulin secretion without any real sugar being ingested, your blood sugar levels will drop anyway. What happens when blood sugar levels drop? Shakiness. Headaches. Hunger. Ravenous cravings for carbohydrates.
For people wondering about stevia – it has a glycemic index of zero and there is no pancreatic secretion of insulin. Stevia is a natural sweetener that is about 40 times sweeter than sucrose. It comes from a plant and not from a lab. Emerging evidence also links stevia with increased insulin sensitivity and improved glucose tolerance, moderately lowering blood pressure, and perhaps even reversing early signs of type II diabetes. And not only does it not promote dental caries, it actually can reverse them.
I’m not saying artificial sweeteners are evil or that they cannot be tolerated in small amounts, but like some other people said, more research needs to be done and it would be naive to consider them 100% safe or 100% unsafe. Some people are just relieved to get some validation for their diet coke addiction, so they’ll say that the rest of us simply raising questions are labeling it all as a “conspiracy”. It’s not black and white here peeps.
I learned this stuff in my undergrad classes in which I earned a degree in Dietetics. Unless my teachers are all sleeping with G.D. Searle (founder of aspartame) I don’t think they have a reason to be biased.
There are WAY to many paranoid persons out there seeing the boogie man behind every rock.
Common sense seems sometimes to be in short supply.
Hi there.
Thanks for the terrific article.
As for everything in life, MODERATION and common sense are keywords.
Best regards and congratulations for the great job!!
Susana
Originally Posted By Dennis@Tim – PEople DO take rat poison in small amounts! what do you think generic warfarin is for people with hypertension!
you are correct that warfarin (coumadin) is used as a PESTICIDE for mice and rats but in humans it’s used as an ANTICOAGULANT not ANTIHYPERTENSIVE. i gave up being a nurse 20 years ago and i used to know that fact but i had forgotten it. thanks for reminding me of it.
awesome, i usually just drink 2 diets pops a day anyways (at the most)
It’s really up to each of us what goes into our body. YOU are the only one that lifts the fork or tips the cup to your mouth. What’s on the fork or in the cup is your choice. Do your reading and make your decision but remember, everyone is entitled to make their OWN decision as well.
The internet does provide tons of information but can be so overloading that you don’t know what is up or down.
I can’t eat bananas because they cause severe migrains but that doesn’t make them poison for everyone else.
Your mistake is believing anything the FDA, or other government entity (ie the National Cancer Institute, says. They are all in the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies. Why didn’t you put any “research” from independents?
Aspartame is an excitotoxin which is a substance added to foods and beverages that literally stimulates neurons to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees. Can be found in such ingredients as monosodium glutamate(MSG), aspartame, cycseine, hydrolyzed protein and aspartic acid. This is from the book “Excitotoxins: The taste that Kills” by Russell L. Blaylock, M.D.. These substances can cause harm to the brain and nervous system and their relationship to neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s disease(ALS) and others. This book references lots and lots of studies. Personally, I wouldn’t want cancer but I also wouldn’t want Parkenson’s disease. It’s horrendous.
Do the research.
Gina
@Amy – if you want to lose weight fast, you need to drink water. 1/2 gallon (or 64 oz) is the minimum. If you are doing a high protein diet, or taking creatin or talk lots of NSAID drugs (like advil) this should be uped to about 10 -12 cups a day or you will put your kidneys into shock. If you don’t drink water than you retain it and you have a harder time losing weight.
As for the aspartamine and sucralose, I agree with Joel. If you drink your 8 cups of water and then have a can of diet pop it will not shorten your lifespan unless you have a sensivity to it (i.e. an allergic reaction). If you are sensitive to aspartamine, then don’t use it. That seems self explanatory. Thanks Joel for the research
@dimitra anderson –
my mistake, i just woke up when i wrote that, thanks for the correction.
I am all about natural sweetners – not taking my chances on gaining weight back or cravings! Nothing good every has come from eating processed crap. And how many times has the FDA approved foods or drugs and then changed their story years later after the damage has been done.
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Hey, it’s Joel! So you want to know a little more about me, huh? Well, I’d be happy to oblige :-)
I guess it all started back in 2001 (my freshman year of college) when I was just a “skinny fat” 19-year old kid. At the time, I was spending close to 2 hours a day in the gym (now my workouts last about 30 minutes), and despite my efforts, you’d probably never guess I worked out a day in my life by looking at me...