Why aspartame is lame.

Working as a server at a popular restaurant chain, people often ask me what the healthiest choices on our menu are. The other day a woman came in looking for a healthier food option. I recommended a salad that has walnuts, blue cheese and chicken. Pleased with my suggestion the woman responded, "Okay, I'll try that!... Oh, and I'll have a Diet Coke too." Cringe.

I'm not a big proponent of the average grocery store. I prefer natural food stores like PCC, Whole Foods or farmers markets, but I purchase a lot of my household items at stores like Fred Meyer. Just yesterday I was inside Safeway and I was listening to an advertisement about Diet Mountain Dew. The ad was boasting about how great it is because it's sugar and calorie free. I'm happy that people in the U.S. are trying to make healthier food choices, but the advertising industry has falsely led people to believe that sweet foods labeled, "sugar free" are good for you.


"Diet soda, I dislike you."

Anybody who knows me well is aware of my disdain for diet soda. Diet soda contains one of the most typical artificial sweeteners, aspartame, which turns into formaldehyde in your body (yeah, like the stuff they preserve dead bodies with that's really stinky) inhabiting your cells, staying there for years. Aspartame is almost 200 times sweeter than sucrose, (natural sugar) and is the most popular artificial sweetener there is. Chemically, it is very different from natural sugar. If you drink diet soda, buy foods that are sweet tasting and labeled, "sugar free" or you sweeten your iced tea with the little colored sugar packets, you are likely ingesting aspartame.





Quick Chemistry of Aspartame.
To put it simply, when you digest aspartame it releases aspartic acid. Aspartic acid is naturally occurring in your body and it is used by brain neurons as an excitatory neurotransmitter. If you are ingesting a lot of aspartic acid, it will cross the blood-brain barrier and build up to high levels.

Methanol is another ingredient of aspartame. Highly toxic to the human body, just 2 teaspoons of methanol can kill a person. Once consumed, it turns into formaldehyde and formic acid (also toxic) entering the brain and central nervous system at high levels.

What will the toxicity of aspartic acid and methanol do to me?
Let me be clear when I refer to aspartame as toxic. If you drink diet sodas, you obviously won't keel over  with overwhelming symptoms and die. If you consume it regularly or in large amounts, you are likely to be at risk for many symptoms that you may be unaware of. High levels of aspartic acid, formaldehyde and formic acid in your body can cause severe headaches, fibromyalgia, leg numbness, cramps, memory loss, anxiety attacks... the list goes on. Artificial sweeteners might be to blame if you are enduring any of these health issues. I have a few friends that talk about how they rely on diet soda daily to avoid severe headaches. They've told me that nothing, not even coffee or aspirin will fix this problem, which tells me that it's not the caffeine they are addicted to, it's the aspartame. So, not only can artificial sweeteners give you headaches from ingestion, but aspartame can give you withdrawal headaches as well.

I saw it with my own eyes.

Last year, in my Biochemistry lab, we dedicated an entire experiment to studying the amounts of methanol in aspartame. We studied aspartame in it's purest form, in a diet drink and in an aged diet drink. Our findings expressed that the diet drink turned partially into methanol when metabolized in the body, and the aged diet drink turned into methanol directly inside of the bottle. It's true. I saw it with my own eyes. Why would you ingest aged aspartame? Aspartame has a very short shelf life and it can turn tasteless in 3 months. In the time it takes for diet soda to be shipped and purchased by you in your local grocery store, the aspartame could have already aged enough to change some of its composition into methanol. So, after your body metabolizes this aged aspartame drink, you're not only taking in excess methanol, but you're creating even more of it inside your body.

What should I use as a sugar substitute then?

A Stevia Plant.

It's likely you've heard of stevia, which is gradually gaining popularity in the America. Stevia is a plant that has leaves 30 times sweeter than natural sugar. It has all the properties of artificial sweeteners that people love, (no calories, no spikes in blood sugar) and personally, I think it tastes almost identical to aspartame. I'm excited about stevia because it's 100% natural and it is a fantastic substitute to aspartame. Truvia is a brand that sells stevia and it can typically be purchased at any local grocery store.






Artificial Sweeteners, well... they suck.
I hate diet soda and you should too. It's not good for your body. Let's not forget that we, as human beings are meant to be eating and drinking from the earth. If you're a diabetic try stevia, or stick with natural sugars like honey, because as it turns out... artificial sweeteners aren't so sweet.