Aspartame

Intrigued by the fact that our fridge at work is stocked with Diet Coke and Coca-Cola Zero, with seemingly identical ingredients, it makes me wonder: What is the different?

Well it turns out, not a lot. Apparently, Zero uses less aspartame, and more of another sweetener than Diet. Upon reading the comments on this page, I stumbled across this page about the warnings of aspartame.

Aspartame converts to dangerous by-products that have no natural countermeasures. A dieter’s empty stomach accelerates these conversions and amplifies the damage. Components of aspartame go straight to the brain, damage that causes headaches, mental confusion, seizures and faulty balance. Lab rats and other test animals died of brain tumors.

Yeah, ok, so we know aspartame is bad for us. (And for the record, I won’t completely trust that page, it’s written very poorly). And it causes cancer. So why is it on the market? Well it almost didn’t. This wikipedia article (a good read), mentions that:

The head of the FDA, Jere E. Goyan, who had not approved legalization of aspartame, due to the brain cancer in rats issue, was fired on the first day Ronald Reagan was president of the U.S. (1981). Reagan hired Arthur Hayes MD (FDA Commissioner 1981-1983), who legalized aspartame a year later.

And…

In February 2007, Page to Pantry, a radio program on the public radio station KPFK 90.7FM in Los Angeles, reported that aspartame was refused approval by the FDA for eight years before finally being approved under the leadership of Arthur Hayes. Immediately after, Hayes left the FDA and went to work for the artificial sweetener industry. This so-called “Revolving-Door” policy seems to be very common in the food additive industry.

With a track record like this, why is it still on the market? Probably because it’s cheap, and companies make money off the fearmongering tactics they use (“0 Calories!”) to attract people trying to loose weight and cut back.

Also, take this into consideration:

They think that even a moderate spike in blood plasma phenylalanine levels from typical ingestion may have adverse consequences in long-term use. They are especially concerned that the phenylalanine can be concentrated in fetal brains to a potentially neurotoxic level.

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.