I know aspartame isn’t good for me either, but egads, this stuff is disgusting! I also think it may be causing (or at least increasing the severity of) vague muscle pains I’ve had for the past week or so.
Yeah, yeah, I know I should probably ditch artificial sweeteners altogether.
Anyone else had a similar experience with this, or another product?
(bolding mine)
Why do you think aspartame isn’t okay to consume? Were you diagnosed with phenylketonuria?
Maybe your leg cramps are a side effect of an aspartame withdrawal as opposed to being caused by sucralose.
I drank a Diet Pepsi the other day, and noticed it said “Now Aspartame Free” on the label. Didn’t really taste any different to me.
Either way, any soda is supposedly shit for your health. Beer might be, too.
Aspartame is broken down to its component amino acids in the stomach. Nothing to withdraw from.
I’ve been a diabetic for the last 30 years and I’ve always drank a shitload of soda. Aspartame had just gone mainstream in 1985 and I thank god for it. Saccharin is disgusting, so before NutraSweet all diet soda was undrinkable. Sucralose’s big difference from aspartame is that it tastes slightly more like natural sugar. Aspartame has a very strong, ‘bright’ sweetness to it, but other than that it tastes similar.
Oh, and I’ve read the* ‘aspartame is poison’ *articles for the last 30 years as well. Unless you’re a phenylketonuric aspartame is harmless. The articles are all 100% nonsense, tin-foil-hat, junk-science crap. :rolleyes:
I bought some Black Cherry Sparkling Beverage, thinking it was just seltzer water. It was wayyy sweeter than the other seltzer waters- I thought it was awesome! But then I figured out that it was actually diet soda with some artificial sweetener or other. My unconscious dietary guidelines don’t allow for the addition of more diet soda, so I had to give it up.
Needless to say, it doesn’t rank very high on the list of my life’s dramatic episodes.
No, sucralose is mostly excreted without being broken down.
Are the leg cramps at night or during activity?
I’ve also had a bit of a sinus infection, whose onset coincided with when I started drinking all that new Diet Pepsi. I’m feeling much better today, so I wonder if the leg pains were from that and not the sucralose.
Diet Pepsi with sucralose still tastes terrible IMHO.
Interesting. My feet have been hurting - I attributed that to something else, but I don’t know. Aspartame fears are mostly woo, so I don’t think it should be gone for that reason.
I think as far as sweeteners go, I like Ace K the best (I realize that it is almost always paired with aspartame, but the combination seems good).
Could it be the caffeine that’s the problem, maybe?
It’s quite possible (likely, even) that the leg cramps have nothing to do with the change in sweetener. The timing could just be a coincidence. There are many things that can cause leg cramps, including low potassium, calcium or magnesium (which can be brought on by blood pressure medication), poor blood circulation, pinched nerves and overexertion.
One of the protein diets avoids Nutrasweet specifically because they say it actually inhibits weight loss. Doesn’t claim any of the rest of the stuff, but suggests Sucralose being different from that… Might be the driver for the change in the choice. Or perhaps differentiator…
(Never understood the need for multiple diet cola brands. Pepsi Max vs Diet Pepsi. Diet coke vs Coke Zero).
Mainly marketing - “Diet” is a harder term to sell to the male market. Diet is flavored with aspartame (or now sucralose), Max/Zero is aspartame and acesulfame potassium. Additionally, Pepsi Max has more caffeine and ginseng (on a search apparently that’s the North American formula and it’s more conventional in other countries).
humans are so good at recognizing patterns that we even see them where they don’t exist.
There are some real wingdings commenting on that blog post.
There’s no “Aspartame Withdrawal Syndrome”, other than if you habitually drank diet soda you’d likely miss it for awhile.
It’s true though that if you stop drinking fluoridated water and anything made with it cold turkey, your entire body is likely to have a greenish glow for several weeks (the toxins coming out).
Aspartame is almost as slandered on the internet as vaccines are amongst Jenny McCarthy fans.
I only drink Coke Zero. I had no idea aspartame was supposed to be bad. Seems fine to me.
Sodium aspartame contributes to high blood pressure.
Unless they changed the flavor profile, it’s going to taste rather different. They did Diet Coke with Splenda, and I remember it tasting very different. It was missing the characteristic “diet” taste, but still was flatter than pure sugar.