I’m hearing that Aspartame is “very, very, bad”. Apparently it causes a long list of health complications and can affect you after anywhere from 5-40 years of consumption.
Sounds like hooey to me. Couldn’t the same argument be made about just about anything? “I breathe oxygen every day for 28 years, and I get headaches… it must be related!”
I can’t seem to find anything on the net that doesn’t appear to be drawn up by tinfoil-hatters. The best was this site. In the course of one (far too) long (incredibly poorly designed) webpage, they manage to mis-spell a host of words, blame everybody from Donald Rumsfeld to Ronald Regan, and blame everything from Michael J Fox’s Parkinson’s Disease to Gulf War Syndrome to the murder of Nicole Brown & Ron Goldman on Aspratame consumption (I’m not kidding!). About halfway down, they started to hit me up for money… another red flag.
Hardly a credible source. (Have a look, at the very least for the entertainment value)
I have never seen a credible study that outline any risks from aspartame consumption (leaving aside phenylketonurics).
The one bit of “reasoning” about its risks that seems to have an iota of truth is that one of the breakdown products of aspartame in your gut is methanol, AKA wood alcohol, which can do bad stuff to you in large quantities, like make you blind.
Do any other food breakdowns create methanol? I don’t know.
Does the quantity of methanol in aspartame constitute a credible health threat, even for folks who like 20 packets of Equal in their coffee, and drink three pots of coffee a day? I doubt it.
Yep! Fruit and vegetable juices do. Orange juice seems to be the most noted. I think I read somewhere that fresh fruit does as well, but I can’t find it anymore.
Aspartame in its current form was developed in the late 1970s. It is a reduced version of the mind control drug (not)employed by the US Army in Viet Nam known informally as “Jacob’s Ladder.”
Aspartame has miniscule effects by itself, but does accumulate in the brain (hence rumors of brain lesions associated with its use). In the presence of a narrow band of radio frequency, the aspartame begins its nefarious work: it enhances the mind’s suggestive state, making certain types of messages irresistable. A common source of the required radio frequency is the common cell phone…hey…who got mayo on my hat?
Having reached the end of Matchka’s post, and thus greatly relieved, I should offer the inevitable anecdotal evidence that is so prevalent in GQ threads these days. My sister experiences severe headaches when she consumes aspartame (or at least to her mind). A doctor I asked about it opined that if it is the aspartame causing the headaches, it’s because she has an allergy to it. I don’t know if there’s any studies around that examine whether or not aspartame is one of those foodstuffs that people tend to be allergic to. Certaintly that would explain the difference between anecdotal experience (as dealt with by the Snopes page that SpoilerVirgin linked to) and scientific studies of the substance.