Is there a general consensus on aspartame’s health effects? Does it cause the body to increase insulin?
Other than a kind of intolerance that some people have,there is no direct link to any harmfull health effect.It doesn’t increase blood sugar and that’s why-except its much sweetier than sugar-its ingriedient to many diabetic foods.
Here’s the Mayo Clinic on sweeteners. No problem for most people for aspartame. Another page of mostly positive info.
As to the infamous “fact” that artificial sweeteners cause the insulin reaction as sugar, the whole topic was poisoned years ago when the first “study” to “prove” this turned out to be basically made up. So that issue is mired in controversy.
But if you read info like the ones given above, they definitely indicate artificial sweeteners are fine for people with diabetes.
Do you have a reference for that? I had heard about that study when it was new, but haven’t heard any follow-up.
No.
There was a recent well-publicized and alarming on the face of it study that linked diet soda use with dementia and strokes. I was concerned about it, but puzzled as it didn’t show the mechanism involved and didn’t differentiate between the various non-caloric sweeteners. It seemed unlikely that all of the artificial sweeteners would show the same effect.
Later analysis showed that the original study had neglected confounders like diabetes and that when these were taken into account the link all butdisappeared.
I see in Surreal’s link that protein can cause a spike in insulin. Is that a major concern? I’ve not heard of people developing diabetes because they had a diet that relied too much on protein.
Protein undergoes gluconeogenesis which means there is a metabolic pathway by which a portion of dietary protein can be converted to sugar. It’s not a large portion, maybe 100 grams of protein can become 30 grams of sugar, and 100 grams of protein is a lot. We’re talking about a dozen eggs to generate the same amount of glucose found in around 8 ounces of Coke-Cola. I think long before the sugar formed caused a problem the protein would become an issue.
But sodium aspartame. . . that’s a completely different subject. . . eh. . . assuming it actually existed.
This mainly happens with protein from dairy sources, specifically whey protein:
FDA:
European Food Safety Authority:
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics:
Insulin spikes do not cause diabetes.
Thanks for the info.
I thought that increasing one’s insulin too much and often would result in insufficient insulin production or insulin insensitivity which could then result in diabetes.
I was mainly asking about aspartame with the goal of going into ketosis by replacing nearly all sweets with aspartame-containing soda.
Aspartame can contribute to low-level inflammation of your GI tract which can indirectly lead to gaining weight
Aspartame and MSG are migraine triggers.
I’ve known people who were “allergic” to aspartame or MSG. I realize, remembering what they described, they were probably having migraines.
Can? :dubious:
The study was done in mice, and the title you cite says “may”. It’s inflammation that “can” contribute to GI disease, and aspartame “may” cause this effect in mice.
Me, I think it’s quite the leap to generalize that to humans as causing weight gain.
As Qadgop indicated, it’s quite a leap from a preliminary mouse study to saying that “your GI tract” will be affected.
That hasn’t stopped a lot of the Usual Suspects (Mercola, Rense etc.) from jumping on this publication as support for their anti-aspartame crusade.
We would first need to see human intestinal tract biopsies and/or associated serum markers of inflammation demonstrate this alleged inflammation (this is hard to establish from biopsies, which normally contain a complement of inflammatory cells which vary considerably in amount and type in healthy people; this is one of the ways Wakefield et al got into trouble while attempting to show inflammation in the small bowel secondary to measles vaccination). Then you’d have to correlate any inflammation with obesity and the array of chronic diseases which the anti-aspartame crowd claim are caused by the sweetener (or other sweeteners).
From a meta-analysis on low-calorie sweeteners (LCSs) and their affect on body weight and composition:
There’s no need to use aspartame when you can use sucralose so it really becomes a moot issue. And since that’s just biologically inert sucrose, it should pose fewer potential issues. Also the amount you need is so small, that should make it even more innocuous.
Even soda manufacturers are gradually coming around to this idea. Whereas now they mainly use aspartame and acesulfame k, some like coke have introduced sucralose varieties. They can be hard to find but they’re out there. The coke version is available on Amazon. And soda stream has a whole line of sucralose diet beverages.
The OP is interested in consuming beverages that already contain aspartame, so his question and the resulting answers are not moot.
One can find “data” on the web regarding sucralose having the same effects you attributed to aspartame:
A mountain of research has concluded the same for aspartame.
Change “the same” to “similar.”