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greykittyCategory All / General Furry Art
Species Lion
Gender Male
Size 500 x 500px
File Size 266.9 kB
oh one of these "swap unlhealthy suger for even more unhealthy chemical substitutes"
Yeah, I tend to believe hundreds of scientific studies over internet rumor. =P
Don't believe me, hunh? It always surprises me that internet rumor takes such precedence in people's minds. ^^ I'm nipping this thing in the bud, for you and for anybody else who has the same idea. Feel free to ignore it since it's a giant wall of text.
If not, here is everything you ever wanted to know about the safety of aspartame (I ran myself ragged finding out everything about it as early as high school because of all these rumors):
Aspartame has been approved by almost a hundred different countries, and in fact, in the US, more money has been spent doing more tests on aspartame than any other food additive, by a large margin. It has never been found to have any carcinogenic effects, despite tests on rats as high as 500mg/kg (that would be the equivelant of a person drinking 200 cans of coke in less than an hour).
Saccharine, an older fake sugar, has been known to cause cancer in lab rats (though the effect was never replicated in humans), which is why most people associate fake sugars with cancer, since saccharine was one of the first synthetic sweeteners on the market.
Aspartame is a compound of aspartic acid, a non-essential amino acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid, and as such these are the two main metabolites that aspartame is broken down into when ingested. A metabolite is a substance that is chemically separated from another one during the process of metabolism, or digestion.
Now aspartic acid is non-essential, which means that while it's used to performs essential tasks in the body, other amino acids can also accomplish this. Aspartic acid is also found readily in animal protein and plant matter. The amount metabolized from aspartame constitutes about 1% of a person's daily intake of aspartic acid.
Phenylalanine is where the safety bottleneck for aspartame is. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid, in other words, you need it to survive and it's the only amino acid that can do that particular job. However, since phenylalanine crosses the blood-brain barrier, there is the potential for harm if a person has too much phenylalanine in their system as it passes through their brain. In large quantities over a period of time, the presence of phenylalanine has been known to basically overdo its job (it's a neurotransmittor stimulant) and cause neurological damage, some of which may be permanent.
The threshold where this phenylalanine starts to become a risk from the consumption of aspartame is much higher than the consumption limit (for safety and legal reasons), which the USFDA have set to 50mg/kg (the European Food Safety Authority has limited it to 40mg/kg). This means that to surpass the FDA limitations, the average person would have to drink over 21 cans of diet soda a day, assuming they aren't overweight (in you're overweight, add 50 more mg for every kg). This generally wouldn't put you in danger unless you had an unusual metabolism; the average person would have to drink significantly more than this, and consistently as well (the effects wouldn't show for at least a week, probably more like a month). If someone drank well over 21 cans of diet soda a day for at least a week, then they would put themselves at a hypothetical overstimulation of the neurological transmittors than phenylalanine stimulates, though this has never actually been observed.
That being said, aspartame is a very poor source of dietary phenylalanine, which is found in significantly higher quantities in meat and milk products. However, it is the bottleneck, mostly because there is a rare genetic disorder known as phenylketonuria, in which a person's ability to process phenylalanine is inhibited, leading to naturally higher blood levels of phenylalanine. Management of phenylketonuria typically means severely restricting or completely avoiding high-protein foods, such as meat, dairy, nuts, and aspartame. This is why on every can of diet soda there is a warning on the back: "Phenylketonurics: Contains phenylalanine." This is to protect the approximately 1 in 15,000 people born with this disorder in the United States.
TLDR; aspartame has never been associated with cancer or health risks beyond the risks already entailed from its various metabolites, some of which you need to survive, and all of which are naturally found in far greater quantities in other foods. <3
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12180494
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828671
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/scdoc/1641.htm
If not, here is everything you ever wanted to know about the safety of aspartame (I ran myself ragged finding out everything about it as early as high school because of all these rumors):
Aspartame has been approved by almost a hundred different countries, and in fact, in the US, more money has been spent doing more tests on aspartame than any other food additive, by a large margin. It has never been found to have any carcinogenic effects, despite tests on rats as high as 500mg/kg (that would be the equivelant of a person drinking 200 cans of coke in less than an hour).
Saccharine, an older fake sugar, has been known to cause cancer in lab rats (though the effect was never replicated in humans), which is why most people associate fake sugars with cancer, since saccharine was one of the first synthetic sweeteners on the market.
Aspartame is a compound of aspartic acid, a non-essential amino acid, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid, and as such these are the two main metabolites that aspartame is broken down into when ingested. A metabolite is a substance that is chemically separated from another one during the process of metabolism, or digestion.
Now aspartic acid is non-essential, which means that while it's used to performs essential tasks in the body, other amino acids can also accomplish this. Aspartic acid is also found readily in animal protein and plant matter. The amount metabolized from aspartame constitutes about 1% of a person's daily intake of aspartic acid.
Phenylalanine is where the safety bottleneck for aspartame is. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid, in other words, you need it to survive and it's the only amino acid that can do that particular job. However, since phenylalanine crosses the blood-brain barrier, there is the potential for harm if a person has too much phenylalanine in their system as it passes through their brain. In large quantities over a period of time, the presence of phenylalanine has been known to basically overdo its job (it's a neurotransmittor stimulant) and cause neurological damage, some of which may be permanent.
The threshold where this phenylalanine starts to become a risk from the consumption of aspartame is much higher than the consumption limit (for safety and legal reasons), which the USFDA have set to 50mg/kg (the European Food Safety Authority has limited it to 40mg/kg). This means that to surpass the FDA limitations, the average person would have to drink over 21 cans of diet soda a day, assuming they aren't overweight (in you're overweight, add 50 more mg for every kg). This generally wouldn't put you in danger unless you had an unusual metabolism; the average person would have to drink significantly more than this, and consistently as well (the effects wouldn't show for at least a week, probably more like a month). If someone drank well over 21 cans of diet soda a day for at least a week, then they would put themselves at a hypothetical overstimulation of the neurological transmittors than phenylalanine stimulates, though this has never actually been observed.
That being said, aspartame is a very poor source of dietary phenylalanine, which is found in significantly higher quantities in meat and milk products. However, it is the bottleneck, mostly because there is a rare genetic disorder known as phenylketonuria, in which a person's ability to process phenylalanine is inhibited, leading to naturally higher blood levels of phenylalanine. Management of phenylketonuria typically means severely restricting or completely avoiding high-protein foods, such as meat, dairy, nuts, and aspartame. This is why on every can of diet soda there is a warning on the back: "Phenylketonurics: Contains phenylalanine." This is to protect the approximately 1 in 15,000 people born with this disorder in the United States.
TLDR; aspartame has never been associated with cancer or health risks beyond the risks already entailed from its various metabolites, some of which you need to survive, and all of which are naturally found in far greater quantities in other foods. <3
Sources:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12180494
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828671
http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/scdocs/scdoc/1641.htm
I have an unhealthy obsession with Diet coke.
I say that because aside from my morning coffee, Diet coke (or in a pinch, other diet colas) are really the only liquid I drink.
I squeed a little when I saw this... So damn cute <3<3
I say that because aside from my morning coffee, Diet coke (or in a pinch, other diet colas) are really the only liquid I drink.
I squeed a little when I saw this... So damn cute <3<3
Same. ^^;; I loves it soooo. I would totally do this, too, if I was the size of a can. xD
*squees with you* GreyKitty's awesome!
*squees with you* GreyKitty's awesome!
I think that if that can were that size IRL that it would last me like a month XD
*cracks you open a tall one and cheerses you with hers*
*cracks you open a tall one and cheerses you with hers*
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