Sunday, August 9, 2009

Aspartame and What it does to your children and you!!!

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1 comment:

jegarst said...

Your video about aspartame safety is outdated and thoroughly rejected by science. There are two poorly understood realities.

The first reality is that all aspartame research prior to 2009 is fatally flawed (and hence so is all criticism of aspartame based on such science including this video). It was all done in a scientifically unacceptable manner as was established in preliminary work presented at the Society of Toxicology (Seattle, USA) and the American Chemical Society (New Orleans, USA) national meetings in 2008. Full comments are currently being preparing for regular publication, but in essence it was demonstrated that inappropriate controls were used in all aspartame rodent research starting with the original Searle work and extending through the oft-cited Soffritti et al work published over the past several years (and even other work thereafter). The standard control-versus-treated animal experiments are invalid for aspartame, because aspartame’s methanol (actually through its oxidation products formaldehyde and formate) depletes a vitamin, namely folic acid. No properly done experiment can deplete a vitamin, but all experiments to date claiming problems have done just that! And those experiments showing the greatest effect (Soffritti et al) took 2-3 years and caused dose- and time-dependent depletion of this critical vitamin. And the cancers reported are well-known consequences of folate deficiency. Studies not finding a problem with aspartame were either of such short duration as to avoid this issue or used diets that provided extra folate such that this issue was not encountered.

The second reality is that this same underlying folate issue explains human problems attributed by critics to aspartame. The folate enzyme system metabolizes the common dietary ingredient methanol’s oxidation products formaldehyde and formate. These are innate metabolites of many substances and are required for normal biological function. In humans, however, the issue is not any aspartame depletion of folate, but widespread preexisting folate deficiency (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folate_deficiency) , especially before 1998 when supplementation was begun (and this criticism of aspartame began) or folate genetic issues, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methylenetetrahydrofolate_reductase), and/or related biochemistry linked to vitamin B12 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_B12). Folate deficiency or genetic issues facilitate formation of homocysteine. Much has been written about the “excitotoxic” amino acids that form the aspartame framework (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) by aspartame critics. However, those excitotoxic amino acids occur at far greater concentrations in everyday food, so neither of these amino acids are issues for most people. However, what seems to be consistently missed by the antiaspartame critics is that homocysteine is a far stronger excitotoxin than any constituent of aspartame.

Explaining problems with aspartame only suggests it is even safer. Given these new, stronger indications of safety, science no longer has any reason to doubt the safety of aspartame. And the European equivalent of the US FDA on April 20 again just validated the safety of aspartame, http://www.efsa.europa.eu/EFSA/efsa_locale-1178620753812_1211902454309.htm.

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)

(FYI, the author has absolutely no financial or biasing connection with the aspartame, the soft drink or their related industries and have made not one penny from my opposition, unlike many antiaspartame critics who sell books and offer irrelevant treatment. The author has a Ph.D. in Medicinal Chemistry (Pharmacy) from the University of Iowa, postdoctoral experience at Yale University (Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry) and at Vanderbilt University and taught nutritional toxicology at the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana) besides having conducted federally funded research at Vanderbilt, UIUC, and at several other universities before recently entering into retirement.)

August 10, 2009 at 1:53 PM

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