Is Aspartame Sweet or Scary?
These days, it feels like every other day we’re told what we should or shouldn’t be eating. Today it’s goji berries that we absolutely have to throw down our gullets, tomorrow it’s kiwi, and yesterday we were told these were both terrible for us! A lot of this is due to a mixture of profit-motivated dishonesty, scientific illiteracy and a basic human desire - the urge to be healthy and feel good. A big topic of conversation in the last few years have been artificial sweeteners - non-sugar additives to things like fizzy drinks and sweets. So what’s the deal with these things? What are they, what’s their history, and most importantly - are they good or bad for us? To try and answer this question, we’re going to zoom in on one of the most widely used artificial sweeteners, Aspartame.
Aspartame, sometimes marketed under the brand names of Canderel, NutraSweet and Equal, is an artificial sweetener that is 200 times sweeter than sugar. It is because of this far more potent sweetness that it is used as a low-calorie alternative to sugar - it has 4 calories per gram, but because the amount of Aspartame needed to create an equivalent sweetness to sugar is so small, the amount of total calories is very small. It was created in 1965 by James M. Schlatter, as a byproduct of research into anti-ulcer drugs, and was shortly approved and produced as an artificial sweetener. 10 years later, in 1975, the FDA launched a full-scale investigation into aspartame’s safety, as concerns had been raised regarding the veracity of the initial studies that had led to its approval as a safe substance for consumption. Working with the Government Accountability Office, they came to the conclusion that while there were some issues with the initial studies, they were minor enough to not affect the conclusions in any significant or meaningful way. Despite this, artificial sweeteners, but especially Aspartame, remains very controversial in many circles. Why is this?
Aspartame is one of the most studied food additives ever. As a result of this, there is a degree of evidence both for and against the safety of Aspartame. For example, a review of studies into artificial sweeteners including Aspartame investigated many different health outcomes, such as obesity, diabetes, depression, kidney disease, cognitive and neurological effects, amongst many others. In the conclusion, it states that;
Some groups, such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest, maintain that aspartame is unsafe to this day, citing studies where continuous levels of aspartame exposure correlated to an abnormal rate of tumour development in rats. This, along with self-reported incidents of headaches, dizziness and other cognitive issues, mean aspartame is still a hotly debated topic.
If there’s all these studies and links between diseases and aspartame, why are we even talking about this? It must be bad, right? If only science were that simple. When talking about scientific studies, it is extremely rare to have a solid, irrefutable conclusion. For every study on anything, you will find a study on the same topic muddying the waters. Fortunately, however, we can make our decisions based on the weight of scientific opinion, which in the case of Aspartame, is relatively strong. A 2013 meta-analysis published by the European Food Safety Authority restated that aspartame, within reason, is safe for human consumption. The recommended daily limit for aspartame intake is 40-50mg per kg of body weight (depending on where you live and what food health body applies to you). This is already a conservative estimate that many are unlikely to reach - to breach this limit, you would have to drink over 19 cans of diet soda, and for any negative effects to happen, you would have to do this consistently. The average person's daily intake is estimated to be around 5mg per kg of body weight a day - less than 10% of the limit. There’s even some evidence that artificial sweeteners can help in weight loss, due to their lower calorie count vs refined sugars.
So, what do we make of this? Is aspartame good or bad for you? The short answer is, it’s probably fine. The long answer is, whilst there’s evidence both for and against the safety of aspartame, much more evidence and research would be needed to seriously dispute the safety of consuming aspartame in moderate amounts. I want to stress that there has ‘never’ been a causational smoking gun linking aspartame definitively to any negative health outcome - however, it is essentially impossible to definitively call any chemical ‘safe’ in all contexts. The only exceptions to this are people with schizophrenia, as aspartame can interfere with widely used medications, and phenylketonuria, a rare disorder that affects how we break down proteins, that can make aspartame lethal.
Our job as coaches isn’t to tell you what to eat, or what not to eat. Our job is to provide you with the facts and the evidence, as best we understand them, and empower you to make informed decisions about what you decide to put in your body. If you’re cautious about artificial sweeteners, and as such want to avoid aspartame, that’s totally fine - there are plenty of other alternatives available. If you want to enjoy a diet soda from time to time, as part of a balanced, healthy lifestyle, that’s also fine! As with most nutrition-related topics, the key is moderation. Eat your fruits and vegetables, get a good amount of protein, drink lots of water, and move as much as you can; if you’ve got these things down, the rest is just sweetener.
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About The Project PT Oxford Personal Trainers
The Project PT uses fitness to empower people. Through our Oxford Personal Training Studio, we use 4 pathways to achieve our mission. Our first pathway started in August 2019 creating accessible and fun fitness events in unusual settings, making fitness enjoyable for all. Our second pathway offers free fitness classes for young children, helping them to build a positive relationship with exercise and sport. The 3rd pathway comes in the form of our Movement Studio, a nature-inspired space teaching people how to move their body's in a welcoming and non-judgmental environment. Our 4th pathway is still in the development stages, Youth Lift will engage with young people on the periphery of being excluded from school. Using the medium of lifting weights empowers them to make other positive changes in their lives.
