I get a lot of emails from Dr Mercola and read a few… then go and read any studies quoted. This one caught my eye – aspartame is acknowledged to be pretty nasty stuff, it can cause all sorts of problems. A 22 year study’s results were published and the hospital which announced the above result apparently retracted it after an hour due to pressure from the food industry.
This is what Dr Mercola, who was sent the study be a news channel to review for a statement they would make says:
The study evaluates the effect between aspartame intake and cancer, and they found a clear association between aspartame consumption and non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and leukemia.
I have read the study’s conclusion and the reason they withdrew the statement I suspect (as being sued by the very powerful drinks industry including Coca cola would be crippling) is that the results were inconclusive when they combined results from both sexes.
What do you use for sweetening stuff @lizz? Or do you just use sugar/go without? I tend to use sucralose or less sugar myself, but always keen to find better alternatives if there are any…
What volume of aspartame were the trial participants taking @Lizz? eg are we talking the equivalent of one diet coke a day or ten?
I don’t add artificial sweetener to anything, the only time I eat is when I have a fizzy drink if I’m out, and that’s pretty rare because tend to drink water.
We are talking more than ONE diet soda a day So if you are having Aspartame in more than one thing, then you should stop.
(Quote form article) “The health statistics for nearly 48,000 men and over 77,000 women over the age of 20 were reviewed for the featured study. They found that men who consumed more than one diet soda per day had an increased risk of developing multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Interestingly enough, this association was not found in women.
Leukemia was associated with diet soda intake in both sexes.
One hypothesis for the difference between the sexes is that men have a higher activity of the enzyme ADH, as I mentioned earlier, which metabolizes methanol and converts it to formaldehyde. More formaldehyde circulating in your blood would naturally have more opportunity to cause greater damage.”
(Humans are the only animals who do not have the protective mechanism to compensate for methanol toxicity. So evaluating methanol toxicity in animals is a flawed model for testing human toxicity. Even so, there are lots of papers proving that Aspartame is toxic to animals, the only other study which was done on humans, which did not show any harm, was only four and half months long).
Oh, sorry Annette – I haven’t really come across the need to sweeten anything – I don’t drink soft drinks as they either have sugar or artificial sweeteners which have always tasted disgusting to me. I’ve never sweetened tea or coffee, eat a virtually wholly organic diet and cook everything from scratch myself. I don’t have puddings or anything processed so avoid it easily. I eat yogurt which is sweetened with sugar and if I have anything sweetened I make sure it is with sugar. What do you need to sweeten?
I remember reading an American one years ago which is why American/European coke light tastes different to our diet coke to afficienadoes like me, they have to use a different sweetener as our ones banned through links to cancer.
I sweeten porridge (dont like it with sugar) and drink sugar free squash (which I’m guessing is sweetened with aspartame – I must have a look) but rarely drink diet fizzies – I usually drink soda water cos I can taste if its been adulterated. Apart from that, I tend not to sweeten things – so when I have a biscuit, it tastes very sweet! I’m not a big fan of the taste of sweeteners, although I do find sucralose much better than the stuff we had when I was a kid.
I drink a reasonable amount of diet coke, which I see from the ingredients list has aspartame in it. I guess, therefore, terminal death is inevitable then. I was hoping for immortality.
Oh god Lizz I’ve been knocking back the old aspartame for the last 36 years I think in the end its a balance of “well do I inject for sugar or risk cancer or go without?” Life is to short to worry (I think worry is a great cancer contributor) you have to die of something! My auntie always says you die of a shortness of breath?
Lizz I agree I think death is terminal…
i think that as there was no sigar in our diet until very recently, and the rise of sweetened products is incredible ad to all our detriment health-wise diabetic or not, that it is better to try to do without both but I have nevr used sweetenr – I really do think they taste horrible and there is plenty of evidence that they are not good for you.
I’m afraid the old ‘you’ve got to die of something’ statement doesn’t wash with me – it sounds sensible enough, but when you look at it without the guilt of it being suggested that you are a fusspot then it really does seem just a way of burying your head in the sand. Cigarette smokers said/say it, people who drink too much, et al. Ok – you are alive and healthy this far – but perhaps you aren’t susceptible to its effects.