Aspartame Is Safe

Even though I am not a fan of taking any sort of artificial ingredients in my daily diet, it turns out that majority of them are safe, in particular, aspartame. In case you guys do not know what aspartame is, it is a non-nutritive sweetener and it will most likely be found in any product that is sugar free. Aspartame is made up of two amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. It is 200 times sweeter than sucrose. In my mind, I feel that consuming an artificial substitute will always worse than the actual food. I feel that drinking coke is much healthier than drinking diet coke. However, I have zero evidence to support my hypothesis, just as all the people on the internet who claim that aspartame will lead to many detrimental illnesses. If you search aspartame on Google, I am willing to bet that majority of the links you will find will lead to undocumented claims of the dangers of aspartame. There are several anti-aspartame critics who blog about its dangers with zero evidence. They claim that aspartame, at normal amounts of consumption, will lead to multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus, methanol toxicity, blindness, spasms, shooting pains, seizures, headaches, depression, anxiety, memory loss, birth defects and death. However, their claims are unjustified.

The only studies that have supported the dangers of aspartame are the Ramazzini studies. They have concluded that aspartame causes malignancies in rats and would be a potential carcinogen in humans, even at normal doses. Despite their findings, the FDA discredited their research for a numerous amount of flaws in their research such as comparing cancer rates of older aspartame-consuming rats to younger control rats, unspecified composition of the rats’ diets and method of adding aspartame, unspecified aspartame storage conditions, lack of animal randomization, overcrowding and a high incidence of possibly carcinogenic infections and the U.S. National Toxicology Program's finding that the European Ramazzini Foundation had misdiagnosed hyperplasias as malignancies. However many anti aspartame activists still hold these studies to be true and the FDA’s studies to be false. This is despite the fact that aspartame has been the most rigorously studied food in their history. Aspartame was approved by experts in the United Nations of Food and Agriculture and the World Health Organization, as well as regulatory agencies in more than 100 other countries. In addition, more than 100 studies were conducted in animals and humans, including adults, children, lactating women, people with diabetes, obesity and special genetic conditions. Until a proper study is conducted that proves the dangers of aspartame, aspartame is safe.

I am open to any arguments stating the dangers of aspartame and may be willing to change my mind if you guys can show me proper sources of evidence.