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The controversy surrounding one of the world’s most popular artificial sweeteners, aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), continues some 30 years after the chemical was rammed through the regulatory process by pharmaceutical interests, despite its well-documented dangers. And yet to this very day, many people are still unaware of the chemical sweetener’s sordid history, not to mention what aspartame is actually made from and how it affects the body and brain.
To many, aspartame is just another FDA-approved sugar alternative that has to be safe, otherwise it wouldn’t be on the market. But the truth about aspartame is much more sinister, including how the chemical sweetener gained market approval http://www.fda.gov. And there’s so much more to the aspartame story that you’ve probably never heard before, thanks to government collusion with powerful drug interests.
1) Aspartame is converted by the body into formaldehyde, a cancer-causing chemical. Composed of three unique compounds, aspartame is a synergistically toxic chemical, meaning the sum of its individual parts is exponentially more toxic than each one by itself. And yet even in isolation, the three main constituents found in aspartame — aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol — are idiosyncratically toxic in their own right.
Free methanol in particular is highly toxic, converting first into formaldehyde and then into formic acid upon consumption. Unlike the methanol found in alcoholic beverages and various fruits and vegetables, the methanol produced by aspartame is not accompanied by ethanol, which acts as a protector against methanol poisoning. By itself, methanol embalms living tissues and damages DNA, and can cause lymphoma, leukemia, and other forms of cancer.
2) Aspartame causes obesity and metabolic syndrome. Artificial sweeteners are typically viewed as a safe alternative to sugar, which many people now recognize as a cause of weight gain and metabolic disorders like diabetes when consumed in excess. But a number of scientific studies have found that chemicals like aspartame are perhaps even more damaging, as they promote weight gain in ways unrelated to caloric intake.
A study published in the journal
Appetite back in 2013 found that compared to sucrose, a form of sugar, aspartame is actually worse in terms of promoting weight gain. Similar research published in the
Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine (YJBM) found that aspartame alters the body’s natural production of hormones, increasing both appetite and sugar cravings.