Re: Aspartame - Medical faculty - Norway

[Guest guest]

I am not backing Aspartame at all. It is not a natural product and is probably best avoided simply due to that fact. However, if you read the other side of this argument and know a little about amino acids, you will find that the points in these articles have been clearly debunked. I'm curious who these 'experts' really are and where these reports are really coming from. Aspartic acid is an amino acid that occurs naturally in many foods. Yes, it is an excitotoxin, but so are a couple of other natural amino acids. An excitotoxin is not some kind of toxic artificial element. It is a naturally occuring element of amino acids, which are simply put, protein. Without excitotoxins, we would be flat lined in the brain. They are what keeps our minds active and working. Yes, over stimulation by any natural or chemical excitoxin is bad, when present without the offsetting amino acids. However, there is another amino acid that is produced by our systems automatically every time we ingest an excitoxic amino acid - GABA. GABA controls the excitotoxins and safeguards us from the over stimulation by them. Unless, we ingest far more aspartic acid than is possible from Aspartame, GABA will do it's part in this natural balancing act.

Much more doubtful about the ingredients in Aspartame, is ethanol. That is the part that we should examine, not aspartic acid. But, even so, the ethanol in Aspartame is less in amount than the ethanol produced by ingesting a glass of fruit juice. The trouble with these 'scientific' papers we see on aspartame, is that they make natural elements that our bodies are used to dealing with all the time, appear to be toxic elements. Granted, they are not natural ingredients that are put into aspartame, but they are synthetic elements, created chemically and mixed together to form aspartame. But, that is also what most vitamins are too. The aspartic acid contained in aspartame is the same aspartic acid you get in an amino acid vitamin supplement. If aspartame should be 'outlawed' due to it's containing aspartic acid, so should multi amino acid supplements. This all just doesn't make scientific sense. Like I said, I would be much more worried about the ethanol than the aspartic acid, since our systems are designed to handle aspartic acid and do every day in people who ingest certain protein foods. And the ethanol is not created in aspartame from a food we have eaten, like it is in fruit, but our bodies are still designed to handle it. On the other hand, I am not worried about aspartame. (I don't routinely ingest it, because it is not a natural food, but I don't run in hysteria from it either, like these reports would like one to do.) I believe these reports may be falsely produced by Betty i, who also maintained that she spoke in front of the World Environmental Council. She most certainly did not. That organization has never heard of her. That whole thing has been debunked and is now part of netlore archives and urban legends.

It's too bad that a product that is more than likely harmless has been purported to be something toxic to human beings, since there are many who cannot eat sugar and aspartame puts a little sweetness back into their lives. I don't know for fact that aspartame is harmless, anymore than I know for fact that spinach is harmless, but I do know for fact that Betty i is not to be trusted, because she has been proven to be a liar and a hysteria monger. And I wouldn't be surprised if she's behind these articles too.

Carol