There are three main kinds of artificial sweeteners: aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin. They are chemically unrelated to each other, and the differences between them are way bigger than those between different natural sweeteners, like table sugar (sucrose) and fruit sugar (fructose.) The fact that they all have a similar effect on our bodies – tasting sweet – is almost coincidental in this light. To me, that’s why they’re interesting.

Equal and Nutrasweet are made of aspartame [asp-R-tame], which is a molecule made of two linked amino acids. Long chains of amino acids are called proteins, and many if not all proteins contain bits of aspartame in their chains. In other words, aspartame is a naturally occuring substance in the body, but it’s only present in very small amounts at any given time.

Once it’s inside the body, the two amino acids in aspartame are split apart (they react with water) and then used to make proteins that the body can use for rebuilding tissues, etc.

The problem with eating aspartame in large quantities is that some people are sensitive to one of its amino acids (phenylalanine.) They can tolerate the small amounts naturally present in their bodies, but can’t handle the flood of it that happens when they eat aspartame. These people are called “phenylketonurics.” This why Equal/Nutrasweet packages have that warning on them that says, “Phenylketonurics: Contains phenylalanine.” This condition is pretty rare, though.

I don’t think any other common problems have really been proven yet. This is not to discount anyone’s experience with it – as we all know, any substance in large enough quantites isn’t good for you. Theoretically you could die from drinking too much water (it would eventually deplete your body of the salts it needs to function.)

Splenda is made of sucralose[soo-kruh-lowce]. You’ve heard of glucose (“blood sugar,” right?) Well, sucralose is a type sugar, too, except that it – unlike naturally occuring sugars – has a few chlorine atoms replacing some the natural -OH groups in the molecule. It is a “chlorinated sugar.” It is not a naturally occuring substance.

As a chemist, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to be suspicious of putting things in our bodies which don’t occur in nature. But it’s also good to put that suspicion in perspective, based on the available research.

Sweet’N Low is made of saccharin [sack-uh-rin]. It is a not a naturally occuring substance (actually, it has a very strange chemical structure, completely unrelated to sugar.) It passes through the body undigested – that’s why Sweet’N Low is the only artificial sweetener that can claim it’s “calorie-free”… your body can’t use it for energy (calories are a unit of energy.)

There have been a lot of conflicting studies on the health effects of saccharin. Some studies show a link to cancer, and some don’t show any link at all. That’s why saccharin is still legal in the US – it’s not been proven to be hazardous. But this doesn’t mean that it is safe, it just means that what we’ve learned so far doesn’t show a clear danger.

Hopefully someone got something out of this post!

My stimulant drink of choice is yerba mate, brewed strong and mixed with equal parts hot soymilk, sweetened with lots of honey (amen, Kyso!) For those of you who haven’t heard of mate, it’s a leafy plant that grows in the tropics. In addition to caffeine, it also contains several other stimulant compounds, and most people report that the ‘high’ from mate is more mild and long-lasting than that from coffee/tea/cola, with less noticeable withdrawal effects like headache and ‘the shakes.’

I havent had diet soda (in huge amounts, i still chew stupid sugar free gum and a few diet cokes a year when someone fucks up an order at a restaurant) or medicine for the seizures in over 8 years, and theyve determined it was the high levels of aspertame and saccrin (sp?) that did it

fuck splenda, and fuck nutrisweet.

gimme sugar.

j train, i think those studies might be the ones done by “friendly” parties to soft drink corps. could be wrong, though…

And in what honey-using situation would you not use a fuckload of honey? I can’t think of anything I use honey on that wouldn’t be improved by the addition of more honey.

Then a friend casually mentioned the one mood-related aspartame study performed to date, a study that found such strong connections between aspartame and increased depression (particularly if you have a family history) that they had to stop the study.

I found a few others (searching PubMed for “aspartame” and “mood”). One study of men, one of college-aged women, and one of children (all healthy) showed no changes in mood with aspartame compared to placebo. I haven’t read the whole studies to see how good they are, though.

The study mentioned in your article wasn’t horrible, but I don’t think you can take much from the study being stopped. The result was statistically significant, but that doesn’t mean that there’s no chance the results were due to chance, just that the odds were against it. With n=13, that’s not too unlikely.

None of that is to say that reducing or eliminating Diet Coke wouldn’t be a good thing, but the studies just don’t show much evidence of harm.

But seriously, there are all kinds of good reasons to cut Coke out of your diet, starting with human rights abuses in Colombia. The company is pretty much pure evil.