Pros And Cons Of Aspartame

Diet sodas, cereals, sugar-free cough drops all have something in common—they contain aspartame. Discovered in 1965 by James. M. Schlatter, aspartame is the most common and popular food additive in the United States, making it the most consumed sweetener . This ingredient is 200 times sweeter than regular sugar, allowing people to use less of the product, which makes aspartame a low calorie sweetener . Consequently, aspartame is found in reduced calorie foods and used as a sugar free sweetener in products like Equal, NutraTaste, and Benevia . Currently aspartame is listed in over 6,000 products . Despite this products popularity, some scientists and consumers believe that although the product has been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) aspartame is unsafe and correlated to diseases like brain tumors, lymphoma, cancer, depression, and obesity . In addition, aspartame is …show more content…
However, aspartame is still found in thousands of products on the shelves of supermarket stores. This paper studies the main arguments on both sides of the controversy surrounding aspartame and two recent safety studies; ultimately seeks to illuminate the truth on the safety of aspartame in humans. Before one can study the main arguments for and against the use of aspartame, general information regarding the synthetic nonnutritive sweetener should be known. Aspartame is hydrolyzed into three metabolites: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol . Aspartic acid is present in all consumed proteins and used, in the human body, to make other substances such as energy or fat . Too much aspartic acid has been linked to diseases: Epilepsy, strokes, and Lou Gehrig’s disease . Phenylalanine, like aspartic acid is an amino acid and present in all proteins; however, unlike aspartic acid, phenylalanine cannot be made from other substances in human’s bodies . Therefore, one’s level of phenylalanine is received