The Scourge of Aspartame...

‘Aspartame is really bad for you’.  ‘You should avoid foods with aspartame in them’.  These appear to be the take-home messages from a variety of websites that state clearly that they think this compound is bad for human health.  They claim that this compound is the cause of a plethora of illnesses from passing headaches to Gulf Warsyndrome and cancer of the brain.  Needless to say they are not the BBC News website (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news) or the latest issue of The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com).  What is from The Lancet are a variety of articles that make interesting reading on the subject. 

            It is well known that aspartame breaks down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol.  Aspartic acid and phenylalanine are both amino acids and are thus a necessary constituent of the proteinous parts of our bodies.  Methanol is not required in our diet and is toxic in higher doses, however Alan Meyers, of the Boston Medical Centre, did a basic calculation with respect to the products of the breakdown of aspartame (PDF here for subscribers).  Here, he notes that there is approximately twice as much methanol in the equivalent volume of fruit juice as there is in a soft drink containing aspartame.  As one might expect, Harriet Butchko, a representative from NutraSweet, also put forward strong evidence that Aspartame is not the known cause of brain cancers (PDF here for subscribers) in response to a claim that it is mutagen.  ‘Mutagen’ sounds like something out of Red Dwarf but is deadly serious – literally.  Mutagens cause mutations (these scientists are cunning with their words, as you can see).  Mutations are the name given to damage to strands of DNA.  This damage can cause changes to the ‘blue prints’ that our cells rely upon to make themselves.  Mutations can lead to cancers.  However, the evidence to date suggests that aspartame and its metabolic products are not mutagenic. 

          This is a big relief all round, given the number and types of foods that we would have to avoid if we wanted to avoid this compound.  What the argument reminds me of, and in particular the sort of arguments put forward by those trying to sell books on the subject (PDF here for subscribers) is why we buy into these ideas – intellectually if we believe it, and financially if we buy the book.  Is it sensational excitement?  This sells newspapers, and so we know it exists by that token of course.  I think it is partly this, but I also think it has much to do with human nature and how we have evolved.  A recent BBC series about Homo sapiens, that was almost completely scientifically sound, included episodes on our struggle against similar human species, namely Homo Erectus (iPlayer video here  for viewers in the UK, for a limited time), and Neanderthals (iPlayer video here, again for UK views for a limited time) .  Of course we cannot be sure what these other species were like precisely, but one way or another we outdid them.  Although they still haunt us: between 1-4% of our genome (the ‘full set’ of DNA that makes up a species) is Neanderthal.  Is one of those reasons we survived and they did not the fact that we are a bit more nervous than the others were?  We panic, we can imagine a danger to be imminent, in order to protect ourselves from things that could hurt us?  Perhaps aspartame is one of those things.  Perhaps climate change is too (the last decade has seen the six warmest years on record but the industrial-scale release of carbon that has been happening for hundreds of years has failed to produce Armageddon), or the perils of travel by railway (Spartacus link here). 

Either way, we are still here, and one day extinction will occur, whether or not we put sugar in our tea.