In reply to Dave Garnett:
> Aspartame on the other hand is less dangerous than the sugar it replaces according to all the evidence I've ever seen.
I haven't looked into it for ages - but there are many things to test aspartame against:
1) acute problems (e.g. the rat overdose)
2) chronic problems (much harder to test, who will want to eat aspartame for years and be monitored?)
2.1) indirect problems. E.g. apparently even tasting sweet things can release a small amount of insulin (
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17510492 ). On it's own - meh? But in a population, or over many years - this extra insulin could be bad. E.g. quoting from wikipedia:
Although some researchers have stated that aspartame contributes to weight gain, hunger and increase in appetite,[8][68] broad reviews and regulators conclude that aspartame has no appreciable effect on appetite.[8][38] - so yeah, this extra insulin, combined with the fact there is no glucose to bind (i.e. a double-effect) could make you fat (because whatever glucose [even if it was doing a real job] the insulin can scrounge up gets sequestered), and because the body expects sugar but gets nothing (and lost stuff from before) you get hungry. What happens if the body recalibrates so that sweet taste releases way less insulin? That's bad too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugar_substitute#Weight_gain
A systematic review concluded that there is a correlation between consumption of artificially sweetened beverages and weight gain in children, but that no clear causal link has been determined.[35] [36]
I don't know whether these effects are significant - but just wanted to say it's not as simple as poisoning some rats and saying it's okay to eat
Post edited at 21:47