Aspartame and Health Issues

Aspartame is the key ingredient found in artificial sweeteners. It is an odorless white powder that is soluble in water and alcohol.

Aspartame is approximately 160 to 220 times sweeter than sucrose and has acceptable flavor with no bitter aftertaste.

Scientists have found that aspartame is generally safe for most people to consume. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), has been intensively studied for its safety to ensure the safety of the food and drinks sold in the United States, approved aspartame in 1981 after extensive studies found that it was safe for use as a sweetener.

Since introduction in 1981, aspartame has become by far the most popular sweeter in virtually all canned and bottled diet soft drinks in the United State.

When aspartame was first developed, many people had concerns about whether it was safe. After all, it didn't have the track record of other natural ingredients that had been safely consumed for hundreds of years.

Rumors have spread for at least a decade, that aspartame is responsible for epidemic health problems.

Almost everyone has a sweet tooth, and kids are certainly no exception. Because excess sugar consumption has been linked to weight gain, tooth decay, and other health problems, many people reach for foods, drinks, and candy that contain artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame, which offer lots of flavor with fewer calories.

In 1996 the Food and Drug Administration published a list of 92 adverse aspartame reactions that included seizures, blindness, obesity, testicular, mammary and brain tumors; sex dysfunction and death acquired from consumers complaints.

The most common complaints about aspartame is that it causes severe headaches among sensitive individual.

Aspartame is one of the most popular man-made sweeteners on the market. It is used in beverages, chewing gum, breakfast cereals, and desserts. It is also available in packets of tabletop sweetener, like the kind typically offered by restaurants.

Although some people have alleged that aspartame is linked to birth defects and illnesses ranging from multiple sclerosis to Parkinson's disease, government authorities and medical groups throughout the world have evaluated aspartame and approved it as safe for human consumption.

Recent reviews of studies confirm that aspartame consumption is safe over the long term and is not associated with serous health effects.
Aspartame and Health Issues

History of Aspartame

In 1965, aspartame was discovered accidentally. Aspartame is made by joining two protein components, aspartic acid and phenylalanine and a small amount of methanol.

It was discovered by an organic chemist, James M. Schlatter working for G. D Searle & Company when he was testing new drugs for gastric ulcers and licked his fingers before picking up a piece of paper.

Initially he thought the taste was from sugar on a doughnut he had eaten that morning but then he realized he had washed his hands since eating the doughnut.

Aspartame tuned out not to be a good ulcer drug, but it has become a well received sweetener.

This discovery led to further work demonstrating the sweetness of number of various pipettes and amino acid derivatives.

Aspartame is marketed under the brand names NutraSweet and Equal. It was the third artificial sweetener indentified to achieve acceptance in the general market.

Eventually the compound was proved to be better tasting than many of the alternatives on the market, and it was safe thought that it would have an excellent chance of surviving rigorous toxicity testing.
History of Aspartame

Aspartame

Aspartame is produced from L-phenylalanine and extremely popular low calorie peptide used as a sweetener in many countries.

Chemically aspartame is L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester.

The taste profile of aspartame is similar to sucrose sweetness. The maximum use level in soft drinks within the European Union is 600 mg/L, which means that, it can be used as the sole sweetener in soft drinks.

Although it is caloric (4 Kcal/g), its sweetness relative to sucrose (180-200) makes it an attractive very low calorie sweetener.

Aspartame is the key ingredient found in artificial sweeteners such as NutraSweet and Equal and is used to sweeten diet drinks such as Diet Coke and diet Pepsi along with laterally hundreds of other products.

The use of this sweetener was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1981 after extensive testing, although there is still considerable controversy about its safety.
Aspartame

Aspartame

Aspartame
Aspartame is the common name for aspartyl-phenylalanine. It is combination of the two amino acids from which its name is derived.

First produced in 1969, it is required to be about 180 times sweeter than sucrose.

Like cyclamate, it was approved and later banned by FDA. Exhaustive evidence of its safety have been presented by animal testing and by definition of its metabolic fate in animals and humans, It was subsequently reinstated, as safe for use by the FDA.

Unlike saccharin and cyclamate, aspartame leaves no bitter aftertaste. It is quite expensive, about 200 times more so than sucrose, but as it is about 180 times sweeter than sucrose, its cost for obtaining a given unit of sweetness is not much more.
Aspartame

Aspartame

Aspartame’s attractiveness as a sweetener comes from the fact that it is approximately 180 times sweeter than sugar in typical concentrations without the high energy value of sugar.

While aspartame, like other peptides, has a caloric value of 4 kilocalories (17 kilojoules) per gram, the quantity of aspartame needed to produce a sweet taste is so small that its caloric contribution is negligible, which makes it a popular sweetener for those trying to avoid calories from sugar.

The taste of aspartame is not identical to that of sugar: aspartame’s sweetness has a slower onset and longer duration than sugar’s, and some consumers find it unappealing.

Blends of aspartame with acesulfame potassium are purported to have a more sugar-like taste, and to be more potent than either sweetener used alone.

Like many other peptides, aspartame may hydrolyze (break down) into its constituent amino acids under conditions of elevated temperature or high pH.

This makes aspartame undesirable as a baking sweetener, and prone to degradation in products hosting a high-pH, as required for a long shelf life. Aspartame’s stability under heating can be improved to some extent by encasing it in fats or in maltodextrin.

Aspartame’s stability when dissolved in water depends markedly on pH. At room temperature, it is most stable at pH 4.3, where its half-life is nearly 300 days. At pH 7, however, its half-life is only a few days. Most soft-drinks have a pH between 3 and 5, where aspartame is reasonably stable.

In products that may require a longer shelf life, such as syrups for fountain beverages, aspartame is sometimes blended with a more stable sweetener, such as saccharin.

In products such as powdered beverages, aspartame’s amino group can undergo a Maillard reaction with the aldehyde groups present in certain aroma compounds. The ensuing loss of both flavor and sweetness can be prevented by protecting the aldehyde as an acetal.