I know I will get a number of people telling me that I am going to die and that Aspartame causes Rats to grow tumors the size of pumpkins and that I am a fool. I have been drinking diet drinks now for six months and recently a friend sent me an article about how it was going to kill me. Well having been raised by two Ph D's one in Chemistry and the other in Physics I did as they always told me to and investigated if the claims were based on real science. My conclusion after two days of worrying and researching is that it's about as harmfully as my 99 year old grandmother. AT BEST it MAY cause some people to get headaches.
I was skeptical about this claim but the idea of a tumor growing in my head was enough to get me to research the problem and check out BOTH sides with as much detail as possible. I literally found hundreds of websites, some telling me it was deadly and would cause cancer and head tumors and blindness and so on and so fourth. It's funny but I kept seeing the same names pop up in all these websites. It's like ten or twelve fringe scientists or for that matter just regular doctors armed with absolutely NO study or published journal put together this scare and now hundreds of websites use these same fringe scientists as references.
I discovered that the following organizations think it's totally safe:
The American Medical Association Council on Scientific Affairs, the
American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association, the
American Cancer Society, The Epilepsy Institute, the US Food and Drug
Administration, and the US Centers for Disease Control.
Of course I am sure some of you think they are all corrupt and evil and people involved in all these health organizations really want you all dead. Give me a break! And the Holocaust never happened. A very large number of well-known and well-respected medical organizations and health professionals have publicly stated that aspartame is safe. Others disagree but you wont see their findings in the American Medical Journal or any other reputable Journal.
In my opinion the most unbiased websites give the best summary of all this. The best website I could find which really sums it all up is the following.
http://netsquirrel.com/combatkit/nutrasweet.htmlHere are a few other good ones:
http://www.snopes.com/toxins/aspartame.asphttp://urbanlegends.about.com/library/blasp.htmhttp://www.junkscience.com/news/nutrasweet.htmlLets face it probably a half billion people have been drinking this stuff for 20 years. If it were really that bad half the country would be dead by now. Almost EVERYONE I know drinks diet sodas like water and they have been doing it for years and not one has claimed it was killing them. The lawyers would be lining up if their were any substance to this but their simply isn't. Sorry but the stuff is as safe as Aspirin. Buy the way did you know Aspirin was deadly
http://www.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/01/23/painkiller.risks.ap/I bet you can find that basically everything is deadly some place on the Internet.