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  • The big debate of artificial sweeteners have never been as big as it is today.

  • Artificial sweeteners have been deemed dangerous for your health after heavy fear-mongering

  • and links to problems ranging from headaches to cancer.

  • And the one artificial sweetener that has taken the most assault is aspartame.

  • The people that have already heard of aspartame generally have a bad opinion of aspartame.

  • For those of you that never heard of it, well if you ever drank a diet soda, you most certainly

  • have consumed aspartame as well.

  • So what exactly is so wrong with it?

  • Let's look at what happens to aspartame within the body.

  • Aspartame is broken down to phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol.

  • Outside of people with a rare genetic disorder known as phenylketonuria, phenylalanine and

  • aspartic acid are generally safe to consume, since they're amino acids that exist in pretty

  • much any protein source.

  • But the big bad wolf of these three is methanol.

  • Methanol can definitely be toxic for your body in very high amounts because your body

  • converts methanol into a proven dangerous compound known as formaldehyde.

  • Many anti-aspartame folks will tell you to avoid aspartame exactly for this reason.

  • But the studies unfortunately doesn't back it up.

  • Reason being is because the amount of methanol from aspartame consumption, is, well, extremely

  • small.

  • And at such small doses, the added methanol into the body simply doesn't do anything to

  • the body.

  • In fact, your body produces formaldehyde every single day in amounts thousands of times greater

  • than you can get from aspartame.

  • It's just simply not enough.

  • And on top of that, one study has subjects consuming upwards 200 milligrams of aspartame

  • per kilogram of bodyweight, which is 40 times greater than the average American daily consumption.

  • Yet, still nothing.

  • No methanol poisoning nor changes in formaldehyde levels in the body.

  • As far as causing cancer, well, the American Cancer Society themselves have looked at studies

  • containing as much 500,000 adults and found that there's simply no strong link between

  • cancer and aspartame.

  • Another cause for concern is causing weight gain.

  • People drink diet sodas so they can lose weight, but wouldn't it be pretty darn... crappy if

  • that same diet soda actually make them gain weight?

  • Well, good thing is that it doesn't.

  • No causative studies has ever shown artificial sweeteners causing weight gain.

  • One 6-month long study even showed that substituting regulars soda with diet soda is as effective

  • as substituting with water in terms of losing weight.

  • And in case you're wondering, aspartame does not spike insulin levels in healthy individuals

  • as well as diabetics.

  • But... you've probably seen people that drink diet soda and notice they're... pretty big.

  • Well, the real problem might be that they just under-estimate how many calories they're

  • consuming.

  • By drinking diet soda, they think the zero calories means they can eat MORE, and chances

  • are they do and eat way too much more.

  • This explains the so-called "link" between obesity and diet soda when in fact it's not

  • the diet soda causing the weight gain, but more so bad eating habits associated with

  • the people that do drink diet soda.

  • So it's the person's habits that link to obesity and NOT the diet soda.

  • In terms of headaches, the studies are quite inconclusive.

  • Trying to link headaches to anything is already a challenge, since many times even a placebo

  • can have high returns in headache correlations.

  • Headache studies on aspartame share very similar correlations as a placebo, so it's hard to

  • say for sure, and you're best just using your own judgment in this matter.

  • So the studies are there, and it's clear that the fear of artificial sweeteners, especially

  • aspartame, just doesn't hold up.

  • The only concern that you can definitely have for diet sodas is that, just like regular

  • soda, it's gonna rot your teeth.

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  • Thanks for watching and please like and subscribe.

The big debate of artificial sweeteners have never been as big as it is today.

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