Aspartame Not to Be Probed By FDA, For Now
The popular and widely used artifical sweetener Aspartame, has avoided FDA investigation at the urging of several health professionals as well as a scientific research firm in Italy that headed the latest study on rat consumption of the sweetener with no calories, finding it’s intake increased the risk of certain types of cancers including lymphoma and breast cancer.
Aspartame is the sweetener used in Nutrasweet, which is sold as Equal in packages people used to sweeten drinks and is widely used in soft drinks as well as an artificial sweetener that serves as a low cal alternative to real sugar, which is high in calories and impacts our blood sugar in a different way.
The study done in Italy was done over a course of several years on rats that were not killed in the study, but rather were allowed to live their life naturally until they died. The (poor) rats were given high doses of aspartame, in fact much higher than the current recommended cap given for human consumption, and when they died, a high amount of cancers were caught, leading to the hypothesis that aspartame increases the likelihood of cancer enough to warrent further research.
One professional goes so far as to say stop buying the stuff until further research is done, which he was hoping would be sanctioned by the FDA, who is responsible for keeping overtly harmful substances off store shelves which are labeled as foods, but that is not going to happen. The FDA released a statement to the effect that they do not believe the newest study shows imminent danger, and therefore they do not feel the urgency to investigate this product is there, especially since the amount being consumed by the rats in the study was higher than what most average people would consume of the stuff per day.
I like aspartame, and I love Diet Coke, which I believe is one of the soft drinks that contains the artificial sweetener, but I don’t drink it every day, and I rarely if ever will drink more than one soda per day of any sort, so I’m thinking people like me shouldn’t worry too much, but who knows, this stuff could be toxic over time - we just don’t know. In the meantime, I’d stick to all natural, unaltered sweeteners like Stevia folks. Wonder if this stuff is in sugar free gums too?
