The downside of Lent is, of course, giving up something that you love. It's about the sacrifice, I heard today at Mass; the denying of temptation. Again, this year I have given up peanut butter. This makes two years in a row. Truthfully, it's much easier this year than it was last year. Last year was brutal. For that reason, I have also given up my caffeinated diet soda. This is truly terrible. Since I'm currently trying to balance work, school, and family, and am with child, I can't indulge in any super-fun vices, so Diet Coke it is. That's all I've got. And now I've taken it away...from myself. I was doing a little reasearch tonight on the dangers of diet soft drinks, as to perhaps dissuade myself from craving them so badly. I have come up with a collection of information, listed below. It's pretty interesting stuff, honestly. Does it make me want to swear it off forever? Not even close.
One of the active ingredients in Diet Coke is aspartame, better known as NutraSweet, which was approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration about 20 years ago, paving the way for the diet soda boom.
In the years since, a number of people have begun to attack NutraSweet, claiming that aspartame can be broken down into three amino acid components, aspartate, phenylalanine, and methanol. All three can be broken down into smaller entities, called metabolites, which can be toxic. For example, methanol, or wood alcohol, can spontaneously become formaldehyde, while phenylalanine can decompose into diketopiperazine, which is a carcinogen.
In fact, conspiracy theorists credit NutraSweet for causing everything from multiple sclerosis to Gulf War syndrome, but say that "aspartame disease" is what hits most people. Symptoms of aspartame disease include headaches and dizziness … and about a billion other things. In February 1994, the Department of Heath released a list of 92 symptoms that occurred when people had an adverse reaction to NutraSweet, one of which was death.
The fine folks at AspartameKills.com are at the forefront of this expose. While their Website explains the horrors of aspartame in greater detail, their essential view is that Donald Rumsfeld and the NutraSweet people ignored the potential health risks to push approval of their wondrous sweetener. While some of what's on AspartameKills.com is notable and perhaps convincing, their tendency to dismiss government officials as Nazis makes them difficult to trust.
Now, according to a study by the NutraSweet folks, "the safety of aspartame and its metabolic constituents was established through extensive toxicology studies in laboratory animals, using much greater doses than people could possibly consume." Of course, as the tobacco industry has shown us, corporations with billion dollar products have trouble accepting that their products may be unhealthy. Can't trust NutraSweet either.
Some independent studies appear to show that aspartame is safe, though. The fine folks at the University of Minnesota's school of public health studied the effects of long-term, hard-core aspartame use in 108 volunteers. In the study, every day for 24 weeks, half of the subjects were given a placebo and the other half were given the same amount of aspartame found in 10 liters of Diet Coke. The Minnesotan researchers discovered no differences between the two groups.
Then again, a story from Oxygen magazine on the dangers of aspartame poisoning says that 90% of the independent studies conclude that it's dangerous. Conspiracy theorists note that the National Soft Drink Association initially opposed the approval of aspartame and say the government won't listen to their concerns.
All of this begs the question: Is it safe to be addicted to Diet Coke?
We have no idea. All we know is it tastes great with heroin.
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