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Ask Dr. Sue
ASPARTAME (NUTRASWEET) REACTION
Dear Dr. Sue,
I enjoyed your informative and detailed article in the
Daily News on infant diarrhea. I've made copies to
give to friends with babies.
I was sorry, however, that you recommended "nutrasweet"
as a sweetener. I have a 10 year history of
unexplained illnesses, undiagnosed. When I read
some articles on aspartame I realized that many of my
symptoms were those discussed in the articles. I
was so ill at times (after consuming aspartame-diet soft
drinks) I felt I would die. After I eliminated
aspartame, my mystery illnesses stopped.
Apparently, some people can use this product
with no adverse effects, but some of my co-workers have
suffered some of the symptoms described in this article.
I hope you will research this artificial sweetener
thoroughly before continuing to recommend it to parents
for their infants.
"A concerned nurse"
Dear Concerned Nurse,
You raise an important point that
deserves discussion. Although aspartame has been
approved by the Food and Drug Administration and has
been widely studied and declared safe by a number of
investigating bodies, there certainly have been other
substances previously held to be safe that were later
found not to be (saccharin comes to mind). I will
summarize the available information about
aspartame, both the "official" line and the "doubters."
1. Aspartame has been more widely tested than any other
food or additive. Several very important
organizations feel that it is safe, including the FDA,
the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic
Association, the Epilepsy Institute, and the Joint
Expert Committee on Food Additives of the U.N. Food and
Agricultural Organization and World Health Organization.
Some independent investigators are concerned that the
studies that were done were biased or even falsified.
Independent studies have sometimes raised concerns that
many feel were not properly
addressed before aspartame was approved for use.
2. The official line is that aspartame is made up of
ingredients that are totally natural and are handled in
the body just like those same ingredients when they
appear in food. The components
of aspartame are two amino acids, aspartic acid and
phenylalanine, and a small amount of methanol. Concerned
scientists insist, however, that because these products
are consumed in an unnatural
way, they are not actually handled the way their natural
counterparts would be in the body. Amino acids,
such as the two in aspartame, usually come bound in
proteins, so that they are absorbed slowly. There
have been studies that have shown that phenylalanine can
accumulate in the blood (and brain) of certain normal
people after aspartame ingestion. (People with
phenylketonuria are stated to be the only ones at risk
of having this happen.) Methanol, too, occurs
differently in foods where it appears naturally.
Methanol is itself a poison (wood alcohol). It
occurs in foods, frequently at significantly higher
levels than even high levels of aspartame use would
provide. However, when it occurs in foods, it is usually
accompanied by ethanol in even greater amounts.
Ethanol is the antidote to methanol poisoning!
Increased amounts of free methanol are released when
aspartame is heated, so cooked foods could be worse than
those consumed cold. Interestingly, humans are much more
sensitive to the toxicity of methanol than other
animals, so animal studies cannot accurately predict the
risk in humans.
3. Repeated studies produced by respected investigators
and accepted for publication in highly reputable
journals have shown no connection between aspartame and
seizures, weight gain, body
temperature, brain development or function, hormones or
enzymes, brain tumors or other cancers, birth defect,
Parkinson's disease, allergic reactions, blood pressure,
or metabolism of carbohydrates and fats.
Other independent researchers HAVE found a connection
between multiple sclerosis, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease),
memory loss, hormonal problems, hearing loss, seizures,
Alzheimer's disease,
hypoglycemia, AIDS dementia, headaches, nausea,
abdominal pains, vision problems, mood disorders,
behavior and birth defects.
4. How much aspartame are our children actually
consuming? The Acceptable Daily Intake set by the FDA
for aspartame is 50 mg per kilogram of body weight.
The average American has been
reported to consume only about 2 percent of that amount,
with heavy users taking in about 4 to 7 % of the
acceptable amount. Since children are smaller in
size, they consume proportionately
more in relation to their weight: heavy users are felt
to take in 4 to 16 percent of the "ADI."
Other studies have shown that children can consume more
than the ADI on an ongoing basis (and that problems can
occur with levels much lower than the ADI, particularly
with ongoing use.)
5. The FDA feels that aspartame is safe for all groups
of people except those with phenylketonuria. This
includes pregnant women and children. A task force
from the American Academy of
Pediatrics agreed that the use of aspartame during
pregnancy posed no risk for the fetus. However,
few pediatricians would encourage the ONGOING use of
aspartame containing products for
the average child, due to continuing questions about its
safety. Few pediatricians feel that pop and
koolaid have any place in the diet of a child anyway,
and these are the most common aspartame
containing products that children consume.
It would be prudent for parents to avoid buying the
other aspartame-containing products that are available
(including instant breakfast, breath mints, cereals,
gum, cocoa mix, frozen desserts,
jello, vitamins etc.). If your child has diabetes,
though, discuss the aspartame issue with your
pediatrician or endocrinologist: any theoretical
concerns about aspartame are outweighed by the
known risks of uncontrolled diabetes! I still
stand by my recommendation that if your child has
significant vomiting and diarrhea, and refuses to take
all oral rehydration solutions, adding nutrasweet
sweetened koolaid to the solution is a reasonable way to
mask its saltiness, and that limited exposure to
nutrasweet for four or five days two or three times a
year is probably preferable to a hospital stay for I.V.
fluids.
 
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