Popular Conditions & Diets
Aspartame is a symbol of modern food culture’s desire for pleasure without consequence. As evidence continues to evolve, reducing reliance on artificial sweeteners, and recalibrating our relationship with sweetness itself, may be a smarter long-term strategy than endlessly debating where the line of “safe enough” lies.
You might see it as NutraSweet, SugarTwin, or Equal. In soda, it goes by the antiquated codename Diet. Whatever its label, it’s aspartame - and it becomes more outrageously popular every day.
First discovered in 1965 and approved for use in soft drinks in 1983, there is nothing new about this artificial sweetener that appears in over 6,000 products.
However, more recent concerns about sugar consumption, and policies to limit its impact, have driven the perpetual skyrocketing of aspartame consumption which seems to show no signs of slowing down. It’s not surprising; as sugar gets more vilified in popular consciousness and legislative policies, the increase in natural and synthetic substitutes has risen.
Aspartame, an industry surfer with decades of experience, is very much riding that wave. It’s logical to predict that global consumption will only explode further as more international markets move away from sugar. In the UK, Diet Coke sales those of regular Coke in 2018, a testament to shifting cultural tides and the epic scale of aspartame intake across the globe.
Perhaps aspartame was one of the earliest raindrops of the "pleasure without consequences” storm that we take for granted now, as we sip on a decaffeinated, dairy-free, sugar-free latte. We are undeniably living in the ultimate era of having your cake and eating it too.
Anyone naturally curious to get to the bottom of the issue will immediately encounter a polarized bifurcation of heated opinions, the whole issue made murky by partisan wellness politics. While the ‘crunchy’ world of natural health aficionados is predictably and categorically biased against synthetic chemicals and food additives, there is a competing edifice of industry-associated science dedicated to repeating the mantra that Aspartame has been unambiguously proven safe.
It’s worth pointing out that the best case against the safety of aspartame is not to be found on blogs, opinion pieces, or social media, but in peer-reviewed journals. For anyone who cares to look, there is an abundance of research on potential harms, including several human studies, connecting aspartame to seizures (1, 2), brain, cognitive and behavioural changes (1, , ), headaches and migraines (, , , ), unfavourable changes in the gut microbiome (, , , ), neurochemical and hormonal imbalances (, , ), congenital disorders (, , ) and more.
It’s worth pointing out that safe and beneficial are not the same thing. If the pro-aspartame voices are 100 per cent right, and it does not cause the wide range of negative consequences reported in decades of research, diet soda drinkers may be able to rejoice that potential harms are nothing but empty hysteria. It’s FDA approved and very well studied, after all.
Aspartame Products. Aspartame: Separating Fact From Fiction. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://aspartame.org/aspartame-products/#.VNO3MFXF_w4 Benefits of Aspartame. Aspartame: Separating Fact From Fiction. (n.d.). Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://aspartame.org/benefits-of-aspartame/
Butchko, H. H., Stargel, W. W., Comer, C. P., Mayhew, D. A., Benninger, C., Blackburn, G. L., de Sonneville, L. M. J., Geha, R. S., Hertelendy, Z., Koestner, A., Leon, A. S., Liepa, G. U., McMartin, K. E., Mendenhall, C. L., Munro, I. C., Novotny, E. J., Renwick, A. G., Schiffman, S. S., Schomer, D. L., … Trefz, F. K. (2002). Aspartame: Review of safety. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology, 35(2). https://doi.org/10.1006/rtph.2002.1542
The dawn of the world’s favourite sucrose replacement in the 1980s must have seemed almost too good to be true. All the sweetness, with essentially zero calories?
So, what’s the catch?
Depending on who you talk to, there isn’t one. Especially when the alternative, that boogeyman white sugar, connotes unwanted weight gain, diabetes, and compromised immunity. Indeed, advocacy websites such as aspartame.org have whole pages dedicated to the benefits of aspartame, which on cursory inspection are really just the benefits of avoiding sugar.
One such review, co-authored by NutraSweet representatives, found that not only is the sweetener fully in line with healthy living, but in its analysis of available published literature, concluded that “there are no unresolved questions regarding its safety under conditions of intended use.” In other words, we know everything there is to know, and we can all just stop talking about this. Case closed.
And yet, the conversation seems to stubbornly continue, as more science emerges year after year with much less definitive conclusions. Pundits on both sides of the aspartame infinity war agree that a shortage of science isn’t the issue; it’s not a lack of data, but of consensus on what it all means.
It was actually due to a concern over brain tumours in rats that caused the FDA to initially withhold approval of the sweetener. That was until a collaboration between Donald Rumsfeld and Ronald Reagan led to reapplication and approval in 1981, very shortly after Reagan’s inauguration. At that time, Rumsfeld was both the CEO of G.D. Searle, the Chicago pharmaceutical company that discovered aspartame, and a member of Reagan’s transition team. The FDA approval was transformative for Searle’s bottom line, and under Rumsfeld’s stewardship the company posted a record 120 million dollar profit in 1982.
If, on the other hand, aspartame critics are even partially right, there may be a lot more at stake. But since no one, anywhere, is making any real argument for aspartame’s benefit, apart from the logical non-sequitur of pointing to harms of sugar and saying “it’s not that,” then one may be justified in asking why anyone really needs aspartame in their life at all. If our primary line of questioning is whether or not it’s really that bad for you, we are already tacitly admitting that there is nothing to gain, and only, at best, a debatable degree of loss.
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Choudhary, A. K., & Pretorius, E. (2017). Revisiting the safety of Aspartame. Nutrition Reviews, 75(9), 718–730. https://doi.org/10.1093/nutrit/nux035
Choudhary, A. K., & Lee, Y. Y. (2018). Neurophysiological symptoms and aspartame: What is the connection?. Nutritional neuroscience, 21(5), 306–316. https://doi.org/10.1080/1028415X.2017.1288340
Choudhary, A. K., & Lee, Y. Y. (2018). The debate over neurotransmitter interaction in aspartame usage. Journal of clinical neuroscience : official journal of the Neurosurgical Society of Australasia, 56, 7–15. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocn.2018.06.043
Czarnecka, K., Pilarz, A., Rogut, A., Maj, P., Szymańska, J., Olejnik, Ł., & Szymański, P. (2021). Aspartame—true or false? narrative review of safety analysis of general use in products. Nutrients, 13(6), 1957. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13061957
Fleming, M. (2018, July 15). Diet Coke Sales Overtake Classic Coke as the soft drinks giant navigates the sugar tax. Marketing Week. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.marketingweek.com/diet-coke-sales-overtake-classic-coca-cola/
Gennet, R. (2011, May 25). Donald Rumsfeld and the strange history of Aspartame. HuffPost. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-rumsfeld-and-the-s_b_805581
Humphries, P., Pretorius, E., & Naudé, H. (2007, August 8). Direct and indirect cellular effects of aspartame on the brain. Nature News. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/1602866
Koehler, S. M., & Glaros, A. (1988, February). The effect of aspartame on migraine headache. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2524.1988.hed2801010.x
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1 - Humphries, P., Pretorius, E., & Naudé, H. (2007, August 8). Direct and indirect cellular effects of aspartame on the brain. Nature News. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://www.nature.com/articles/1602866
2 - Van den Eeden, S. K., Koepsell, T. D., Longstreth, W. T., Jr, van Belle, G., Daling, J. R., & McKnight, B. (1994). Aspartame ingestion and headaches: a randomized crossover trial. Neurology, 44(10), 1787–1793. https://doi.org/10.1212/wnl.44.10.1787
3 - Lipton, R. B., Newman, L. C., Cohen, J. S., & Solomon, S. (1989). Aspartame as a Dietary Trigger of Headache. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1526-4610.1989.hed2902090.x
4 - Koehler, S. M., & Glaros, A. (1988, February). The effect of aspartame on migraine headache. Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain. Retrieved March 3, 2023, from https://headachejournal.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1365-2524.1988.hed2801010.x
