Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with aspartame

But they're both sugary and delicious!

pised — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:13:14 -0800

Understanding that both are bad for you, which one is worse: high-fructose corn syrup or aspartame?

FYI: Dubble Bubble will not be marked as best answer.

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 08:11:17 -0800

Aspartame-free chewing gum? Posting on behalf of my wife, who is allergic to aspartame. What's out there now that even Doublemint and Juicy Fruit are spiked with the nasty stuff? Googling gave me this, which gives me the V!@G4A heebie-jeebies. Is there anything based on sucralose? Or even something similar to the original Wrigley's mint-flavored chewing gums?

What else can I drink all day without gaining weight?

cgg — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 11:34:42 -0800

Aspartame-free low-calorie beverage suggestions needed. Does such a thing even exist? Recently I've cut out all aspartame from my diet, as it aggravates my headaches. Previously, I'd had a 4 or 5 Coke Zero a day habit, which upgraded a similar Diet Coke addiction. I sit at a desk all day, and I need to have something (preferably cold) to drink at my desk at all times. (Otherwise, I'll just end up snacking instead). Trouble is, I'm now completely sick of water. Obviously, regular soft drinks are out, and even that quantity of juice has way too many calories. Is there anything else out there I can drink? I've tried (sweetened) iced tea, but it's almost as bad as the soft drinks. I hate coffee and all it's derivatives, and I'm not a big fan of unsweetened tea. Don't worry - I'm not planning on cutting out water entirely, but I do need to mix things up a bit.

To summarize, I need cold beverages that meet these criteria:
* does not contain aspartame or other manufactured sugar substitutes
* low calorie
* no coffee flavoring
* Available in Canada (bonus points for locally in Vancouver)

I'm sure I'm asking too much, but if anyone can help me figure this out it's the hive mind... thanks in advance!

What is the safest artificial sweetner to overdose on?

stuckie — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 11:37:53 -0800

What is the safest artificial sweetner to overdose on? I'm a pretty healthy guy, despite what I subject my body to. For probably close to 20 years, I gradually increased my daily Coca-Cola intake from the occasional "Big Gulp" to probably 128oz. Then, 2 years ago, i decided to basically quit, cold-turkey.

For a couple of months I was able to subsist on water, but I found that while I missed the Coke to some degree, what I really missed was carbonated FLAVOR in my beverages. And I work somewhere where they are FREE. So eventually I convinced myself that if I was able to give up both the sugar and the caffeine, I would allow myself to drink things like Fresca, Diet 7-Up/Sprite/Squirt, Diet Rite, etc (can't handle the cola-flavored ones, for some reason, though)

Now I'm back up to, say, 6 cans of Fresca per day. Now I doubt that will increase much, given my current situation (and 7-11s or restaurants don't even CARRY diet caffeine-free beverages in their fountains), but I AM a little concerned about my lack of good information about the sweeteners. Sugar, while incredibly caloric, was at least a "known quantity" and there are few reputable doctors who will tell you that drinking refined sugar is going to make you anything but fat.

On the other hand, everyone seems to have their own opinions about the health risks of the "new" sweeteners - aspartame gives you brain cancer; sucralose gives you digestive problems; saccharine gives rats cancer...

Growing up, I've felt comfortable deferring to the FDA about these things. As a skeptic of the Penn & Teller "Bullshit" school, I've got good faith in the scientific method over scare tactics, but my paranoid mind can't help thinking that in this day and age, when every business lobbying entity has its own lab to "counter" the findings of legitimate unbiased researchers (Global Warming? Maybe? Cigarette Harm? Uncertain?), what do we conclusively know about, for instance, the long-term human injestion of 72oz of product containing any of these sweetners?

Again, my system is likely still quite rugged, and I've tried a number of sweetners without any "direct" effects (in the way that like many people report that Splenda gives them digestion difficulty or Nutrasweet gives them a headache) - but at 34, I'm starting to worry about the long-term health issues, and was wondering if there was any research out there that addressed this.

If it helps, I prefer the "taste" of Splenda best, though for some reason the grapefruit taste of Fresca/Diet Squirt is what I've been into the most lately, and they are both aspartame-based. I don't particularly like tea, and juice, while great (and expensive), is just as caloric as Coke.

I realize that most folks' kneejerk reaction will be to say "go back to water", or link to "scare" pages, and I guess I don't mind those kinds of answers, (though they will probably go unheeded) I'd much more appreciate anything with some legitimate scientific "cred."

Thanks in advance, and for tolerating the long-windedness.

And the award for the world's most paranoid dieter goes to...

skjønn — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 20:33:49 -0800

Are there any simple tests that can be done (besides tasting) to determine if a given sample is diet coke or regular coke? Without using taste or smell, is there a simple way to distinguish between coke and diet coke?

One possible way to distinguish: test strips that react differently to the sweeteners in each one? There are strips you can buy that will tell you if you have ketones in your urine, if a substance is an acid or a base, etc etc. Maybe something similar would work? Maybe the PH is significantly different and PH test strips could be used?