Dear Healthy Foodie: Are Diet Sodas Really Unhealthy?

by Doug DiPasquale Dec 10th 2008 11:26PM

Categories: Health, Healthy Eating, Dear Healthy Foodie, Don't Eat This

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Dear Healthy Foodie: Are Diet Sodas Really Unhealthy?">



Dear Healthy Foodie,

How bad are diet sodas? I drink one with my lunch every day.

M.


Hi M.,

Diet sodas are some of the most controversial food items in our diets at the moment. Depending on who you talk to you'll get a completely different answer on their safety. The controversy actually surrounds the artificial sweeteners used in diet sodas instead of sugar.


At the centre of the controversy is the most popular of the artificial sweeteners, aspartame, also known as NutraSweet or Equal. Since it is estimated that two thirds of adults now consume aspartame regularly, questions on it's safety need to be addressed. Introduced to the public by the Monsanto Corporation in 1981, aspartame is a chemical sweetener said to be 150 - 200 times sweeter than sugar. It is found in thousands of products, including most diet sodas. The assumed benefits of the sweetener include significantly lowering the sugar intake of the general public and therefore curbing the obesity epidemic, providing safe sweeteners for diabetics and those suffering from any other sugar-restricted illness and decreasing the Western world's sugar dependency significantly.

However, shortly after the sweetener was introduced, complaints of the chemical's effects on consumers began to mount. These complaints against aspartame include mood disorders, the eroding of intelligence, affecting of short-term memory, seizures, headaches and ironically "paradoxical effects on appetite", ie. increased appetite and food cravings. Detrimental effects as serious as birth defects, cancer, brain tumor and diabetes started mounting less than a decade after the sweetener's release.

Despite these complaints, the Food and Drug Administration in the U.S. and Health Canada continue to designate aspartame as 'Generally Recognized As Safe' (GRAS). They cite many studies that have shown the chemical to be safe. However, many complain that the studies chosen are biased in that they have all been funded by those with a vested interest in aspartame, and that studies relying on outside funding which find problems with the sweetener are ignored. In his "Survey of Aspartame Studies", Dr. Ralph Walton looked at 166 relevant aspartame studies. He found that 100% of the studies with aspartame industry related funding (74 studies) found no safety issues in consumption of aspartame, while 92% of those with independent funding (92 studies) identified problems with the sweetener, some questioning the chemical's potential neurotoxicity.

At the very least, I think we can safely say that something funny is going on with the status of aspartame in our food products. I won't go into a detailed explanation of the nature of the toxicity of artificial sweeteners, however I will point those who are interested in the right direction.

And don't think that other artificial sweeteners are a safe alternative. Splenda and all the rest have long lists of complaints behind them as well.

I generally believe that anything with this amount of controversy behind it, with these kinds of complaints being issued in the numbers that they are, should be avoided at all costs. Regardless of the chemical's designation as safe or unsafe, everyone should be asking themselves if it is something they want to be consuming. Artificial sweeteners are man-made chemicals of questionable origin, synthesized in labs and, prior to 30 years ago, had never before been consumed by anything on planet earth. Does this describe something that should become a staple in your diet?


The Healthy Foodie is Doug DiPasquale, Holistic Nutritionist and trained chef, living in Toronto. You can email him with questions at dugdeep@gmail.com.

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