To whoever wrote the thread about Aspartam a bout 1 1/2 month ago Thank you so so much!!!

[gorionine]

Sorry I cannot find the thread anymore, nor can I remember who was the OP. It was about Aspartame (I think it was the fact that they had given it a new name to fool people avoiding it) and amongst the posts was a link about bad effects it could have.

For over a year I had felt I had a personality transplant, and definitely not a good one. GP ruled out depression and said I was most probably exausted. I felt tired yes but also very aggressive all the time even to the people close to me that I absolutely adore. Also felt that everybody hated me.

Now I have totally stopped aspartam (I was sweetening most of my hot drinks with it)and a month or so on I am so pleased with the difference. Even the Dcs have noticed that I am "nice" again. In fact I cannot remember having shouted at them in the last few weeks at all.

So again Thank you, a 1000X

Thanks Pag and claig.

This is great stuff and something to ficus on.

Had no idea this stuff was viewed as being so pernicious.

MrFlibble (love the name) I think it can deprive your bones of calcium, possibly leading to osteoporosis.
This is not good as I drink shit loads of the stuff with my white wine!!

Oh no I have a tin of Diet Coke every night Bugger.

Is drinking juice with sugar in it ok?

ANyone know what else Aspartame is in? I buy low fat yoghurts which say "Aspartame free" so assume other low fat products contain it? As I am constantly on a diet, I eat a lot of low fat foods.

Stay away from low fat foods they're always full of sugar or sweetners. You'd be better counting the calories [says the fat sod at the computer]

MrFlibble, yes carbonated water is said to deplete the calcium in your bones. It can cause gas which is why GetOrfMoiLand had some problems with it. Also the Italian models I used to know would never drink carbonated water, they thought it didn't help with weight loss. I don't know if there is anything in that.

However, unlike aspartame, I don't think it is doing a lot of harm, so I would think it is OK to carry on.

Drink normal coke. Diet drinks tasts vile anyway.
Aspartme is the only thing that is banned for my children, otherwise we are an everything in moderation type family.

I am a dental health educator for children and see the effects of full sugar fizzy drinks etc, i have to send many children for GA's at the dental hospital to have many baby teeth extracted. My advice is to drink milk and water.
Fifteen lumps of sugar in a can of coke.

I couldn't drink normal coke anyway - to me it tastes disgusting.

Will wean myself off and replace with wine.

now you're talking

the amount of carbonic acid in sparkling water is not going to matter in the slightest to your bones so long as you are taking in a decent quantity of fruit and veg, as they contain potassium, which will neutralise the carbonic acid and save your bones.

Fizzy drinks also contain phosphoric acid, especially colas, which has been linked to lower bone density - see this from Wiki (you'll need to go down to the 'Processed Food Use' for the relevant bit.

Yes it was Solo who alerted us to the namechange of aspartame - thanks Solo!

gorionine - glad you are feeling better - I'm sure I posted on the previous thread about a lady I knew who had terrible migraines, at least one a week, which stopped when she cut out aspartame. Lots of anecdotal evidence to show that it is dreadful stuff but the "research" doesn't back it up (clever that) - although I do remember once seeing an ad for Nutrasweet that said something like "over 2000 studies show it to be safe" and thinking - if you needed to even do 2000 studies, that's a worry in itself.

One of my favourite bits was discovering that one of the researchers used MSG as a placebo for aspartame; and then used aspartame as a placebo for MSG and went on to say that both were perfectly safe as statistically they were no different to placebo. No surprise there - the glutamate and aspartate bits of the molecules both attach to the same receptors in the brain!

sounds good to me !!!

i mean the wine sounds good

My mum had terrible IBS for years. Gave up meat, tried all sorts of things, and then when she gave up aspartame she was cured! She was always on a diet and ate lots of "healthy" yoghurts (sweetened with aspartame).

Isn't it unbelievable we think we are doing the right thing eating those yoghurts etc.

I hate aspartame - years ago I did a degree in Food Science and one of the things we did in the first term was a subjective taste test of different sugars and sweeteners - we had to taste them against a standard solution of sucrose (table sugar) and dilute either the sweetener/sugar or the sucrose until we thought they were about the same.

Glucose and fructose are much sweeter than sucrose, lactose is less sweet. Of the 3 sweeteners (ALL disgusting, I might add) the aspartame was the WORST and the flavour is imprinted on my taste memory, so I can taste it immediately in anything now.

Muller light yoghurts were the worst offender for that, ime - mostly because I didn't think to check it was in there and it was a horrible shock! Straight in the bin with it. (sick, you know)

much of the "advice" we are given is the opposite of the truth. Soya has been pushed as a wonder food for years, and many vegetarians use it for protein. Look into it and you will be surprised.

The biggest thing to remember is that food and especially diet food companies have no interest in our health. Their only interest is in their profit margin - and that includes ensuring return customers.

The diet industry has no motive to help us get thin permanently - they would lose all their customers!

But they will jump on bandwagons, healthy or otherwise, if they perceive that it would be profitable for them to do so.

FWIW Sainsbury's squashes DON'T have aspartame in them, they have Sucralose. I always buy them instead of anything else, but I have recently read some stuff on Sucralose that makes me want to swear off that as well!

Wine sounds like the best plan!

ack - sucralose - the problem with that is that it was marketed originally as being no calorie because they didn't think the gut could absorb it (chlorinated sugar) - then some Japanese researchers found that up to 40% of it is absorbed but no one was really entirely sure how it would affect the body systems, since they'd assumed it wouldn't matter much as it wasn't absorbed...

I expect they're doing long term research on it now...

Coke has this in it. Not sure which kinds of coke but here's a cut and paste:

Phenylalanine - Aspartame
Phenylalanine is a hidden danger to anyone consuming aspartame. Most consumers don't know that too much Phenylalanine is a neurotoxin and excites the neurons in the brain to the point of cellular death.

ADD/ADHD, emotional and behavioral disorders can all be triggered by too much Phenylalanine in the daily diet. If you are one in ten thousand people who are PKU or carry the PKU gene, Phenylalanine can cause irreversible brain damage and death, especially when used in high quantities or during pregnancy. Phenylalanine is 50% of aspartame, and to the degree humans consume diet products, Phenylalanine levels are reaching a dangerous peak.

It is important to learn about the ingredients within your foods, especially isolated amino acids like Phenylalanine. They are in combination within nature for a reason - they don't belong in isolated form for the healthy human diet.

you are safer with good old-fashioned sugar than these artificial sweeteners. Getting fat is nothing compared to what the sweeteners can do.

Well, I'm glad to hear that fizzy water is OK although I might phase it out and replace it with fizzy wine....

Seriously though, I loathe all fizzy drinks (bar water obviously) and just do not understand the appeal. They give me headaches, make my teeth feel rough, my mouth feel clogged up and make me burp. I mean why drink them?

A bit off topic but does anyone here know anything about Quorn? I am deeply suspicous of it...

why are you suspicious of quorn? it is a mycoprotein, highly purified protein from a fungal source - like mushrooms only different. And because it's highly purified protein, it can be shape changed and coloured/flavoured/textured to look like other foods.

Afaik, and I'm not up to speed on it, it is digested like any other protein.

MrFibble, I personally wouldn't go anywhere near it. It is a fungus, I've heard bad things about it.