In June 2016 CNN reported that Pepsi Co (Pepsi) announced the return of aspartame to Light Diet Coke in the U.S. market in December of this year, and just last August Pepsi suspended the use of aspartame in Light Diet Coke in order to meet consumer demand (both changes were limited to the U.S. only). Less than a year later, Pepsi's slap-in-the-face fiasco has once again put the controversial king of sweeteners, aspartame, in the spotlight.

Aspartame, like saccharin, is a synthetic non-nutritive sweetener. Sweeteners can be categorized into nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners according to how many calories they contain. Non-nutritive sweeteners are substances that contain only 2% or less of the caloric content of sucrose at a sweetness level equal to that of sucrose. Because these sweeteners combine high sweetness and low calorie content, they are a good choice for those who have a sweet tooth but are worried about gaining weight, as well as obese and diabetic patients who need to limit their sugar intake but want to improve the taste of their food.

When it comes to aspartame, some people may not have heard of its name, but if we talk about saccharin, I believe we are not unfamiliar with it. Aspartame, like saccharin, is a synthetic non-nutritive sweetener. Sweeteners can be categorized into nutritive and non-nutritive sweeteners according to how many calories they contain. Non-nutritive sweeteners are substances that contain only 2% or less of the caloric content of sucrose at a sweetness level equal to that of sucrose. Since this type of sweetener combines high sweetness and low calorie content, it is a good choice for those who have a sweet tooth but are worried about gaining weight, as well as obese and diabetic patients who need to limit their sugar intake but want to improve the taste of their food.

Aspartame is chemically known as aspartyl phenylalanine methyl ester and is formed by the condensation of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Figure 1 shows its structural formula. At room temperature, aspartame is a white, odorless powder that is readily soluble in water and ethanol, but decomposes easily at high temperatures and over long periods of time in water. Aspartame is about 200 times sweeter than sucrose, and its dilute solution tastes similar to sucrose, with a refreshing flavor and no bitterness. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Scientific Committee (ESC) have set the safe daily intake (ADI) for aspartame at 50 mg and 40 mg per kilogram of body weight, respectively, and for a 60-kg adult, the ADIs are 3,000 mg and 2,400 mg, respectively. Intriguingly, the discovery of aspartame was purely accidental: in 1965, a scientist named Schnitt accidentally licked his chemically contaminated finger in between experiments, and aspartame was born.

Time flies, more than half a century has passed, although aspartame in such as carbonated beverages, fruit juices, wine, instant coffee, pastries and other nearly 6000 kinds of food and more than 90 countries in a big way, but the public to its questioning has never stopped. Sometimes more right and wrong isn't necessarily a bad thing, and because so many people and research organizations have paid “extra attention” to aspartame, it has been described by the FDA as “one of the most thoroughly researched food additives available”. After summarizing the results of numerous trials, the CDC concluded that “there is no epidemiologic evidence to conclude that aspartame causes significant harm or serious risk.

Although there are authorities to dispel rumors about aspartame (including the U.S. FDA, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the Food Standards Agency of the U.K., and Health Canada, etc.), how much do you, as a consumer, know about aspartame? How safe is aspartame?

First let's look at the metabolism of aspartame. After entering the human body, aspartame is broken down by esterase and peptidase in the intestines to generate aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, and then absorbed into the blood circulation. Aspartic acid is a non-essential amino acid, which our body can synthesize by itself, while phenylalanine is an essential amino acid, which is abundant in egg and milk, and has certain pain-relieving and antidepressant effects. Referring to the statistical report of the American Institute of Health on the daily diet of its residents, the average daily intake of aspartic acid and phenylalanine by the American people is 6.5 grams and 3.4 grams respectively.

If we take a certain brand of sugar-free drinks on the market as an example, a 335 ml can contains about 180 mg of aspartame, so even if you drink a few cans of drinks every day, the level of these two amino acids absorbed is basically negligible compared to that obtained from normal intake. It is important to note, however, that people with phenylketonuria should avoid foods or beverages containing aspartame because of the production of phenylalanine from the breakdown of aspartame. Another metabolite of aspartame is methanol. Speaking of methanol, the frequently exposed industrial alcohol

Below, we clear up any doubts you may have in your mind by understanding the progress of scientific research on aspartame.

1. Will eating aspartame cause metabolic disorders? According to the results of different animal and population studies, a single large dose of aspartame (1000 mg per kilogram of body weight) will indeed cause an increase in the amino acid level in the blood (it is not ruled out that aspartame enters the body and breaks down into amino acids), but within the safe dose, it basically does not have a significant effect on the amino acid level, and it does not affect amino acid levels in the breast milk of breastfeeding mothers and the blood of children. However, there is much controversy about whether aspartame affects the body's glucose and lipid metabolism. While some animal and population studies have shown that normal intake of aspartame does not alter blood glucose and lipid levels, other studies have found that aspartame may cause obesity, insulin resistance and hyperglycemia, and even different laboratories using the same animal models have come up with opposite conclusions.In 2014, Suze and coworkers made an interesting discovery that offers a new way of resolving the above paradox. They found that sweeteners such as aspartame and saccharin can affect blood glucose levels in mice by altering the composition and function of their intestinal flora. The results of population experiments also verified the above conclusion. Considering the differences in genetic inheritance, lifestyle and immune system of different individuals, resulting in different composition of individual intestinal flora, many existing population and animal studies have not yet ruled out the interference of intestinal flora, therefore, scientists need to further explore and validate whether aspartame affects the metabolism of the organism. It is worth noting that scientists have recently found that sucralose, a synthetic sweetener, can increase appetite and lead to metabolic disorders in Drosophila by affecting the nervous system when given diets supplemented with sucralose for a long period of time. It is not clear whether aspartame would have similar effects as sucralose and warrants further study.

2. How toxic is aspartame? Will regular consumption of aspartame lead to chronic toxicity? In acute experiments, mice and rabbits were given 10,000 mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight orally, and there were no deaths or adverse effects in the animals. There were no deaths or adverse effects in mice and rabbits given oral doses of 10,000 mg/kg of body weight for several months.

3. Saccharin has been reported to cause cancer, can aspartame also cause cancer? First of all, it should be clarified that saccharin does not cause cancer. 1977, scientists found that intake of saccharin increased the risk of bladder cancer in mice, which led to a storm of saccharin bans around the world. However, further research found that the results in mice did not apply to humans and that normal doses of saccharin had little effect on human health. It wasn't until the 1990s that the FDA lifted the proposed ban on saccharin. With the previous experience of saccharin, scientists' research on aspartame has been relatively objective and fair. Up to now, through a large number of animal experiments, epidemiological investigations and genotoxicity testing experiments, aspartame has not been found to increase the risk of cancer and genetic damage in animals and humans. Among them, some experimental results suggest that aspartame may be a risk factor for mice suffering from brain cancer and other malignant tumors, but a number of agencies and expert teams, including the U.S. FDA, the U.S. National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), have investigated these experiments and found that most of the experiments have flaws in their design or data processing, and that some experiments have been reassessed with the exclusion of interfering items, and the original conclusions are no longer valid. Re-evaluation of some experiments after the removal of interfering items, the original conclusion is no longer valid, that is, there is no inevitable link between aspartame and the occurrence of cancer.

4. In the news, we can sometimes see that some people have headaches after drinking beverages containing aspartame, so will aspartame cause damage to the nervous system? The answer given by the results of current animal and population studies is still no. In our daily life, including the consumption of cheese, chocolate, caffeine, hot dogs and other common foods can also cause migraine, but we often laugh it off because the above are just individual cases. Therefore, when faced with aspartame, we should not judge it with colored glasses either.

5. Apart from healthy adults, can special groups such as pregnant women, children and the elderly consume aspartame? Animal experiments have shown that consuming 1600-4000 mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight per day has no adverse effect on pregnancy and lactation (however, when the dose reaches 7000 mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight per day, the body weight of the offspring may be affected, but not the development). There are few population studies in this area, and this year, for the first time, scientists from Canada found, through a large-scale mother-infant follow-up experiment, that if mothers regularly consume sweetener-containing beverages during pregnancy, it may result in babies' post-week-old weights

6. How is the use of aspartame in China? In 1985, China discussed and adopted the use of aspartame at the second annual meeting of the Technical Committee for Standardization of Food Additives and included it in the national standard, and after many revisions, aspartame is still one of the food additives allowed to be used. The Standard for the Use of Food Additives of the National Food Safety Standards (GB 2760-2014) issued by the National Health and Family Planning Commission in 2014 stipulates that food products with aspartame should be labeled as “aspartame (containing phenylalanine)”, and also stipulates the amount of aspartame to be used in different food products. Therefore, the use of aspartame in China is legal. At present, the scope of use of aspartame in China's food field includes a variety of beverages, dairy products, confectionery, chocolate, gummies, table sweeteners, health food, pickles and cold drink products, etc., need to pay special attention to is that due to the aspartame heat stability is poor, in the temperature of more than 80 ℃ easy to lose the sweetness, so it can't be used in the bakery products.

Having said all the above, I believe that all readers already have a general understanding of aspartame. It is necessary to point out that, in the process of aspartame research, due to differences in experimental conditions, objects, methods, etc., scientists may get different conclusions, as mentioned above, the intestinal flora affect aspartame involved in the body's metabolism, but the progress and development of scientific research is a general trend, we will continue to improve and consolidate the existing research results, and at the same time, actively face the challenges of the unknown areas. In addition, if we are unable to solve certain problems due to the limitations of our technical knowledge, we should believe in the conclusions based on a large number of reliable experiments that have been rigorously tested and supported by authoritative authorities, rather than some individual cases.

Given that most of the negative reports about aspartame are based on long-term chronic experiments, and the results of a large number of studies still confirm the safety of aspartame, so if you want to eat dessert once in a while, I prefer to consume the same level of sweetness, but only a few grams of aspartame substitutes, rather than foods with high sugar content. However, as the saying goes, too much of everything is too little. Keeping our mouths shut, eating less sweets, eating more vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk and other natural foods, eating a balanced diet, and exercising moderately are the prerequisites for us to stay healthy.

Finally, I would like to remind readers that when buying food, remember to observe the food labeling on the package, the state regulations containing aspartame products must be clearly labeled. Food safety is important, but understanding food is equally important!

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