Tag Archives: aspartame

Monk Fruit Will Save Your Sweet Tooth and Your Diet: Zero Calories up to 500 Times Sweeter than Sugar

monk fruit sweetener

Here in the new year, millions of Americans will try to cut back on sugar or drop it altogether. It’s a noble effort because sugar is devoid of nutrients, except for calories, which it has in spades.

Quick fact: The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports each of us consumes 31 five-pound bags of sugar a year. That’s 267,840 empty calories from sugar alone. Still, people will be jonesing for something sweet to eat. Enter: monk fruit.

Traditionally, people used zero-calorie sweeteners to satisfy their sugar cravings at no caloric cost. Synthetic sugar substitutes, including aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet), sucralose (Splenda) and others, are added at the table but are mostly taken as carbonated diet drinks and low­ calorie foods. But consumption of those foods has taken a nosedive as of late as health conscious consumers flock to natural sweeteners. Stevia, the zero-calorie herb extract, is gaining appeal, but monk fruit is the real one to watch. (more…)

Posted on January 9, 2024 by Natalie K

Swapping Out Sugar Could Help Weight Loss

Artificial sweeteners and other sugar substitutes often get a bad rap, but are they really as bad as they are made out to be? The results of a recent study suggests that maybe they aren’t; good news for all of us with sweet tooths. In the study three sweeteners were used to determine the effects on food intake, satiety, and glucose and insulin levels.

stevia

Researchers used sucrose, stevia and aspartame in the study. Stevia, a plant used as a natural sugar substitute, has come into popularity fairly recently in the United States, but has been used for centuries in South and Central America. The US Food and Drug Administration placed stevia on their Generally Recognized as Safe list. Any concern about the safety of stevia consumption comes from the eating and drinking excessive amounts, not from casual use.

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Posted on September 10, 2024 by Elizabeth

AminoSweet Announced as the New Name for Aspartame

It’s still Aspartame. Reminiscent of the recent High Fructose Corn Syrup name change, possibly in an effort to change our opinions, Aspartame will now be referred to as AminoSweet. Don’t fall for a more “natural” name – this stuff is still bad news. Hopes are that by using a more natural sounding name, consumers will feel more at ease with its pervasive use in more than 6,000 products.

Originally introduced more than 25 years ago, this “accidental discovery” has quickly taken over the food industry.  Two naturally-occurring amino acids (aspartic acid and phenylalanine) were first combined in an effort to produce an anti-ulcer drug. Pharmacist James Schlatter discovered that the new compound had a very sweet taste. The company was granted a change on its FDA approval application from drug to food additive. Thus, aspartame was born.

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Posted on December 14, 2024 by Carmen

5 Foods That Will Help You Snooze

By Lise Turner for Care2.com

It has been a sleepless several nights for me, mainly because of troubling events. But it made me start thinking about food, and how it’s intimately connected to our patterns of sleep. If you can’t sleep, and life is calm and happy, maybe it’s something you ate–or didn’t. The foods we eat can dramatically affect how much, and how well, we snooze. Some foods calm and relax, some wake up the nervous system, and some just downright wire you for the night.

What you should eat for deeper sleep depends partly on your patterns. If you toss and turn before drifting off but then doze soundly for the rest of the night, you might benefit from adding slow-burning carbs (beans, sweet potatoes, berries) to your evening meal to prompt the production of serotonin, a brain chemical that promotes calm. If you zonk out quickly but wake up a few hours later, you might be suffering from blood sugar fluctuations. I’ve tried a high-protein snack before bed–a handful of walnuts, a spoonful of almond butter, a small cube of cheese–and these tend to keep blood sugar levels steady throughout the night.

Focus on foods with soothing nutrients, like magnesium, which help relax muscles and calm the body, and B vitamins, key in the production of serotonin and other brain chemicals necessary to sleep. Trytophan, an amino acid that’s needed to make sleep-inducing serotonin, is especially effective when it’s paired with complex, slow-burning carbs.

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Posted on August 27, 2024 by GuestBlogger

Truth About Artificial Sweeteners on the Dr. Oz Show

Tune in on Tuesday, January 4 to the Dr. Oz Show when he gives you the facts and the fiction on artificial sweeteners.

On the episode, Dr. Oz will evaluate the most popular artificial sweeteners, like NutraSweet (aspartame), Splenda (sucralose) and Truvia (stevia). He’ll tell you which ones have been associated with weight gain, diabetes and even cancer. In 2024, researchers at Purdue University found that eating foods containing artificial sweetenerswas directly linked to eating more, consuming more calories and gaining weight. (more…)

Posted on January 3, 2024 by heather

Flavored Water Isn’t a Substitute for the Real Thing

Water is life. Water transports vital nutrients in your body and flushes out harmful toxins, while lubricating joints, aiding in digestion and regulating body temperature. Water is also essential for weight loss to keep your metabolism running efficiently to allow you to burn maximum fat while curbing those dehydration cravings that love to mask themselves as hunger.

You know all of this. You know you are supposed to drink your eight 8-ounce glasses of water a day to keep you properly hydrated, especially while exercising. All too often, however, people make the mistake of thinking if something is liquid, or marketed as a beverage, it counts towards your water intake. Not so.

Some are obvious: soda, coffee, tea and anything else with caffeine actually works against you, dehydrating your system and leaching calcium from your bones. They also pack a caloric punch that will undo any burn you just put in at the gym. Those are no brainers. (more…)

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Kelly

Aspartame 101

Aspartame, simply defined, is an artificial sugar that is a simple chemical compound made up of: two amino acids (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) and a methyl group (CH3).  The combination of these compounds creates a product that is 200x sweeter than sucrose.

aspartame

This sweetener is marketed under a number of trademarked names, including: Equal and NutraSweet and is an ingredient in around 6,000 consumer foods and beverages sold worldwide!

artificial sweetners

In the digestive tract, enzymes split aspartame into its three parts, then the body absorbs the two amino acids and uses them just like it had come from food protein.  Great caution needs to be taken when consuming this product because this sweetener contains phenylalanine.  Products containing aspartame must have a warning label for people with phenylketonuria (PKU).  PKU is an inherited disease that inhibits a person’s ability to dispose any excess phenylalanine.  An accumulation of phenylalanine and its by-products is toxic to the developing nervous system, causing irreversible brain damage.

During metabolism, the methyl group momentarily becomes methanol, a methyl alcohol, which is potentially toxic.  Enzymes then convert methanol to formaldehyde, another toxic compound.  Finally, formaldehyde is broken down to carbon dioxide.  Before aspartame could be approved, the quantities of these products generated during metabolism had to be determined, and they were all found to be below the threshold that would cause harm.

An Italian study found that aspartame caused cancer in female rats and fueled the controversies surrounding aspartame’s safety.  However, statements from the FDA and other sources indicated that such a conclusion is not supported by the data.

The Acceptable Daily Intake (ADI) for aspartame is 50mg per kilogram of body weight, this is extremely high and the mass majority of our population does not even come close to this amount.  Most people who use aspartame consume less than 5mg per kg of body weight per day.

In my opinion, it is best to go as natural and organic as you can and that your wallet allows you to, but if you decide to consume these products it’s OK!  Just try to limit the amount of artificial sweeteners you put into your body.

Posted on September 15, 2024 by Kinsey