Diet Soft Drinks - Good or Bad for Heath?
Most diet drinks include aspartame, commonly known as nutrasweet. This chemical stimulates the brain to think the food is sweet. It brakes down into acpartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol (wood alcohol, also used in lacquer thinner) at 86 degrees—remember, your stomach is probably at 98 degrees). Another breakdown bi-product, diketopiperazine (DKP) has been shown to cause brain cancers in laboratory rats.
An article put out by the University of Texas study found that aspartame has recently been linked to obesity as well. The process of stimulating the brain causes more cravings for sweets and leads to carbohydrate loading.
My recommendation is to drink juices; even these should be watered down in a 1 to 4 ratio (one part juice to four part clean room temperature water). The best drink is, of course, water.
Try this: Crush some fresh basil and mint leaves, put them in a large carafe, add room temperature water, and let this mixture sit for half of an hour. Then add one tablespoon of honey and mix. This is an aromatic and refreshing drink to accompany any meal.
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- Date: 26 December 2011
- Posted By :
- Date: 26 December 2011
- Posted By :
The connection between aspartame and folate deficiency is that aspartame contains a methyl ester; methanol is released upon hydrolysis. The purpose of folate is to recycle methanol’s oxidation products formaldehyde and formate into methyl groups. Deficiency can lead to the same "symptoms" as methanol toxicity---but only in people that are otherwise deficient in this vitamin. Food consumption alone never leads to poisoning, but it can have the longer term consequences mentioned in the previous paragraph.
These facts explain everything about the whole "internet conspiracy" theory suggesting aspartame is unsafe. But you have to realize too that there is more methanol in juice drinks (pectin is a polymeric methyl ester) than in aspartame drinks. So again the problem is one of folate deficiency still being a human health problem, even after the US, Canada, and Chili required grain product fortification starting in 1998. That date is relevant also because all viable concern with aspartame were raised before that date, but the frank malformations and teratology in infants of deficient mothers is what led to action on the folate deficiency. Those issues have dropped dramatically amongst the population, but have not been eliminated because of various genetic issues that make some people require even more folic acid than others.
But the take-home message here is that all papers showing any issue with aspartame failed adequately to ensure folate sufficiency in their animal work or use populations (including diabetics and others) that have ongoing folate-deficiency in the first place-- includes the UT study, which includes no mention of this highly important issue, known for roughly four decades.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
