Aspartame Rumors Unfounded

If you have spent anytime online, chances are you have stumbled on Web sites with screaming headlines and well written text attempting to scare Internet surfers about artificial sweeteners, especially Aspartame (NutraSweet), which is alleged by these doomsayers to cause all sorts of maladies, including methanol toxicity, vision problems, headaches, fatigue, brain cancer, lupus, and even multiple sclerosis. In fact, with the last year, millions of people have reported receiving ominous, official looking email messages about aspartame's alleged hazards.

In response, hundreds of readers have emailed, and written to many organizations, wondering if there is any validity to these doom and gloom messages, which are spreading like wildfire over cyberspace. So, to get to the bottom of this issue, we went straight to the top and asked the real experts - scientists who have actually investigated the effects of aspartame in 'clinical studies'. And what we discovered was that the overwhelming majority of these experts not only say these rumors are groundless, but that aspartame may actually be healthier than nature's natural sweetener: sugar - which, unlike aspartame, has been scientifically linked to numerous health problems, including osteoporosis, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and obesity - not to mention the time honored association between sugary foods and tooth decay.

According to officials at the Food and Drug Administration, the safety of aspartame is, in their words, "clear cut". The FDA calls aspartame one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives it has ever approved, adding that more than 100 toxicological and clinical studies it has reviewed confirm that aspartame is safe for the general population.

Agreeing with the FDA's stance on this issue are other health organizations such as the American Medical Association and the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation. In a report on the FDA's Web site, David Hattan, Ph/D., acting director of the FDA's division of health effects evaluation, says there is no "credible evidence" to support, for example, a link between aspartame and multiple sclerosis or systemic lupus. Dr. David Squillacote, senior medical advisor to the MS Foundation, agrees, telling Newsday that the claims "are rabidly inaccurate and scandalously misinformative."

Other circulating reports have linked aspartame with brain tumors. However, an analysis conducted by the FDA of the National Cancer Institute's public database on cancer incidence in the United States- the SEER Program-does not support an association between the use of aspartame and increased incidences of brain tumors or cancer. "Both our scientists and those at the National Cancer Institute have looked very carefully at brain-tumor trends," Dr. Michael A. Friedman, deputy commissioner for operations at the FDA and the Administration's senior adviser for science, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We find no association between aspartame consumption and human brain tumors."

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Aspartame Rumors Unfounded

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