Aspartame: Godly or Ghastly

Everyday throughout the world, a dieter, health fanatic or just a lover of diet foods, is faced with an ethical dilemma. Should I come to terms with calorie filled sugar? Or face the alleged cancer causing aspartame, which is used as a sugar replacement. One would most likely choose aspartame due to the large labels stating “diet” and “sugar-free” but one must consider the positive and negative benefits of aspartame on the human body.

Although the positive effects of aspartame are rarely focused on, there are numerous benefits that one must learn in order to successfully answer the ethical question of “should I use aspartame knowing it may cause many undocumented health complications?” Aspartame was first created in 1965 but was not used as an artificial sweetener until 2009, where health activists and Internet “trolls” heavily criticized it endlessly, stating it caused cancer. Many have fallen into their trap and truly believe that it does cause cancer among other things, but several studies have shown that these results were inconclusive. As a sweetener, aspartame is the best, having zero calories, being 200 times sweeter than traditional sugar, and easily made and sold so one should weigh their options by becoming fat, with loads of sugar, or eat the foods you like, with the sugary taste of aspartame.

Society has mainly focused on the negative aspects of aspartame, as many believe there are terrible health risks associated with the use of aspartame. These health risks range from cancer, as mentioned earlier, to blindness and originated from a spam email that flowed to millions of North Americans, warning people that the government is attempting to kill us with aspartame. But you need not to worry, as not one of these many diseases including multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus, methanol toxicity, blindness, spasms, shooting pains, seizures, headaches, depression, anxiety, memory loss, birth defects and other annoying symptoms, have been proven truthful by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration)

If you’d like to read more about the controversy involved with aspartame, there’s a Wikipedia page here dedicated to the American outrage at aspartame. My final thoughts are live life to the fullest; even if diet coke is going to give you cancer and you avoid it, there are millions of other products out to get you in the long run.

Patty Cakes