Is the sugar substitute aspartame dangerous - the benefits and risks of oncology. Aspartame - chemical properties and harm of a synthetic sweetener, form of release and side effects

The second half of the 20th century is a magical time when we discovered an amazing product - sugar substitutes. Love for sweets is in a person’s blood (it’s not for nothing that we are so drawn to bulk apples, juicy strawberries and warm August honey), but how many troubles this sugar creates ... And although sweet substitutes gave us a unique opportunity to enjoy delicious tea without harm to the figure and thyroid gland, the number of attacks on these supplements is growing every year. Here is aspartame - what is harmful and is there any benefit? Scientists and nutritionists, chemists and ordinary people are still arguing about this ...

How did it all start?

And it began, as is usually the case with scientific discoveries - with pure chance. Aspartame, a well-known sweetener, sugar substitute, food additive E951 on the labels of sweets, was born because one talented chemist during the experiments wanted to ... lick his finger.

James M. Schlatter worked on the creation of the gastric hormone gastrin, which is used to treat ulcers. Aspartame turned out to be an intermediate in this process, and when the chemist realized that the taste of the new substance was sweet, the future legendary additive got a start in life.

This event happened in 1965, but only in 1981 aspartame began to be produced and used in the USA and Britain. Experiments, experiments and research took 16 years - scientists had to check everything and prove that the sweetener is safe, not a carcinogen and does not provoke terrible ailments. And they did.

Where to find aspartame?

Are you slender as a cypress and do not limit yourself in sweets? Or, on the contrary, have you forever abandoned sweets and cookies, and do you drink coffee exclusively without sugar? In any case, you are familiar with the name "aspartame" or the mysterious numbers E951 - they can be found on almost all labels with factory-made sweets and even medicines.

Want to check how often aspartame is used, where the supplement is found and how often we are forced to eat it? Take a closer look at the list of ingredients in the following products:

• any chewing gum;
• different varieties of sweets;
• sweet yoghurts and curds;
• soda and some juices;
• ready-made fruit desserts;
• bags of hot chocolate;
• sweets for diabetics;
• cough drops and multivitamins;
• sports nutrition.

Aspartame is also part of a number of complex sweeteners - for example, Milford. You can buy the supplement both in such sweeteners and in its pure form: for one package (350 tablets) of aspartame sweetener, the price is quite harmless - 80-120 rubles.

Myths about aspartame

In a long dispute about what aspartame is for the body - harm or benefit, the main argument is the chemical nature of the substance. It consists of three components, into which it breaks down in the body: amino acids - aspartic acid (40%) and phenylalanine (50%), as well as toxic methanol (10%).

Potential toxicity and gave rise to many myths around the ill-fated sweetener. Here are the most popular ones:

1. The methanol in the sweetener poisons the body and can cause temporary blindness.
2. The additive causes a whole range of neurological disorders: insomnia, depression, problems with memory and attention, panic attacks, ringing in the ears, severe headaches and convulsions.
3. Aspartame increases appetite and provokes excess weight.
4. During pregnancy, the use of a sweetener can cause malformations in the fetus.
5. Toxic substances in aspartame can provoke the growth of various types of tumors.

And in fact?

All the remarks, reproaches and calls to never approach products with aspartame in your life do not take into account one thing. There are several hundred studies and opinions from reputable world organizations that report that the sweetener aspartame is safe for everyone, including children, diabetics and pregnant women.

Aspartame has been declared non-carcinogenic by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) and other agencies. And in 2007, the journal Critical Reviews in Toxicology published a series of articles based on the results of more than 500 studies that studied aspartame inside and out and were also convinced of its safety. Here doubts can only be related to how much you believe in the impartiality and objectivity of these studies: a lot of money is involved here, and doctors and biologists are people too, unfortunately, a degree does not guarantee honesty and high moral principles.

The most controversial issue is the content of methanol in the additive. Its presence is confirmed by a chemical formula, there is no way out, but the amount of poison in one tablet of a sweetener is such that methanol is not even found in the blood - it is so small.

Meanwhile, many vegetables and fruits also contain methyl alcohol, but what is there - even in the body it is produced in small quantities. So, together with pectin, we also get an inconspicuous portion of methanol, but in.

Drink chilled!

If you buy aspartame in its pure form, the instructions for use will definitely tell you that you can use the sweetener only in cold form, it is forbidden to heat it. Opponents of the sweetener claim that when heated to 30ºC, aspartame turns into formaldehyde, but this is not so - otherwise all those who like to drag a bottle of cola in the heat would be poisoned regularly. Yes, and in the body the temperature is clearly above 30 degrees - so lovers of cold soda would also be poisoned.

The fact is that during heat treatment, the substance is destroyed and loses all its sweetening properties. And the dish will be simply savory. So if you want to bake healthy but tasty buns and jam, choose other sweeteners - for example. By the way, aspartame is slightly less sweet than sucralose - only 200 times sweeter than sugar.

Contraindications to aspartame

Evidence of aspartame safety does not mean that the supplement has no contraindications. All medicines and even the most useful products have prohibitions on the use (remember, at least in bran and whole grain bread).

What is aspartame and whether it is harmful, it is important to know one category of people - patients with a rare disease phenylketonuria (in Russia, 1 baby out of 7000 is born with it). With such an ailment, the synthesis of the amino acid phenylalanine is disrupted, and it must be reduced to a minimum in the diet. Therefore, on any aspartame lollipops, sweets and chewing gum, you will definitely read: "Forbidden to patients with phenylketonuria."

About the importance of the allowed daily dose

To prevent all possible side effects from taking aspartame, the scientific world has established an acceptable daily dose of aspartame - 50 mg / kg. This is the portion that should not be exceeded - and then there will be no side effects (the promised insomnia and migraine), with the exception of the rarest allergy, when you just need to refuse the product.

When frightening entries on blogs, forums and websites try to convince us of the dangers of aspartame, they usually talk about excessive, long-term use of aspartame - that is, above the acceptable daily dose. And now - attention!

To consume the allowed portion of the supplement per day, you need to eat about 300 tablets (each in sweetness is equal to a teaspoon of sugar), drink 26 and a half liters of cola, or chew an incredible amount of sweetened candies.

It is very difficult to imagine how this can be done physically. How difficult it is to imagine a mother who will allow her child to eat all this. Or a teenager who will not feel disgusted already on the third liter of cola and will not want ordinary vegetables with meat.

Aspartame for pregnant women and children

The main test of the safety of any product or drug is its “permissibility” during pregnancy and lactation. With the addition of E951, everything is complicated - aspartame during pregnancy is surrounded by a lot of rumors and speculation.

On many forums and even in the Internet instructions for the drug, you can read that during pregnancy it is a real poison. And although there is not a single study that has proven the danger of a sweetener for the fetus and for the expectant mother, it is better to play it safe. And refuse for the period of pregnancy and from extra buns with sweets, and from aspartame.

The sweetener E951 can be found in many medicines, but the main stumbling block is aspartame in vitamins for children. It is worth going to any forum for moms - and you will find a bunch of angry messages from moms who are ready to deprive their children of vitamins, just not to feed them this terrible aspartame.

You can prove the harmlessness of the sweetener as much as you like, but how to treat yourself and your children, everyone decides for himself. If you want to keep your baby as safe as possible, ask your pediatrician which vitamins are best. The easiest choice is to buy a multivitamin complex with regular sugar - it will not bring any unpredictable side effects.

Aspartame is a food additive E951, a sugar substitute, a food sweetener.

As a chemical element, aspartame is a dipeptide methyl ester, which includes the amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid.

In terms of taste, the E951 additive is many times superior to sugar, its sweet taste is felt longer, but appears more slowly than that of sugar.

The E951 additive is destroyed at a temperature of 30 ° C, so the use of aspartame is possible only in the production of those products that do not need to be subjected to heat treatment.

Aspartame is odorless and water soluble.

The use of aspartame in the food industry

The main purpose of E951 aspartame is the production of soft sweet carbonated and non-carbonated drinks, a sugar substitute.

With aspartame, diet drinks are produced, due to its low calorie content, and products for diabetics. You can meet the E951 additive as part of confectionery, chewing gum, and lollipops.

In Russia, aspartame as a sugar substitute can be sold under the following trademarks: Enzimologa, NutraSweet, Ajinomoto, Aspamix, Miwon.

Harm of aspartame

The harm of aspartame lies in the fact that after it enters the human body, it breaks down, as a result of which not only amino acids are released, but also methanol, and this is already a harmful toxic substance. Naturally, the dosage of aspartame is of great importance. In Russia, the norm is 50 mg per kilogram of human weight per day. In European countries, this rate is less - 40 mg per kilogram of human weight per day.

The peculiarity of the use of aspartame E951, which allows it to lead to an overdose, is that drinks containing this additive have an unpleasant aftertaste that makes you drink it with sweet water again and again. At the same time, it is noted that water sweetened with aspartame does not quench thirst, which also causes consumers to drink large amounts of drinks containing E951.

It has been proven that the use of low-calorie drinks and foods that contain aspartame instead of sugar can still lead to weight gain.

Aspartame can harm those who suffer from phenylketonuria, a disease associated with impaired metabolism of amino acids, in particular phenylalanine, which, as already mentioned, is included in the chemical formula of aspartame.

When abused, aspartame can cause side effects: headaches, incl. migraine, ringing in the ears, depression, insomnia, allergies, convulsions, joint pain, leg numbness, memory loss, dizziness, spasms, causeless anxiety. In total, there are about 90 symptoms that E951 supplementation can cause, and most of them are neurological.

Long-term use of drinks and foods with aspartame can cause symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Such side effects of aspartame are reversible, but the main thing is to identify the cause of the disease state in time and stop using the nutritional supplement. There are cases when, after limiting the amount of the E951 supplement, patients with multiple sclerosis returned sight, hearing, and tinnitus disappeared.

It is also believed that an overdose of aspartame can cause the development of systemic lupus erythematosus.

Pregnant women should not abuse aspartame, as the supplement has already been proven to cause fetal malformations.

Despite such serious side effects, aspartame is allowed to be consumed as a food additive in Russia within the normal range.

Those people who feel the symptoms described above and can say that this is happening against the background of the use of sugary carbonated drinks and foods sweetened with aspartame are advised to inform their doctor about this and exclude such products from their menu to check the diagnosis.

In 1965, American chemist James M. Schlatter, while working on a new drug for gastritis at the New York pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle & Company accidentally licked a finger that had been exposed to a synthesized intermediate and found it tasted extremely sweet. Thus, he discovered aspartame.

In 1981, after multiple clinical trials, aspartame was approved for use.

It was first produced on an industrial scale in the US and UK, recommended as a low-calorie dietary sweetener officially proven to be non-carcinogenic, unlike saccharin, which was then suspected.

Aspartame (E951) - artificial sweetener. It is a methylated dipeptide of two amino acids - aspartic and phenylalanine. Solubility in water is good. When heated above 30 ° C, it collapses, losing its sweetness.

The chemical name is N-L-alpha-Aspartyl-L-phenylalanine 1-methyl ester.

The chemical formula is C14H18N2O5.

Aspartic and phenylalanic acids and their methyl compounds are found in many proteins of ordinary food. Like proteins, E951 has 4 kcal / g, but due to the fact that it requires a negligible amount to sweeten food, its calorie content does not matter when calculating the amount of food.

Reference: Compared to sugar, the sweet taste of aspartame-sweetened products does not appear immediately, and then a cloying aftertaste remains for a long time.

Use in the food industry

Aspartame, as one of the most common sweeteners in the food industry, is used in soft drinks, dairy products, jellies, sweets, ice cream, desserts, chewing gums and in many products that do not require heating during preparation - more than 6 thousand items in total. The main share of this substance is in drinks.

Here is a list of some products that have E951:

• "Coca-Cola Light", "Coca-Cola Blak", "Pepsi Light", "Nestea";
• power engineers - "Pitbull", "Bulldog";
• dragee - "Fisherman`s Friends", "Mentos", "Orbit Drops", "Winterfresh";
• chewing gums - "Orbit", "Airwaves";
• medicines - "Voltfast", "Vitamin C Additiva".

Aspartame is also used in the composition of medicines (lozenges, tablets, syrup) and as a sweetener in the form of tablets - one tablet is equivalent in sweetness to a teaspoon of sugar.

Commercial sweetener names: Slastilin, Sanekta, Shugafri, Sukrazit, Nutrasvit, Aspamix.

The benefits and harms of food additive E951

There are many conflicting opinions about the benefits and harms of aspartame. Let's try to figure out whether this, one of the most popular sugar substitutes, is actually harmful or useful.

In the birthplace of aspartame in the USA A lot of research and testing has been done. As a result, it was found that this supplement is not only harmless, but even beneficial at recommended doses. For the United States, the maximum allowable daily dose is set at 50 mg of aspartame per kilogram of body weight, in Europe - 40 mg / kg.

In Russia, by the Decree of the Chief State Sanitary Doctor of November 14, 2001 No. 36 (), sweetener E951 is recognized as a harmless food additive and is approved for absorption for sweetening food products, enhancing their taste and aroma.

Some public organizations for the protection of consumer rights are supporters of the opinion about the dangers and unsafety of this sweetener. Their arguments are based on the fact that in the body, aspartame is divided into two amino acids - phenylalanine, aspartic and methanol - wood alcohol, which is a deadly poison.

Methanol in the body is converted to formaldehyde, which is a strong carcinogen that destroys proteins, the nervous system and leads to cancer. Formaldehyde poisoning can cause blindness and even death. But the harm that methanol and formaldehyde can cause depends on the dose that enters the body.

The fact is that the methanol content in this sweetener is very low. In one liter of a drink with aspartame with a very sweet taste, it contains no more than 60 mg. In order to get poisoned, 5-10 ml of methanol is required, which is hundreds of times more.

The allowable daily intake of aspartame is calculated with a wide range of safety. This means that even taking a sugar substitute at a dose of even up to 70 mg / kg of body weight per day, the content of methanol in the blood will be so low that its presence will be impossible to determine in the laboratory. And this is neither more nor less (for a person weighing 70 kg) - 465 tablets or 46.5 liters of any drink containing E951.

In terms of sweetness, this will approximately equal 1 kg of sugar. Can you drink that many sodas or use that many pills in one day? The answer is obvious. And it's still a safe dose of a dietary supplement.

In the body, methanol is formed naturally as a result of ongoing metabolic processes. About 500 mg of the substance per day is metabolized from food. From 1 kg of apples, 1.5 g of methanol is metabolized. The content in juices reaches 140-150 mg / l, and in drinks with aspartame - 60 mg / l. Is it worth talking about what and what is more dangerous?

Harmful substances are found in any food and our body is adapted to get rid of them. If he can get rid of methanol from juices, and even for the benefit of himself, then he will deal with drinks containing E951 even faster.

There are both benefits and harms when eating this sweetener, which, by the way, is great for people dependent on insulin. The benefit is that by replacing sugar with aspartame, a person eats more healthy food. The negative side is immediately revealed - aspartame does not contain carbohydrates in its composition, and the body, reacting to sweets, prepares to process carbohydrate foods. Such food is usually not available, hence the constant hunger. Here is the paradox - a person, taking a sweetener to lose weight, eats more, and instead of losing weight, he gets fat.

Important: when using aspartame as a sweetener, strictly control the amount of food you eat so as not to gain weight.

It should also be noted that drinks with E951 do not quench thirst well. Or rather, they don’t satisfy her at all. After drinking a portion of such drinks, a sugary aftertaste remains in the mouth for a long time, which you want to wash off with the next portion of the liquid. A person perceives this as thirst. Here a vicious circle arises - while quenching your thirst, you can drink a lot of drink and still not get drunk.

Important: it is better to quench your thirst with natural juices or ordinary water. And drinks with aspartame are only good for pampering.

Products containing this additive are contraindicated for people suffering from a rare disease - phenylketonuria, since aspartame contains phenylalanine. Therefore, manufacturers are required to report the danger.

If somehow an overdose of aspartame has occurred, then signs of poisoning, vomiting, headache, allergies, joint and abdominal pain, numbness, memory loss, dizziness, anxiety, depression may occur. Prolonged overdose may cause cancer.

The effect of E951 on pregnant women, children and people with poor health

The effect of aspartame on pregnant women and breastfeeding is not fully understood. There are opinions that even such an insignificant content of methanol can lead to fetal malformations. In any case, despite the fact that E951 is considered harmless, it is better to play it safe and not use it during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.

Do not use this sweetener for children, the elderly, those in poor health, and during illness when the immune system is weakened to reduce the burden on the body.

Aspartame is a safe synthetic sweetener that is widely used in the food industry and is completely harmless to healthy people. However, despite its proven safety, people with poor health, pregnant and lactating women, as well as children, it is better to refrain from this product.

Watch a video that says: what is aspartame?

than aspartame. The substance was discovered in 1965, but only 16 years later received official permission for use. Over the years, many clinical trials of the product have been conducted.

More than 100 food standards regulators from different countries, including Russia, have provided a convincing evidence base for the absence of carcinogenic and mutagenic properties of synthetic sugar substitute.

Aspartame is the official name of a food additive ( GOST R 53904-2010). The international option is Aspartame.

Synonyms:

• E 951 (E-951), European code;
• N-L-α-Aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ether;
• 3-amino-N-(α-carbomethoxy-phenethyl)-succinamic acid;
• Equal, Canderel, Sukrazit, Sladex, Slastilin, Aspamix, NutraSweet, Sanekta, Shugafri, Sweetly are commercial names.

Substance type

Additive E 951 is included in the group of food sweeteners. According to SanPiN 2.3.2.1293-03, it can perform the function.

Aspartame is a methyl ester of an organic compound of two amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. Despite natural ingredients, sweetener is a product of chemical synthesis. This gives reason to classify it as an artificial additive.

An enzymatic method for obtaining a substance using genetically modified sources (for example, bacteria Bacillus thermoproteolyticus) is not used on an industrial scale due to the too low yield of the final product.

Properties

Package

Additive E 951 is packaged in 25 kg plastic bags. After being hermetically sealed, they are placed in an outer packaging container:

• cardboard boxes with polyethylene lining;
• winding cardboard drums;
• polypropylene bags.

Aspartame can be placed in FIBC (big-bag) 500, 750 kg flexible containers.

Additive E 951 is allowed for retail sale (SanPiN 2.3.2.1293-03, Appendix 2). The packaging capacity is chosen by the manufacturer. The sweetener usually comes in plastic jars or foil bags.

Application

The main consumer of aspartame is the food industry.