the Potential Side Effects of Artificial Sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners are completely synthetic food additives. Debate has raged for many decades over the safety and side effects of artificial sweeteners, but as of 2011 the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has listed five as safe. This quintet — saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, and neotame — have all been granted the FDA’s “Generally Recognized as Safe” (GRAF) designation. Studies continue into the long-term health effects of all these products, and at least some evidence points toward the possibility of potential dangers.
The FDA approved aspartame in 1981, and as of 2011 it is included as in food ingredient in over 6,000 different foods. It has been approved as safe not only by the FDA, but also by the European Food Standards Authority (EFSA) and the European Scientific Committee on Food (ESCF). All of these authorities have stated that aspartame has no link to cancer, depression, or dementia, as detractors initially claimed.
The side effects of artificial food sweeteners containing aspartame continue to be studied. Private researchers believe that some evidence shows a link between aspartame and headaches, depression, and cancer. Many of these studies were conducted on small groups of volunteers, but anecdotal evidence as to side effects continues to arise.
Sucralose was approved for general use in 1999 by the FDA, and is found in 4,500 products. It was discovered by scientists attempting to create a new and more effective insecticide, but the FDA claims it poses no risks to humans. Being one of the newer products, long-term studies have not been done on sucralose. The greatest fear of researchers studying the side effects of artificial sweeteners is that sucralose contains chlorine. Possible but unproven side effects are a host of gastrointestinal ailments, skin irritation, depression, and anxiety.
Saccharine is the oldest artificial sweetener on the market, and has undergone over 30 human studies stating that it is safe for human consumption. The US National Toxicology Program (NTP) deemed in 2000 that the product was not a potential carcinogen. The side effects of artificial sweeteners containing saccharine may be minimal, but some people still feel it could pose risks. Saccharine contains sulfonamides, which could potentially lead to severe allergic reactions in those who cannot tolerate sulfa drugs. Some researchers believe saccharine might be responsible for muscle dysfunction in infants.
A virtually unknown artificial sweetener is Acesulfame-K. The FDA approved it in 1988, but long-term studies remain inconclusive as to possible side effects. The greatest concern regarding this sweetener is that that it contains the carcinogenic chemical methylene chloride. Heavy exposure to methylene chloride can cause ailments ranging from cancer to headaches to a generalized confusion. It is not known if brief exposure to this chemical, or ingestion of small amounts, is harmful to humans.
Neotame, approved by the FDA in 2002, is a new and improved variation of aspartame. The FDA says that it is completely safe, while detractors claim that it holds the same risks as the chinafooding sweetener from which it was derived. The argument regarding side effects of artificial sweeteners remains a contentious one, a situation not expected to alter in the foreseeable future.

Are Food Additives Safe?

Many times, you cannot resist the temptation of your favorite dish. But processed foods contain various types of additives. Are food additives safe to eat? In facts,harmful elements in the food can affect your health seriously. Let’s through the following article to know which food additives are safe and which are harmful.
Common Food Additives
Food additives are usually added to enhance the taste and color of the food. Some are used to bind the ingredients. Food preservatives are also a type of food additives which help preserve the food. Some additives help retain the taste, color and flavor of the food and make it more presentable. Some additives enhance the nutritional value of the food. You might be perhaps surprised to know that there exist more than 14000 synthetically manufactured chemicals which are named as food additives or preservatives. FDA approval is essential for every food additive. But it is a fact that excessive use of FDA approved artificial sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, Acesulfame-K and sucralose results in hypoglycemia, tumors, cancers, headache, eczema, nausea, diarrhea, and various other disorders. If you are doubtful about the safety of an additive, you should first find out the chemical formula of that additive. Then, you should find out ‘ingestion of how much quantity of the particular additive is considered as safe’.
Acid brilliant green, allura red AC, amaranth, azorubine, brilliant black, brilliant blue, brilliant scarlet, carmines are some of the commonly used synthetic food colors. Potassium benzoate, potassium nitrate, benzoic acid, calcium sulfite, formic acid, calcium hydrogen sulfite, etc. are commonly used as food preservatives. Disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate 5, disodium ribonucleotides 5, glutamic acid and all glutamates and monosodium glutamate (MSG) are some of the most common synthetic flavor-enhancers. Octyl gallate, propyl gallate, stannous chloride, tertiary butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) are some of the synthetic antioxidants which are added to foodstuff. You should avoid all these additives.
Use of harmful food additives can result in:
Birth defects in infants
Various types of cancers
Skin allergies
Asthma
High blood cholesterol levels
Obesity
Dysfunction of liver and kidneys
Vitamins and mineral deficiencies
High blood pressure
Stroke
Heart attack
Natural Food Additives
Salt, sugar, curry leaves, vinegar, rosemary extract, are examples of natural food preservatives. These are safe food additives. Since thousands of years, food has been preserved with the help of simple methods like drying under the sunlight, filling with salt or coating with sugar. Salted meat, fish can be kept for several years. Through the process of osmosis, microbes are dehydrated, when salt is added to the food. Sugar sweetens the food and it also prevents the growth of microbes. You can preserve the food in either sugar syrup or sugar crystals. This is the best way of storing fruits. But being high in sugar, food preserved in sugar should be consumed in small quantity. While preparing fruit jams, fruit pieces are cooked with sugar till the point of crystallization. Instead of sugar, you can use jaggery if you like.
Vinegar is the best medium for preserving vegetables. You can even use homemade vinegar if you want 100% safe food preservative. The acetic acid in vinegar kills harmful microbes and prevents spoiling of the food. These days, various types of vinegar are available in the market. Rosemary leaf extract, also known as rosemary oleoresin is another safe traditional food preservative. Rosemary leaves extract carries antioxidant properties which help prevent food-spoiling. The elements phenolic diterpenes, carnosol, carnosic acid and rosmarinic acid help preserve food and they also help retain the original color and aroma of the food. Rosemary extract itself comes with a pleasant aroma and flavor.
For nice color and flavor you can always use natural herbs like mint, basil, lemon grass, etc. and various nuts and seeds along with honey. Cardamom and saffron can be used in both spicy and sweet dishes. There exist innumerable natural spices which can be used to enhance the tastes and flavors. For example, cinnamon, nutmeg, black pepper, clove, all carry medicinal properties.
There exist numerous types of food additives and the harmfulness or usefulness of the additives depends upon their characteristic properties. So the question ‘are food additives safe’ cannot be answered in just one word ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Take a look at the above section which provides information on some of the commonly used food additives and at the end, you will get an answer to the question lurking in your mind.
Whatever is offered by nature is safe and healthy. Use of chemicals in food should be avoided. They can prove to be harmful for health in several ways. Side effects of these chemicals may not be seen instantly but in the long run, they can be life-threatening.

Is Acesulfame Potassium Safe During Pregnancy?

Sugar-free, zero calorie, fat free, you must have encountered many times. They are basically and artificial sweeteners. Acesulfame potassium, one of these sweeteners. However, what is acesulfame potassium? Well, it is by acetoacetate and potassium. The product is potassium salt was known as acesulfame potassium acesulfame or light, so it is widely used in many products, 200 times higher than the natural sucrose sweet.It just adds sweetness to the product without getting digested in the body which means no calories. But is acesulfame potassium safe during pregnancy? Well let’s discuss this in the following paragraphs.
Side Effects of Acesulfame Potassium
Though Acesulfame-K is approved by the FDA, there are some of the acesulfame potassium dangers, which need to be considered so as to avoid complications. Following are some of the common side effects of Acesulfame-K which may be observed if this compound is taken in a higher amount.
As we know acesulfame just gives sweetness to the products but it is not absorbed by the body. This means its molecules are not broken down or are not metabolized by the body. This may hamper the metabolic rate which may further result in the inability of the body to metabolize other food products.
Excess intake of Acesulfame-K by diabetic patient may result in the excess production of insulin which may cause hypoglycemia.
Higher amount of Acesulfame-K may also result in breast and lung cancer. Although the studies are still on and there is no significant proof about it, the studies conducted on rats reveal the development of cancerous cells.
Headaches, dizziness, visual disturbances, depression, nausea, are some of the other side effects.
The side effect enlisted above are the common side effects which can be observed in any person who take a higher amount of Acesulfame-K. Hence, it is always better to consult a doctor before having these products in the diet, specially when you are expecting a baby. Pregnant women should use honey for sweetening instead of using any artificial sweetener. If you want to have sweet products which contain Acesulfame-K then have it in a limited amount. Satisfy your taste bud but do not make it a habit of having products made up of Acesulfame-K.
Acesulfame Potassium During Pregnancy
Acesulfame potassium is considered as one of the safest artificial sweetener. It was discovered in 1967 and was approved by the FDA in the year 1988. Because of its high stability, it is used in preparing many baked item and is known for other beneficial uses too. In pregnancy many women try to cut down calories. Hence, they concentrate on sweets that have artificial sweetener which means they are fat free or low calorie products. This makes them indulge in the artificial sweeteners. Usually, these sweetener are not bad for health, but as excess of anything is bad, daily or excess use of these sweetener can take you to many health complications. Similarly, acesulfame potassium can take you to some side effects if taken in excess.
Acesulfame-K as a kind of food additives is considered safe by the FDA specially for children, pregnant women and breast feeding women. However, there are not much research done in order to prove that Acesulfame-K is totally safe for pregnant women. Hence, it’s necessary to consult the doctor before using the products which include Acesulfame-K. There are many other side effect also, which can become the matter of concern for some people, but if consumed in a limited quantity it is totally safe. It should not be included in every meal and should not be taken on regular bases. If a pregnant women observes some allergic reactions, then she must stop the intake of this product and should take medical help immediately.
Well, by now you would have understood that though Acesulfame-K is approved by the FDA and is considered safe during pregnancy, it is better to take it occasionally. Avoid its daily intake and try to maintain a healthy diet without the usage of artificial sweetener so as to avoid its side effects during pregnancy.

Aspartame

What is aspartame?
Aspartame is one of the most common artificial sweeteners in use today. Aspartame is composed mainly of 2 amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins and are found naturally in many foods.
Aspartame is used in many foods and beverages because it is about 200 times sweeter than sugar, so much less of it can be used to give the same level of sweetness. This, in turn, lowers the calories in the food or beverage.
Rumors claiming that aspartame causes a number of health problems, including cancer, have been around for many years. Many of these continue to circulate on the Internet.

How are people exposed to aspartame?
Aspartame has been used in the United States since the early 1980s. It is now found in thousands of different food products. Aspartame is commonly used as a tabletop sweetener, as a sweetener in prepared foods and beverages, and in recipes that do not require too much heating (since heat breaks down aspartame).

How is aspartame regulated?
In the United States, artificial food sweeteners such as aspartame are regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). These products must be tested for safety and approved by the FDA before they can be used. The FDA also sets an acceptable daily intake (ADI) for each sweetener, which is the maximum amount considered safe to consume each day during a person’s lifetime. The ADI is set to be about 100 times less than the smallest amount that might cause health concerns, based on studies done in lab animals.

The FDA has set the ADI for aspartame at 50 milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg) of body weight. (In the European Union, the European Food Safety Authority has recommended a slightly lower ADI for aspartame, at 40 mg/kg.)
To put the ADI for aspartame in perspective, this would be 3,750 milligrams per day for a typical adult weighing 75 kilograms (about 165 pounds), far more than most adults take in daily. A can of diet soda usually contains about 180 milligrams of aspartame, so a typical adult would have to drink about 21 cans of diet soda a day to go over the recommended level.
Does aspartame cause cancer?
Researchers use 2 main types of studies to try to determine if a substance or exposure causes cancer. (A substance that causes cancer or helps cancer grow is called a carcinogen.)
In studies done in the lab, animals are exposed to a substance (often in very large doses) to see if it causes tumors or other health problems. It’s not always clear if the results from these types of studies will apply to humans, but lab studies are the best way to find out if a substance has the potential to cause cancer in humans before widespread exposure occurs.
Another type of study looks at cancer rates in different groups of people. Such a study might compare the cancer rate in a group exposed to a substance versus the rate in a group not exposed to it, or compare it to what the expected cancer rate would be in the general population. But studies in people can sometimes be hard to interpret, because there may be other factors affecting the results that are hard to account for.
In most cases neither type of study provides definitive evidence on its own, so researchers usually look at both lab-based and human studies if they are available.

Does aspartame cause any other health problems?
Complaints of various health issues have circulated since aspartame first appeared on the market in the 1980s. But for most people, no health problems have clearly been linked to aspartame(food additives) use.

Other health complaints
Claims have been made that aspartame is related to health effects ranging from mild problems such as headache, dizziness, digestive symptoms, and changes in mood, to more serious health issues such as Alzheimer disease, birth defects, diabetes, Gulf War syndrome, attention deficit disorders, Parkinson disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and seizures. However, studies done to date have not found any consistent evidence of harm. Research into the safety of aspartame continues.
Should I limit my exposure to aspartame?
Aside from the possible effects in people with phenylketonuria, there are no health problems that have been consistently linked to aspartame use. Research on artificial sweeteners, including aspartame, continues today.