What should a company do if its product has already been discredited for potentially negative health effects? Take the product off the market? Actually yes, in reality unfortunately no.

Many companies are not really interested in ensuring that customers receive high-quality products that are good for their health. Instead, they are all about making money. Ultimately, the pharmaceutical industry is responsible for health.

Specifically, this is about the company Ajinomoto. The manufacturer of aspartame has now given its product the beautiful name “AminoSweet“ Same product, same ingredients, different name. AminoSweet is now sold as a “natural sweetener” and healthy alternative to sugar.

Do you notice something? Amino, as in amino acid, is something we associate with something positive. After all, amino acids are important building blocks for the human body. So you can sell them directly as a fitness product, right?

So why is aspartame harmful?

aspartame is probably the sweetener that is most controversial and the one that most rumours revolve around. For every study that says aspartame is harmful, there is a counter study and vice versa. The studies that are pro-aspartame are mostly financed by the sweetener industry and therefore have little significance. The anti-aspartame studies are instead from independent scientists.

Known effects of aspartame on metabolism include allergies, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, visual disturbances, lymph node cancer, leukemia, brain tumors and headaches (Source 1, bottom).

So be careful in the future when you see the ingredient “AminoSweet“ Especially if you are allergic to this substance.

It is better to be critical of an industrially produced product once too often than too rarely. After all, there are still plenty of healthy alternatives, such as Stevia: https://www.hs-activa.com/products/stevia

Anyone who would like to know exactly why aspartame is potentially harmful can find out more here:

If aspartame is heated to more than 120 degrees in low-water foods (e.g. in cakes), it becomes acrylamideAnd acrylamide is considered carcinogenic and harmful to fertility.

Even the Cola Diet, fruit curd or other cold dishes that everyone loves can contain aspartame (around 6,000 products worldwide). When we eat and digest products containing aspartame, the two amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine and alcohol methanolThese are also the three raw materials used in the production of aspartame.

Let’s take a closer look at what these three substances are all about.

phenylalanine is produced in the USA using genetically modified bacteria. It is currently unclear whether the EU will also do this. unknown.

That which is released during the digestion of aspartame methanol becomes the carcinogenic substance formaldehyde The risk of cancer only increases with high consumption of aspartame, as the amount of formaldehyde is relatively low. However, methanol also affects the dopamine system in the brain and is addictive.

The aspartic acid is active in the human body as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system, among other things. It is therefore involved in the signal transmission of around 100 billion nerve cells in the brain.

It is important that neurotransmitters are always present in the body in a certain concentration. If this concentration increases or decreases due to external influences, it can have a major impact on our health.

It is therefore assumed that aspartame balance of neurotransmitters could be irritating because it consists of 50% aspartic acid. Depression, anxiety, hyperexcitability, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease are all associated with it.

However, there are also many foods that naturally contain much more aspartic acid than the sweetener aspartame. It could therefore also be that the unnaturalness of aspartame and/or the special combination of ingredients is the problem. Or reasons that have not yet been researched.

The fact is that no one can say exactly why aspartame could be problematic. However, based on the evidence available so far, it is a fact that it could be problematic (Source 2).

History of Aspartame

In 1965, aspartame was discovered by the chemist JM Schlatter. He actually wanted to discover a drug to treat ulcers and mixed the two naturally occurring amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine. He discovered that the combination of these two substances had an intensely sweet taste.

The accidentally discovered sweetener, which was originally intended to be a drug, was finally approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in 1970. Interesting fact: the chemist JM Schlatter, who discovered aspartame, worked for Searle & Company, a subsidiary of the Monsanto corporation.

Aspartame is therefore a artificially produced sweetener from the kit of a chemical company…

Insects in our food

And while we are talking about ingredients that can be harmful to consumers: New EU regulations approve two new forms of edible insects in January and venerate it as the food of the future.

What initially sounds a bit disgusting but otherwise like a natural protein source can in reality harmful effects on our bodies.

This is the conclusion reached by a team of researchers from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of León. Before normalising the inclusion of insects in the food chain, more research is needed, say the scientists.

During their investigations they found several toxic and nutritionally detrimental substances in the insects that are currently consumed on a daily basis not recommended make.

The different substances in the insects can, among other things, promote the absorption of vitamins and minerals reduce, disrupt the bioavailability and digestion of proteins, inhibit vital enzymes or toxic in certain quantities be.

In some beetles Among other things, it also contains the steroid hormone testosterone, which, if consumed regularly, can lead to “growth delays, hypofertility, masculinization in women, edema, jaundice and liver cancer” (source 2).

Allergy sufferers should also be careful when choosing their industrially processed food, as the different substances naturally also have a previously unknown unknown extent of allergy risk.

Like other food additives, the insects in food are labelled with E numbers. We are happy to provide you with a list of products and E numbers that hide insects as a PDF for download.

Download here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/2535/7146/files/Insekten-Lebensmittel-Blacklist.pdf

• Source 1: Soffritti M et al., “Aspartame induces lymphomas and leukemias in rats” Eur. J. Oncol., vol. 10, n. 2, pp. 107-116, 2005 (German: “Aspartame causes lymphomas and leukemias in rats.”)

• Source 2: Academy of Naturopathy, Distance Learning Specialist Advisor for Holistic Health, 2021 by Swiss Education Center AG, 16th edition 2021, p.172-173
• Source 3: https://www.agrodiario.com/texto-diario/mostrar/3774350/estudio-ule-concluye-consumo-insectos-conlleva-riesgos-salud