The Controversy Surrounding Aspartame And Its Effect On...

Who uses the sweetener or consume diet drinks may have heard of the controversy surrounding aspartame. The product has been linked with diseases or disorders such as migraine, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer, cancer, lymphomas, and brain tumors, among others. This association is mainly caused by the fact metabolized in the human body-releasing methanol, a chemical compound that has toxic and accumulative effect on the nervous system. Despite being naturally present in small amounts in chicken in the meat, the beans and skim milk when ingested in large quantities methanol can cause blindness, among other problems. This fact has been known since the approval of aspartame in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However,†¦show more content†¦Aspartame is composed of aspartic acid (40%), phenylalanine (50%) and methanol (10%), the substance is present in sweetening but is also used by the food industry because of the lack of calories (recommended to persons wh o are dieting) and the fact of not being sugar, sweeten but 200 times more (recommended for diabetics). In the opinion of the director of Abran (2005), considering that table sugar is caries (tooth decay), unlike aspartame, and that obesity is a worldwide epidemic, sweeteners can help combat excess calories in the diet. according to ANVISA, only people who are born with the problem of difficulty to metabolize phenylalanine (a condition called PKU) should avoid aspartame and foods containing phenylalanine (fish, chicken, beans, milk, etc). If industrial products, such as soft drinks, there is usually a warning on the label or packaging on the presence of phenylalanine. Scientifics Resource Nevertheless, concerns persist with the product. And intensified, especially after the publication in 2005 of an Italian study of 1,800 mice, which did not establish a relationship between the consumption of aspartame and the development of brain tumors, but showed a statistically significantly higher incidence of lymphoma, leukemia and malignant tumors of kidney tumors in females and males peripheral