You can pretty much dismiss any source that warns about the formaldehyde and methane "issue," because these are normal and perfectly safe digestive byproducts.
Fruit and fruit juice produce DRASTICALLY MORE formaldehyde and methane than an aspartame-sweetened diet soda (as in many times as much).
If you avoided all foods that produced these chemicals, you would have to eliminate virtually all fruit and fruit juices.
So why aren't we snatching bananas and apple juice out of the hands of toddlers if formaldehyde and methane are so detrimental in metabolic quantities?
I stumbled upon the blog below, when I was looking for some of the research I based my own aspartame use on (My decision, after reading and evaluating all the research pro and con, was to add a folic acid supplement and reduce but not eliminate my aspartame use).
I decided to post this, despite my promise to stay out of all IP threads (except the 90%ers thread because my own plan, The Simple Diet, is similar but not identical to IP).
I'm making the exception here only because the thread topic is aspartame science and has nothing to do with IP directly.
At any rate, back to aspartame science. I found that this blog summarized my own study of the research (and included research I wasn't even aware of).
When I moved to the US from Europe I noticed mainly three factors that were significantly different: People in the US really love sugary foods (not just sweet, but actually plain sugar in taste), the portion sizes are enormous, and people do not move much (where I come from everybody walks the whole day). In science I have found that the scientific question asked always limits the kind of answers you can get. That's why it is important to think long and hard about what you actually want to ask. This is one of the reasons I generally ignore epidemiologic or statistical studies and I admit I am completely biased. If you do a study on obese vs nonobese people, it seems logical that obese people will use products with aspartame prominently and in many cases without success. They know they should loose weight, they therefore try to limit caloric intake, and they fail because the reasons they became obese are very often more complex than simple intake of calories.
So, you would be able to make a connection between aspartame use and obesity, but you would do so using a spotlight and ignoring all the dark areas around it, which you well know are there. But that would be hard to publish anywhere, whereas it is much easier when you come up with some controversial findings.
In a recent radio interview I heard with investigative journalist, Gary Taubes (Why We Get Fat and Good Calories, Bad Calories) he talked about his frustration with the way many so called scientific studies are done in the world of nutrition.
He observed that people who were participants weren't properly tracked and that this made it difficult to factor in the issue of 'compliance' v 'non-compliance.'
I actually read Mercola very often. I just posted your original link on my facebook a few days ago. I have also cut out Nutrasweet and Sweet N Low and switched to Stevia. There are too many possibilities of being affected by aspartame in the brain and with losing weight for me to take the risk anymore. Cheers
Jojo381972 , 10-27-2013 07:54 PM
