Ive been putting Splenda in my coffee and drinking crystal light and such that also have aspartame for a while without thinking much. But then I started looking into what aspartame can/could do to your body and how it bloats you up and now I'm wondering what in the world to put in my coffee.

No no I'm not crazy worried about the side effects but I guess I want to look into a "healthier" sweetener?

I've tried Truvia since its supposed to be natural but my taste buds just don't seem to adapt to it. Sometimes I sweeten my oatmeal with honey but of course I can't use that for everything. I know realistically I should try to cut out sugar from my diet but with my sweet tooth, that's almost impossible

truvia is not natural at all - it's stevia extract you want. truvia's been processed all to heck.

bloating is the least of your worries: if you want to have children, aspartame has been linked to spina bifida and other issues as a result of methanol poisoning (aspartame is metabolized by your body into methanol, a known carcinogen).

I just cut out artificial sweeteners on Monday. And I have to say, it's ROUGH. I drank a cup of coffee in the morning with Splenda, then easily 4-5 diet pepsi cans a day. I switched to Natural Bliss in my coffee (one tbsp- so still doesn't taste sweet enough, sadly, but I'll live) and Polar seltzer water. Also last night I brewed some iced tea and added a little bit of regular sugar, but not enough so that it's nearly as sweet as I'd like.

I just need to stick with it until my taste buds adapt... which I know will happen! I want to see if it makes a difference- so far, I haven't really craved anything (aside from Diet Pepsi, which I did have once, unfortunately) and I've lost a little bit more than usual at this point in the week. Regardless of whether it helps with weight loss, I really want to be healthier and I think this will make a big difference.

Anyway, I think *any* amount of aspartame you cut out is a good thing. And I feel your pain with this! Good luck!

Stevia's your best bet but you should seriously consider just giving it up.

There is no SOLID PROOF that artificial sweeteners cause any kind of "damage" to the human body. As long as you are not overloading on them, I'd say just stick with what you like.

Sometimes I have real sugar in my coffee; other times I use Equal or Splenda. I'm no "worse for wear" for it.

**all things in moderation**

I lost the initial 30lbs with sweeteners in my coffee but now I just don't trust it. I put skim milk and half a bag of real sugar now. Hasn't really stopped me from losing weight, and I feel better about the choice I'm making.

Most of the legitimate "health risks" of aspartame consumption are actually related to folic acid deficiency. If you're eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, you're unlikely to experience these problems. Aspartame DOES contribute to folate depletion, so if you're not eating lots of fruits and veggies (or if you just want to be cautious) taking a folic acid supplement will remove most of the "risks" associated with aspartame.

The reason that aspartame is associated with pituitary tumors and neural tube defects (such as spina bifida) is not because of "methane poisoning" but because of folic acid deficiency. Doctors have known for decades that the leading cause of both pituitary tumors and neural tube defects are due to folic acid deficiency (it's why prenatal vitamins are loaded with the stuff and why doctors are now suggesting then women trying to conceive start the prenatal vitamins while trying to conceive - because neural tube defects occur in the first trimester - before a woman knows she's pregnant).

While it is true that aspartame breaks down into formaldehyde and methane (which are poisons in large quantities), both are entirely normal byproducts of digestion. Many healthy, wholesome, and entirely natural foods break down into much much higher concentrations of methane and formaldeyhyde and no one suggests we stop eating those foods.

If you're going to avoid aspartame because of what it breaks down into, you'ld also have to give up many foods, including many vegetables and most proteins.

There are people who should avoid aspartame, such as people with the inherited condition PKU, who lack the ability to digest aspatame or the natural foods which contain the amino acid phenylalanine. The amino acid is so common, that the PKU diet is extremely difficult to follow (it's said that with PKU, "if it tastes good, you can't eat it).

Some people find that aspartame aggravates migraines b(but that[s not unusual either. Many foods, healthy and not-so-healthy are found to trigger or worsen migrains).. If you have migrains, it's a good idea to keep a food and symptom log so you can find which foods trigger or worsen your migrains).

Even if you're never ingesting aspartame, your body is producing formaldehyde and methane. Aspartame isn't going to signifcantly increase the amount of formaldeyde and methane. You could eat tons of the stuff and you couldn't eat enough to cause methane or formaldehyde poisoning.

If you're eating a healthy diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables (or taking a folic acid supplement) and you don't have a condition that makes you sensitive to aspartame, you have less to fear from aspartame than from the "poisons" in air fresheners and fabric softener sheets and other common household products.

I've spent a lot of time reading the research associated with aspartame and with household cleaners and fragrances. I'm still using aspartame (although I gave it up for about a year as an experiment), however I've given up most of my household cleaners, air fresheners, carpet powders, and even strong perfumes.

In the scheme of things, I find it rather ironic that so many people avoid aspartame as if it were a strong poison, while oblivious to the much greater danger from common household products and cosmetics they use every day.

I think it's because it's human nature to associate poisons with ingestibles, rather than contact and inhaleable toxins.

Splenda is sucralose, not aspartame. But either way, I agree with kaplods.

If you just want to go more with whole foods, cutting all artificial sweeteners out would go along with that. If you want to cut them out because they seem to be linked to you not feeling well, getting headaches etc, go for it. But as far as using it as to avoid the calories in real sugar, I don't see any reason why you should stop. Perhaps that could be a longer term goal, once you get the hang of things.

I know it doesn't effect everyone the same way, but it took me months and months to figure out the cause of my persistent and often debilitating migraines. It got so bad that I'd be left in bed rendered helpless for a week at a time, unable watch TV, read, listen to music, or anything else to pass the time other than hold a pillow over my head and pray that the pain would stop.

Before it reached that point I thought I needed a new eye prescription. When that didn't help my headaches, I thought it was the change in climate, or the stress involved with moving out of the Midwest to start my life over. I also wondered if it might be allergies. I was always tired, flustered, anxious, confused, unable to concentrate on anything. It was a horrible time for me.

One day I was feeling surprisingly well and was sitting up at the computer. When my husband came home from work, he surprised me with a treat: bottled tea. I drank about half the bottle and the headache immediately came back at full strength, doubling me over in pain. I realized that it had to be something in whatever I was drinking, and made the connection: when I'd moved across the country, I decided to cut down on my sugar intake and had switched to artificially-sweetened products. The tea in my hand contained aspartame, and feeling like an idiot, I suddenly remembered that aspartame had caused my father all sorts of problems, including said headaches and even sores in his mouth from sucking on aspartame-laden mints. It had been years since it had been discussed though so I'd pretty much forgotten about it. And when I started doing research on it and read about the formaldehyde connection, I also recalled that my dad had to watch the ingredients on his shampoos and hairsprays because anything with added formaldehyde also caused him headaches.

Now I've read several times that the small amount of formaldehyde produced from broken-down aspartame is too negligible to be concerned over and that it happens with certain natural foods as well, but it still makes me wonder. I mean, after I gave up aspartame the headaches went away, as well as the confusion, the anxieties, being flustered, the inability to concentrate . . . and the lesser symptoms would immediately come back whenever I accidentally had some (I had to give up all diet fountain sodas since there were no labels to read, and can only have those sweetened with either stevia or sucralose i.e. Splenda). And as an added bonus, my over-active-bladder went away, as well as the mysterious sores on my scalp(!). If it's really not the formaldehyde or the methane, well, there's still something about it that threw my body out of whack besides a possible folic acid deficiency simply because the effects were so immediate. I mean, it only took 30 seconds for a beverage to make a full-on migraine return when I was ingesting the stuff regularly! And when I haven't had it in ages, accidentally having some will give me that old fuzzy head where I feel confused, anxious, etc., and will even affect my bladder all over again.

I read all labels now in order to avoid aspartame, as I've found out the hard way that it's sometimes included in non-diet products in order to lower the calorie and/or carb count. I don't ever want to go through all the headaches and other issues ever again, no matter what it was about the aspartame that caused it. Once again I know everyone's experience is different, but in my book, that stuff is nothing but poison.

Like I said, I am not worried at all about the "side effects" of artificial sweeteners, just lookin into other options but thanks for all the info. It's nice to hear that some of you use real sugar and don't see that as the enemy

I switched from taking my coffee with regular white sugar to raw turbinado sugar to skim milk with no sugar. I still have the raw sugar in the house for when my kids want tea or when I am really craving something sweet in my tea or coffee. However, I've gotten used to just drinking my coffee with skim milk and I enjoy it just as much as I used to with the sugar.

"no solid proof" - raise hands, all those who volunteered to be the guinea pig that proves the theory.

We all volunteer to be guinea pigs just by participating in modern life - or more accurately we're canaries in the coal mines.


We're constantly exposed to extremely dangerous and toxic chemicals every day that have been proven to be far more hazardous than aspartame, and yet most people are unaware of those dangers (perhaps assuming that if the hazards were so great, the substances would be illegal or at least that they would have heard of the dangers).

Some assume that "well if I can't avoid it, why worry about it," but many of these chemicals are products that can be avoided. Safer products are available, except most people are more concerned with aspartame because it's the "risk" they've heard of, even though the risk is far greater than that of aspartame.

But most people don't want to give up their teflon pans, their bottled water, their plastic wrap and plastic food containers, their carpeting, their air fresheners, hand sanitizer gels, cosmetics and fragrances, and they don't want to take the time and effort to get accurate information, instead they rely on urban legend to tell them what to be afraid of - fast food ball pits, kidney thieves, and aspartame.

The Standard American Diet is so unhealthy that it has been proven to cause serious health issues and shorten life expectance, and yet the proven risks don't deter folks from the diet.

If you just judged based on deaths and illnesses known to be caused or exacerbated by sugar, grains, and other modern foods, there would be more grounds for calling sugar and wheat poisons, than aspartame.

But we LIKE sugar and wheat, so we pretend they're not killing us, and we avoid less dangerous substances because they "might" be doing us harm, while we're eating huge amounts of foods that are known to cause severe health consequences.

I'll take the unknown risks of aspartame over the known risks of trans fats, highly-processed grains and sugar, any day of the week (not to mention all the household products that most people aren't even aware are dangerous).