Everyday Systems: nosdiet: message 525 of 3212

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On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 12:51:39PM -0800, zebella <zebella@...> wrote:
> .
> > 
> > By scaremongering about aspartame you are hindering people's 
ability
> > to transition from poor eating habits to good. 
> 
> Oh come on now --- if that were true, the entire US would be slim 
and
> trim with the availability of the aspartame laden foods out there.\

Huh? The entire US isn't doing No S, but the people on this mailing list
are. Telling people that aspartame is dangerous when no-one can come up
with any evidence for this makes it harder for people to transition from
a diet with more "S" to one with less "S".

I can't stop drinking soda during the week cold turkey; it's a major
caffeine vector for me. I suspect I'm not the only one. So diet soda it
is -- less and less as I go, and some caffeine-free too, but still some
-- and with *no evidence at all* of short- or long-term negative effects
of aspartame, it seems counterproductive to tell people trying to cut
out the corn syrup that they can't go there via diet soft drinks.

Availability of different sweeteners varies with geography; it is
unusual to find sweeteners other than aspartame in prepackaged anything
here in Canada. I think both aspartame and sucralose are safe sweeteners
based on current evidence, mostly because I've done reasonably extensive
research into aspartame in the past and was satisfied with my own
understanding of the literature. (That research project started when my
stepsister's father was diagnosed with MS, and some of the family was
blaming aspartame for it; I had access to a medical library at the time,
so I figured I might as well use it.)

On the other hand, the evidence about saccharin and acesulfame potassium
is nowhere near as consistent, so I hedge my bets there and avoid them
when I can. 

Keep in mind that all of aspartame, sucralose, saccharin and acesulfame
potassium have large lobby groups behind them, but only two of them are
generally regarded as safe. Even then the lobbyists working for the
companies producing artificial sweeteners are nothing compared to the
political machine that is Big Sugar in America. A taste of Big Sugar's
influence:

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1125730,00.html

My long posts got caught up in the details, but the bottom line is this:
There is no evidence that using aspartame is going to lead to health
problems. Everyone can be as conservative as they like, but someone
*trying* to go from soda to not-soda (and that's what the thread was
about, remember) is probably going to get there via diet soda, and
telling them that they should avoid aspartame without any evidence to
back that up makes it hard for people to follow No S. 

If it is hard for people to follow No S then they may stop following it.
We should encourage people to take steps, however small, *towards*
following it, instead of putting more barriers in their way.

Transitioning from soda to water via diet soda isn't something I pulled
out of a hat; it's Reinhard's "hierarchy of pop alternatives":

http://nosdiet.com/group/121

-Rich

-- 
Rich Lafferty --------------+-----------------------------------------------
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada | Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!
http://www.lafferty.ca/ | http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus.html
rich@... -----------+-----------------------------------------------