by Mitchel Roy

Created on: February 27, 2007   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

At the grocery store, there are two different lemonade mixes. The traditional sugar lemonade mix and Crystal Light with a label that says, "sugar free". On the soda isle there is the sugared drink and the drink with a label saying, "diet". The sugar free and diet are obviously the healthier choices, right? Maybe not, for underneath those labels lies a chemical known as Aspartame that is worse than sugar. Aspartame has the potential to harm the nervous system and therefore should be avoided.

Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used in diet drinks and many other sugar-free foods, and is manufactured as Nutrasweet and Equal. It chemically consists of the weak bonding of aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The FDA approved its use in 1981 and it has been an object of research and debate ever since.

Aspartame has been reported to be a cause of brain cancer. This report is based on two observations, the rise in brain cancer since Aspartame was approved and a study that showed rats developing brain cancer when given Aspartame. Are these observations valid? Bob Holmes points out that the connection between Aspartame and an increase in brain cancer is purely based on "suspicious timing". Bob notes that, "experts say... brain cancer rates started rising in the early 1970s, almost a decade before the sweetener hit the market. The biggest rise (from 47 to 53 tumors per million people) took place between 1984 and 1985." He also found that during this large rise Aspartame had only been available for three years and only in sodas for one. No chemical has ever been reported to cause cancer that fast. The rise in brain cancer has leveled off after the late 1980's, but the rise in Aspartame use has nearly doubled. Also, the increase in brain cancer had mostly taken place in those over sixty-five, who only constitute a small percent of Aspartame consumers. Women drink almost fifty percent more aspartame than men do, but are not the majority of brain cancer patients. Using this observation to argue against Aspartame is a case of faulty logic.

In the 1970's tests showed that rats fed Aspartame developed more brain tumors than those on regular diet. Bob Holmes, however, notes that, "most experts dismiss this as a statistical fluke". One reason is because the rats fed higher doses of Aspartame produced less tumors than did the rats on lower doses. Also, three similar studies showed no tumors produced by Aspartame. Also, Mark Malkin and Alfred Yung, both MDs at cancer centers,

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