There are so many things over the Internet that scare the shit out of us. Make us all feel we shouldn’t be eating something , drinking something, that one particular food group or drink is going to worsen our health. And it all becomes a little bit confusing!
in recent conversations diet drinks have come up as a question from my clients, because of the artificial sweeteners, specifically aspartame, and whether its going to stop them losing weight, cause them significant health complications, trick there body into holding onto body fat, the list goes on! so here are some research based responses….
European guidelines efsa state 40mg of aspartame per kilo of body weight is perfectly safe with no adverse effect on ANYTHING, so for example a 60kilo person could consume 12 cans of Pepsi max or Diet Coke (of course this is on the highest end of safe consumption). I LOVE a Pepsi max and im not even consuming that many a day. a 100k kg person could consume 20 cans and still be considered okay. (there’s 200mg aspartame per can)
so what happens when you consume aspartame ?!
aspartame is made of two naturally occurring amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid, which are also found in food. the phenylalanine has been changes by adding methyl group too it which creates the super sweet taste (200x sweeter than sugar), and all of these ingredients are naturally occurring in our food. Proteins in our food are digested in our intestines, and enzymes break it down in to peptides, which are just smaller molecules, ready for our body to use as energy, so the exact same process occurs when we consume aspartame to food. So its literally absorbed as energy the way food would be.
in previous studies it has shown aspartame is broken down very quickly, and non is left in the blood stream and no traces have been left in any organs or the body.
Research back dated to the 1970s show no risk of DNA damage and cancer, brain damage, and behaviour defects. so were all good !
When and why would you need to limit diet drinks ?!
YOU DONT. The ONLY time to be conscious is when pregnant. Even then, the dosage stated above 40mg/kg bodyweight, would be a safe level of phenylalanine in the bloodstream to not effect the foetus.
so no diet drinks will not cause you any harm, they won’t cause you to gain weight, you won’t get addicted to them. Just try not to chug to many litres per day !
stressing about whether they’re causing you any harm will be more detrimental to your health than the drink itself. Diet drinks can be a great tool for social situations when you’re trying to limit alcohol, or to watch your calorie intake.
so enjoy !