A couple of days ago I got into a discussion about diet sodas with a very dear family member. It is a topic that has been brewing for a while. For some reason which absolutely erks me there is this notion that diet drinks or anything with artificial sweeteners is bogus or carcinogenic. Based on my extensive research on this very topic I beg to differ. For example the ever-so-popular Equal or Nutrasweet sweeteners.

Equal and Nutrasweet are also known as aspartame by its scientific name and is simply produced by the union of two amino acids known as aspartic acid and phenylalanine. If you recall amino acids are the building blocks of protein naturally found in many foods. In fact it takes 20 amino acids to make up a molecule of protein. Now According to some people if this were true then by scientific undeniability proteins no matter how lean would in some way cause cancer and be fattening which is clearly not the case. Furthermore according to the American Cancer Society there is no direct correlation between the union of these two amino acids and cancer development. Now let’s talk about Splenda, the newest one of the artificial sweeteners.

To begin I would like to inform you that Splenda is made from dextrose. And dextrose is the main form of glucose usually found in plants and animal tissues and could be also derived from starch.

It seems that the famous and somewhat controversial artificial sweeteners don’t seem to be that artificial at all. And last but not least I would like to talk about Sweet and Low also known as saccharin which was the first sugar substitute on the market. Saccharine aside from tasting like dish soap mixed with cough syrup does have some scientific studies that have found it to be carcinogenic in massive amounts on lab rats. For that same reason diet sodas haven’t used this sweetener in decades and has become a thing of the past.

-A.P.