Aspartame Renamed, called "Natural"

[susiestar]

husband just heard this on the news today, though apparently the company doing this started quite a while ago. A major manufacturer of aspartame (aka NutraSweet until now) has renamed it "AminoSweet" and is calling it natural. It is a mixture of 2 amino acids that are naturally occurring, but this is NOT a natural sweetener no matter what they call it.

I don't want to start a big political debate on artificial versus natural sweeteners. There are pros and cons to both for most people. I am mentioning this so that those of you who cannot tolerate aspartame will not try this "new" sweetener and get sick.

I was looking into some migraine help because mine are a lot worse in the last 5-6 mos and learned that aspartame is a migraine trigger for many people. Two sites called it one of the more common migraine triggers.

It does that, and much more for me. For a long time I thought I was strange, or odd, and that very few people other than my mother, sons and I reacted this way. I am learning that I was wrong about this. In my pain doctor's practice there are 6 people who react like that to aspartame and one of them told me that they are seeing more patients who have this type of adverse reaction to aspartame and they are seeing people who used to eat/drink foods with it and now they are having bad reactions to it. I don't know the why's, just wanted you to be aware that the body's reaction to it can change.

For those that react to aspartame badly, be aware that oral disintigrating medications all have aspartame (at least every one I have come across) and so do ALL children's liquid antibiotics. thank you's reaction is really bad, and I spent several frustrating days going through the list of all liquid antibiotics to see if any would work for him. NONE of them didn't have aspartame. This was about 8 years ago.

I will say that he is a champion pill swallower by an early early age because we had to either cut an adult tablet or open up an adult capsule and mix it with something if he got sick. (If you do have to mix a medication so a child can swallow it, a little bit of hershey's chocolate in a spoon, with the medication stirred in with a toothpick, works better than jelly, peanut butter, simple syrup, karo, or pancake syrup. I always had 2 spoons with hersheys in them - the first had the medication and the second was to chase the bad taste away. Total the amt of choc syrup was maybe 2 teaspoons, max, so it wasn't a problem of over-doing it.

I know most people don't react the way I do. There are a lot of people who really like aspartame as a sweetener, and they have found benefits to it. I just posted this to explain the problems that are becoming more common and mostly to let you know about the name change.

Just please remember that AminoSweet is NOT new, it is the same old aspartame you have had for years - and is just as natural as it ever was!

 

[Hound dog]

Oh well just lovely.

Can bet the name switch is due to drop in sales due to people not tolerating it well. I don't do diet anything. I only use splenda in my iced tea. Otherwise not a thing. And I can't drink sugar in tea it makes me gag, nor can I do without anything sweetening it. So I'm stuck with splenda, which is just the sugar molecule reversed or some such.

 

[susiestar]

They may have "reversed" the sugar molecule, but it still isn't anything that occurs in nature. My body reacts to splenda almost as violently as it does to aspartame. What super stinks is that stevia truly IS a natural sweetener that adds no calories. But a small portion of the population tastes it as bitter and not sweet. Guess what I belong to? That part of the population - it tastes bitter and truly strange to me. But for most people, stevia (truvia, etc...) IS a sweetener that is low cal/no cal and they only taste bitterness if they use WAY too much. Stevia has been around for ages and ages.

 

[Star*]

MOs' Aspartame would like to be called natural too. But I fear years of alterations and such.......somea parts a me would have to be called.......no........wait........no dyed hair, no piercings, no tattoos, no boob job, no tummy tuck, no face lift........not even cut my hair in 21 years......Okay no aspartame is fake.....I'm natural. But dat sugar? Is a no real....is a lab created. Oh and I'm a sweet......snort......

 

[AnnieO]

I'll try the stevia... Who knows? But renaming aspartame is just a marketing ploy. It will still make me vomit. And I didn't know it was a migraine trigger - but I'm not surprised. I avoid it, but every now and then I get some. And... I don't have migraines very often... Just every now and then. I'll have to watch that...

 

[Lothlorien]

I get migraine's from aspartame too. I can tolerate a small amount, but more than one packet in a given day will give me a wicked headache. I don't like the taste of it. I like Splenda. They call that natural too, but who knows. Stevia is good too. I like Stevia in tea. For some reason, Splenda seems to give me a dry mouth with tea, so Stevia is perfect. Stevia is less sweet than Splenda, so I use more of it than Splenda. I love the sodas that are made with Splenda. They taste almost like the real thing without all the sugar. I cannot drink regular soda, because the amount of sugar makes me feel sick later.

I absolutely detest Sweet n Low.

 

[buddy]

Cant do any artificial sweetener either, found it was the cause of headaches... once I stopped diet soda, all was good. One day I got a diet by mistake and it was a "to go" order so I just drank it... confirmed my decision for sure, had a terrible headache. Now I don't do caffeine either, overall pain is much less. Especially pain related to pms, dms (my word for during menstrual syndrome, hehe). I wont let Q have any of it either. I don't fight an occasional soda with caffeine, not worth the battle, but we don't buy it at home.

Hound, can you use honey in your tea or is it the same as plain sugar to you? I love plain unsweetened tea, dont know why, but I love it. hard to find non caffeine ice tea when out to eat though. bummer.

 

[AnnieO]

Ya know, if you take into account that NOTHING on this planet is truly artificial - it came about by combinations of things that were already here - I guess you could call this stuff natural.

 

[InsaneCdn]

Oh well just lovely.

Can bet the name switch is due to drop in sales due to people not tolerating it well. I don't do diet anything. I only use splenda in my iced tea. Otherwise not a thing. And I can't drink sugar in tea it makes me gag, nor can I do without anything sweetening it. So I'm stuck with splenda, which is just the sugar molecule reversed or some such.

Have you tried using honey?

 

[susiestar]

If you want to try the stevia with-o buying it, either grab a couple of packets at a coffee place or go to truvia or steviacane's websites and ask for a sample. Even if they don't have a sample button, go to the contact page and ask them for one. Let them know you want to try it because the other sweeteners make you sick and if this works you will be thrilled. That is how I got samples to try with-o spending $$ at the store to buy it.

 

[TerryJ2]

Another migraneur. Still won't buy it, no matter what it's called.

 

[Star*]

Stevia? She sounds like the brown headed Barbie that came out in the late 1970s that they tried to market as a stewardess when they sold the Barbie planes.

 

[hearts and roses]

Stevia tastes like bad licorice to me, aspartame gives me slight headaches.

I use agave in my tea and oatmeal and splenda in my coffee. Agave nectar has a lower glycemic index for those keeping track.

 

[BusynMember]

Had no idea any artificial sweeteners caused migraines. I use all of them (Splenda being my favorite) with no bad effects. Honey is great, but high in calories so I don't use it. Stevia...ugh! I hate how it tastes!

 

[Mamaof5]

I get variant migraines with auras from splenda, aspartame & stevia. Straight up sugar please, preferable the all natural and unprocessed stuff please. Sometimes I will resort to brown sugar (honestly all it is is white sugar with molasses or so I've been told).

Ironically, the stevia really gives me a bad, horrible migraine that can last for days.

 

[Marguerite]

Honey is no healthier than sugar, when it comes to calorie counting. The only advantage you MIGHT get form using honey, is the stronger flavour might encourage you to not use so much. But gram for gram, honey and sugar are the same. Honey has a few other trace things in it.

Aspartame - because it is basically amino acids (which do occur naturally, although not usually in isolation) I can understand the application. But they should always contain a warning because people with phenylketonuria have to watch their intake of aspartame because their bodies cannot metabolise some amino acids, in years past before the cause was known, these people ended up with severe brain damage soon after birth.

Isomalt - the sugar molecule reversed - is interesting stuff. Because it does not occur in nature, your body won't recognise it. You can also leave a dish of it down for the ants and they will walk right past it. But because chemically it is identical to sugar (apart from the mirror image) your body tastes it like sugar.
But have you ever noticed? If you suck a sweet, or eat something high in conventional sugar or carbohydrates, you will get a sour taste in your mouth about fifteen minutes later. For a lot of people who do eat sweet foods, this sour taste is a reminder to go have another sweet. But what causes this is the digestive enzymes and bacteria in your mouth beginning the digestive process. However, if what you eat contains Isomalt instead of sugar, you get the same sweet taste but it never changes to sour. I find this makes it easier to cut back on intake.

And if you eat Isomalt, you MUST cut back on intake. Since it is chemically inert in your body, Isomalt does not get broken down into component molecules so it can be absorbed across the digestive tract. Instead, it dissolves (as sugar does) and continues its journey through your GI tract to the big exit sign. However, along the way you have a sugar solution in your gut. If that sugar solution is too concentrated (ie you ate too many Isomalt sweets - for me, two at a time is the max) it has an osmotic effect on your intestinal contents and stops your body extracting water from your small intestine and large intestine. It actually will make you thirstier because your body is trying to dilute the sugar. This also means your poop does not get dried out as much as it should - yup, diarrhoea. And because there is an increased volume there and the GI tract has to shift it along, you get gut aches as well.

So if eating Isomalt causes thirst, gut ache and diarrhoea, it is probably not due to a reaction of any kind. You probably just ate more of it than your body can tolerate at any one time. Break up the amount over a longer period, all according to how fast your body processes food along.

I found Isomalt to be really helpful in weight loss - it trains me away from sugar, because if I have too much I feel rotten. But when I desperately crave something sweet, I reach for my tin of Isomalt sweets. However, eating too many of those (or too many that contain other related substances) gives me trouble. So you do get taught by your own body reaction, to change your eating patterns.

On the thirst issue - anything which causes osmotic issues either in your gut or your bloodstream (salt, for example, or MSG) will make you thirsty as your body tries to deal with it.

I'm physically inactive, unable to exercise, very unfit. I lost 25 Kg over about 9 months but have since (over two years) gained back about 10 Kg. I've currently stopped the increase and I'm trying to turn the weight loss back down. Because I can't exercise (which would make it so much easier!) I have had to do it with diet alone. And that has meant cutting out all sugar (Isomalt excepted), all fruit except strawberries (one serve of other fruit allowed per day), milk only in tea, coffee and breakfast cereal, breakfast cereal that is high fibre and low sugar (and low fat of course), all simple carbs (ie no white flour, no white rice, no potatoes). I switched white to wholegrain and cut back to one slice of bread (wholegrain of course) per day, max. Cutting portion size drastically. Drinking lots of water or equivalent (about 2 litres a day). No more yogurt, no more drinking milk. This also meant having to take vitamin and mineral supplements because such a diet is just not enough. But for me, after years of trying to lose weight with all my other problems, tis is the only thing that worked and I had to do it or face gastric bypass. Instead I chose to eat as if I had already had the surgery, but without having to endure the operation.

I relaxed a lot of my diet rules which to some extent has contributed to the weight re-gain, but it won't be difficult to go back to the strict part of the diet. I made the mistake of going back to drinking milk, and that really piles the weight back on, even if it's skim milk. I did not realise milk would be such a problem with weight.

But sugar - also a huge problem, if you have it regularly or in quantity.

Okay, lecture over.

Marg

 

[HaoZi]

I've never heard of Isomalt, is that a different brand name for something or a totally different animal? I crave salty stuff after I eat sweet stuff. Maybe I'm just weird.

 

[Marguerite]

Maybe it's what it's called in Australia. It's the commercial name for the sucrose isomer (mirror image of sugar molecule).

Marg

 

[susiestar]

I think that Marg's Isomalt is our Splenda, also known as sucralose on the ingredient lists on packages. NutraSweet is AminoSweet-to-be is aspartame.

I am always shocked when people argue that honey is not the same as sugar. It simply isn't logical. Honey does have some benefits, but also some drawbacks - like everythng else, in my opinion.

MWM, the ability to taste stevia as something other than sweet (usually bitter) is genetic. MY college biology teacher had us do a lab where we tested for that as well as other things. It was quite interesting to find out some of what is genetic like the ability to taste stevia as sweet.

I didn't know aspartame caused migraines in people other than my mom, me and my kids until a few days ago. I found it on a webiste when I was looking for info on what they are diagnosis'ing as chronic migraines (more than 15 days per month, keeps you from doing regular activities consistently, and a few other things I ignored because I had the first 2 things and you needed one of about 4 or so things). I thought I would mention the migraine trigger so that if anyone here has migraines they could keep an eye out to see if this is one of their triggers.

 

[AnnieO]

Sucralose was supposed to be the newest sweet wonder. It has the same effect on me as aspartame and saccharine. BLEAH! Possibly migraines - I haven't connected that and have no desire to test the theory - but definitely vomiting.

My theory is... My brain registers sweet and expects the calories to go with it. And then... When it doesn't get it? It gets angry. And my blood sugar drops.

Oh yeah - when my blood sugar drops? I get nauseous and eventually, if I don't do anything about it, I vomit.

So... Could be related, at least in me.