One of the biggest hoaxes the public has bought into in the past
several years is the artificial sweetener, aspartame. Aspartame
is sold under several trade names, including Nutrasweet, Equal,
Spenda, and others. All of these are very effective sweeteners
and help to eliminate sugar from your diet. Aspartame has no
nutritional value, is quite inexpensive, and is often used as a
weight control product.
If the story stopped here, aspartame would be a real boon to
society. We would have a better handle on the obesity problem.
But, unfortunately, the story does not stop here. Aspartame is a
dangerous chemical that has no real upside while having very
many real downsides. Let's look at some of them.
Aspartame is a chemical that apparently crosses the blood-brain
barrier and affects the thinking mechanisms. The symptoms of too
much aspartame in the system are very close in effect to those
of Alzheimer's. The memory, both short and long term, becomes
much less effective. Heavy users of aspartame may begin to
forget simple things and lose their ability to discriminate
between simple memory functions and things that are long
standing habits.
If you are a long-term user of aspartame, or one of those more
sensitive to it, people who know you well may be able to sense a
difference in your thinking and emotional behavior. But the
differences will be subtle and slow in developing, so detection
may be difficult. Even your best friends may not notice the
changes for a while.
So, what is the solution to this problem? The obvious solution
is to understand the consequences of aspartame consumption and
to begin reducing or eliminating aspartame from your diet.
Awareness is a key factor in reducing aspartame consumption.
Aspartame is generally found in just about any food or beverage
advertised using words like "diet", "no sugar", "low calorie",
"non-fattening" and "sugar free". Other phrases are also used
that are easily recognizable.
It will pay you great dividends in terms of health and happiness
to learn about the trade names for aspartame, and then to avoid
them when shopping for groceries. Once you know and understand
the terminology for aspartame, the rest is easy. You can quickly
become adept at identifying the unwanted foods just by scanning
the ingredient declaration on food labels.
With a little knowledge and some practice, you will soon become
skilled at being able to choose tasty, healthy and nutritious
foods when you shop!
(Note: This article is the opinion of the author and may or may
not be substantiated by scientific fact.)
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