Aspartame & insects in food...

What should a company do if its product has already fallen into disrepute due to potential negative health effects? Take the product off the market? Actually yes, in reality unfortunately no.

Because many companies are not really interested in customers receiving high-quality products that are good for their health. Instead, it's all about making money again. The pharmaceutical industry is ultimately responsible for health again.

Specifically, this is about the Ajinomoto company. The manufacturer of aspartame has now renamed its product with the beautiful name “ AminoSweet ”. Same product, same ingredients, different name. The AminoSweet is now sold as a “natural sweetener” and healthy alternative to sugar.

Do you notice anything? Amino, as in amino acid, is something we associate with something positive. After all, amino acids are important building blocks for the human body. So you can also sell it directly as a fitness product, right?

Why is aspartame harmful?

Aspartame is probably the most controversial and rumored sweetener. For every study that describes aspartame as harmful, there is a counter study and vice versa. However, the studies that are pro-aspartame are mostly financed by the sweetener industry and are therefore not very meaningful. Instead, the anti-aspartame studies tend to come from independent scientists.

Known effects of aspartame on metabolism include allergies, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, vision problems, lymph gland cancer, leukemia, brain tumors and headaches (Source 1, at the bottom).

So be careful in the future if you discover the ingredient “ AminoSweet ” on a product. Especially if you are allergic to this substance.

It is better to be critical of an industrially manufactured product too often than too rarely. Finally, there are plenty of healthy alternatives, such as stevia: https://www.hs-activa.com/products/stevia

Anyone who would like to know exactly why aspartame is potentially harmful can find out more here:

If aspartame is heated to more than 120 degrees in water-poor foods (e.g. in cake), it becomes acrylamide . And acrylamide is considered carcinogenic and a threat to fertility.

Everyone's favorite Diet Coke, fruit quark and other cold foods can also contain aspartame (around 6,000 products worldwide). When we eat and digest products containing aspartame, the two amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine as well as the alcohol methanol are formed. These are also the three starting materials in the production of aspartame.

Let’s take a closer look at what these three substances are all about.

Phenylalanine is produced in the USA using genetically modified bacteria. It is currently unknown whether the EU also handles this in the same way.

The methanol released during the digestion of aspartame is further broken down into the carcinogenic substance formaldehyde . However, the risk of cancer only increases with high consumption of aspartame, as the amounts of formaldehyde are rather low. However, methanol also affects the dopamine system in the brain and is addictive.

Aspartic acid is active in the human body, among other things, as a neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. It is therefore involved in the signal transmission of around 100 billion nerve cells in the brain.

It is important that the neurotransmitters are always present in the body at a certain concentration. If this concentration increases or decreases due to external influences, this can have a strong impact on our health.

It is therefore suspected that aspartame could upset the balance of neurotransmitters because it consists of 50% aspartic acid. For example, depression, anxiety, hyperexcitability, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease are associated with this.

However, there are also many foods that naturally contain a lot more aspartic acid than the sweetener aspartame. It could also be that the unnaturalness of the aspartame and/or the special combination of ingredients is the problem. Or, reasons that have not yet been explored.

The fact is that no one can say specifically why aspartame could be problematic. However, based on the evidence available so far, it is a fact that it could be problematic (Source 2).

History of aspartame

In 1965, aspartame was discovered by chemist JM Schlatter. He actually wanted to discover a medicine against ulcers and mixed the two naturally occurring amino acids aspartic acid and phenylalanine. He discovered that the combination of these two substances had an intensely sweet taste.

The accidentally discovered sweetener, which was originally intended to become a drug, was finally approved by the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) in 1970. Interesting fact: the chemist JM Schlatter, who discovered aspartame, worked for Searle & Company, which is a subsidiary of the Monsanto corporation.

Aspartame is an artificially produced sweetener from a chemical company's kit ...

Insects in our food

And while we're talking about ingredients that can be harmful to consumers, new EU regulations in January approved two new forms for eating insects, hailing them as the food of the future .

What initially sounds a bit disgusting but otherwise like a natural source of protein can actually have harmful effects on our bodies.

A research team from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of León has now come to this conclusion. More research is needed before normalizing the intake of insects into the food chain, say the scientists.

During their investigations, they found some toxic and nutritionally harmful substances in the insects, which currently make daily consumption not recommended .

The different substances in insects can, among other things, reduce the absorption of vitamins and minerals, disrupt the bioavailability and digestion of proteins, inhibit vital enzymes or be toxic in certain quantities .

Some beetles also contain the steroid hormone testosterone, which, when consumed regularly, can lead to “growth retardation, hypofertility, masculinization in women, edema, jaundice and liver cancer” (source 2).

Allergy sufferers should also be careful when choosing their industrially processed foods, as the different substances naturally pose a previously unknown level of allergy risk.

The insects in food, like other food additives, are marked with E numbers. We are happy to provide you with a list of products and E numbers that hide insects as a PDF for you to download.

Download here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0053/2535/7146/files/Insekten-Lebensmittel-Blacklist.pdf

• Source 1: Soffritti M et al., “Aspartame induces lymphomas and leukemias in rats” Eur. J. Oncol., vol. 10, n. 2, pp. 107-116, 2005 (German: “Aspartame causes lymphoma and leukemia in rats.”)

• Source 2: Academy of Naturopathy, distance training specialist advisor for holistic health, 2021 by Swiss Education Center AG, 16th edition 2021, pp. 172-173
• Source 3: https://www.agrodiario.com/texto-diario/mostrar/3774350/estudio-ule-concluye-consumo-insectos-conlleva-riesgos-salud