re what are the problems with nutrasweet aspartame in article apr uvm edu hbloom moose uvm edu heather writes nutrasweet is a synthetic sweetener a couple thousand times sweeter than sugar some people are concerned about the chemicals that the body produces when it degrades nutrasweet it is thought to form formaldehyde and known to for methanol in the degredation pathway that the body uses to eliminate substances the real issue is whether the levels of methanol and formaldehyde produced are high enough to cause significant damage as both are toxic to living cells all i can say is that i will not consume it aspartame is the methyl ester of a dipeptide so a product of its hydrolysis is going to be methanol which can then be oxidized to formaldehyde the amounts of methanol formed from the ingestion of aspartame containing foods are completely in the metabolic noise since you re forming equally minute amounts of methanol from other components of food all the time in studies involving administration of high doses of the additive blood methanol levels were undetectable methanol is a poison only in quantities seen in human poisonings say ml and above this is a consequence of its oxidation to formaldehyde and formic acid two quite reactive compounds which at high enough levels can damage tissues like the retina and kidney because at such high doses the body s detoxification system is overwhelmed interestingly one treatment for early methanol poisoning is to get the person drunk on ethyl alcohol vodka or an equivalent that s because ethanol is metabolized preferentially over methanol by the enzymes in the liver if the methanol stays as methanol and isn t metabolized to formaldehyde it is actually relatively non toxic steve dyer dyer ursa major spdcc com aka ima harvard rayssd linus m c spdcc dyer
