re what are the problems with nutrasweet aspartame 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 phenylalanine is nothing for you to worry about it is an amino acid and everyone uses small quantities of it for protein synthesis in the body some people have a disease known as phenylketoneurea and they are missing the enzyme necessary to degrade this compound and eliminate it from the body for them it will accumulate in the body and in high levels this is toxic to growing nerve cells therefore it is only a major problem in young children until around age or so or women who are pregnant and have this disorder it used to be a leading cause of brain damage in infants but now it can be easily detected at birth and then one must simply avoid comsumption of phenylalanine as a child or when pregnant heather if i remember rightly pku syndrome in infants is about they lack two genes and people who lack one gene are supposed to be persons those with pku have to avoid naturally occuring phenylalanine and those who only have one gene and underproduce whatever it is they are supposed to be producing are supposed to be less tolerant of aspartame the methol formaldahyde thing was supposed to occur with heating i don t drink it i figure sugar was made for a reason to quickly and easily satiate hungry people if you don t need the calories it s just as easy to drink water used to drink a six pack a aday of aspartame soda don t even drink one coke a day when sugared
