I've seen lots of concern about preservatives, colors, and flavorings in foods as well, but sweeteners have a more pronounced role as replacements for sugar. This makes them far more visible in general.

Aspartame also rapidly "breaks down into residual components, including aspartic acid, phenylalanine, methanol, and further breakdown products including formaldehyde and formic acid" on ingestion. [1]

Even with no smoking gun for cancer, why would anyone tempt fate after reading that?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame#Metabolites

You forgot the second half of the paragraph from your source:

> Human studies show that formic acid is excreted faster than it is formed after ingestion of aspartame. In some fruit juices, higher concentrations of methanol can be found than the amount produced from aspartame in beverages.

Also:

> Aspartame consists of two amino acids—aspartic acid and phenylalanine. When ingested, aspartame is broken down into these amino acids for use in protein synthesis and metabolism. In addition to aspartic acid and phenylalanine, aspartame digestion also yields a small amount of methanol, a compound that is naturally found in foods like fruits and vegetables and their juices. The amount of methanol resulting from consuming an aspartame-sweetened beverage is about five to six times less than that resulting from the same volume of tomato juice.[1]

[1] https://foodinsight.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-as...

Yep I earned those downvotes, thanks.

That's a useful website.

Since who drinks tomato juice, really, another way to put it is that you'd need about 20 large Diet Cokes (32 oz each, no ice) per day to get the same amount of methanol as from a diet rich in ripe fruits (1000 mg/day).

https://cot.food.gov.uk/sites/default/files/cot/cotstatement...

Methanol basically comes from fermentation or digestion of pectin, so it’s in pretty much all fruits and fruit byproducts in small quantities. It’s really not a problem in small doses, in fact your breath will have a small but measurable amount of it at pretty much all times. You really have to try to get enough methanol to poison yourself.

That’s some weapons grade FUD you got there.

First the dose makes the poison and second, all of those compounds are naturally occurring in humans as part of our metabolism. The pathways responsible for metabolizing proteins and keeping us alive produce them.

Just love how you selectively quote that paragraph. The following sentence is: In some fruit juices, higher concentrations of methanol can be found than the amount produced from aspartame in beverages.

In other words, all of those compounds are fairly simple small molecules and will be found abundantly in nature. There is no indication that aspartame leads to the breakdown of larger quantities then many "natural" foods.

Damn bro your first comment got insta-killed, I wonder whose mad

Anyway, not everybody gets o-chem in their lives, but we all have an opinion on the news.

All I want to know is what does it say about my biology that aspartame tastes like shit to me.

I've always thought they tasted terrible.

Their taste is definitely odd. It’s sweet but not really, and often leaves a soapy aftertaste. The only way I can deal with it personally is if the food in question is flavorful enough to drown out the strangeness, in which case it probably didn’t need sweetening much anyway.

You get used to it after a while. I actually sometimes prefer a Coke Zero because of its unique taste (though I try to avoid soda altogether.)

They taste different to cane sugar / corn syrup but good/bad is subjective and something you get used to. I used to not like it but now my taste adjusted it and now I don't like the "real sugar" flavor.

I agree, but maybe that’s because it gives me a headache.

At least, I think it does. I can never remember which sweeteners do - some do, some don’t. I don’t eat them enough to keep track.

It's a big category. Aspartame has a really distinctive taste, but lots of sweeteners like sucralose and allulose not so much.

I can recommend tagatose.[1]

It tastes and feels indistinguishable from ordinary table sugar to me.

[1] - https://www.wired.com/2003/11/newsugar/

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagatose