Viva la Diet Drinks, Aspartame and All

I received a post recently, and feel it a good idea to go ahead and reply in an entry for all to see .

BugzyGrass writes...”I just wanted to know if you have done any research on some of the ingredients in diet sodas?? The one that I am referring to in particular is ASPARTAME. Please Google ASPARTAME and read some of the info that you find...you will find that although regular sodas have sugar, they are safer than their diet counterparts. I guess diet sodas are more effective, however...there is no better form of weight loss than death!!!”

Why reply publicly? Because chivalry is not dead, and I feel obligated to defend the honor of not only myself, but all those diet drink lovers out there and the millions who consume aspartame-containing products.

In answer, yes I have done some research on diet soda ingredients. I like to know a little about things before I put them into my body, whether a food ingredient, drink, supplement, etc. And as a competitive athlete in college, I was (and still am) concerned with proper nutrition.

It is fairly common knowledge that urban legends run RAMPANT around the web. While the entertainment value may be high, a great deal of info available on the web is not substantiated by any facts. And just because web sites are found in search engine results, they are not necessarily the most accurate sources of info. Here are a few sites that refute the inaccuracies presented on all those aspartame “scarelore” sites:

About.com Urban Legends
Snopes.com - Kiss My Aspartame
American Council on Science and Health

So there you have it… Viva la diet drinks!!