The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #85433 Message #1582522
Posted By: beardedbruce
13-Oct-05 - 03:29 PM
Thread Name: BS: Coca-cola Zero
Subject: RE: BS: Coca-cola Zero
nope, again. Try reading
"Like many other peptides, aspartame may hydrolyze (break down) into its constituent amino acids under conditions of elevated temperature or high pH. This makes aspartame undesirable as a baking sweetener, and prone to degradation in high-pH products requiring a long shelf life. Aspartame's stability under heating can be improved to some extent by encasing it in fats or in maltodextrin. Aspartame's stability when dissolved in water depends markedly on pH. At room temperature, it is most stable at pH 4.3, where its half-life is nearly 300 days. At pH 7 however, its half-life is only a few days. Most soft-drinks have a pH between 3 and 5, where aspartame is reasonably stable. In products that may require a longer shelf life, such as syrups for fountain beverages, aspartame is sometimes blended with a more stable sweetener, such as saccharin."
"Scientists agree that approximately 10% of aspartame (by weight) is broken down into methanol in the small intestine. Most of the methanol is absorbed and quickly converted into formaldehyde. Some scientists believe that the methanol cannot be a problem because: a) there is not enough methanol absorbed to cause toxicity, b) that methanol and formaldehyde are already a by-product of human metabolism, and c) that there is more methanol in some alcoholic beverages and fruit juices than is derived from aspartame ingestion. [12] [13]
Other scientists believe a) fruit juices and alcoholic beverages always contain protective chemicals such as ethanol that block conversion of methanol into formaldehyde, but aspartame contains no protective factors; b) that the levels of methanol and particularly formaldehyde have been proven cause chronic toxicity in humans, and c) that the low levels of methanol and formaldehyde in human metabolism are tightly-controlled such that significant increases from aspartame ingestion are not safe. "