I have read the book up to OWL. So I'm a little confused the website says no "aspratame" ( I hope thats spelled right) and the book says you can have it So why can you or can't you have? Please explain this to me! I know I have seen a thread about this and there has probaly been many but I can't find them even with the search option.

Well a website might be more 'up to date' information than even the most recently published book. (I assume it's the www.atkinscenter.com website?)

Dr. Atkins never did like aspartame as an aritificial sweetener. He preferred us to use Splenda (sucralose) or Stevia. I think it was because of the possible, although unproved, side effects.

Lots of people use it and have no problem and do lose successfully. Perhaps you could use Sugar Twin which is saccharin in the US. (In Canada, Sugar Twin is made from cyclamate.)

I think the major consumption of aspartame is in diet pop or 'soda'. These also contain citric acid as part of the flavour & Atkins said that citric acid can be a staller.

So if you need something sweet, it's probably better to have something with Aspartame than with sugar. You'll just have to see how things go for you.

I don't know which page of the book you're referring to, but Dr. A clearly recommends against consuming Aspartame.

Aspartame has the most toxic profile of any of the artifical sweeteners around at the moment, and is clearly linked with headaches.

Dr. A also believes that it can promote insulin resistance.

Avoid it, if at all possible. If not, don't sweat it.

I have the paper back and on pages 97 and 98 it says aspartame is acceptable and on the next page it says to monitor it.

You may want to just try aspartame and see if it has any effect on you. I'm one of the lucky ones who it does not have an effect on but if my husband uses it in his coffee, he stalls.

I would think aspartame would be better for you than saccharin - didn't that kill mice back in the 70's? Or was that just mice who drank alot of Tab??

All the stuff I have read is that Splenda is the preferred, aspartame is ok instead of sugar as long as you do not have a reaction. A lot of people do have reactions to it (headache, stall etc.)

You might want to find yourself a copy of the latest edition of DANDR.
In the 2001 edition he says, "We discourage the use of aspartame (marketed as Nutrasweet and Equal) because of questions about its safety."

Rosebud

Oh, very bad for you!!! This coming from a former dietcoke-a-holic. The stuff that makes it up is toxic and if it goes bad, can do damage to your insides. I know a woman (who knows someone...yada yada) who had a bad can of soda and was rushed to the hospital. I'd never heard of 'bad' soda but apparently it can happen with this stuff. I don't have my copy of my book handy right now, but I do remember reading that Dr. Atkins discouraged its use, not recommended it.

Nope, Saccharine didn't kill the rats. What happened was, the Sugar industry paid for some studies where they fed rats obscene amounts of pure Saccharine (the equivelant of hundreds of pounds a day in humans.) Some of the rats developed bladder cancer. Saccharine has never been shown to cause problems in Humans...and as of a few years ago, products made with it no longer require a warning label.

Aspartame OTOH, was administered to 7 monkeys. 6 of the 7 monkeys had seizures which stopped when they stopped taking Aspartame. The 7th Monkey died during the study. All [but one] of the studies performed on Aspartame and not paid for by NutraSweet found at least one problem with it. All the studies performed by NutraSweet were rigged. For example, Aspartame was sometimes given in slow-dissolve tablets instead of quickly absorbed powder [like you would find in SF Foods.] In some studies, they used equipment so old and innacurate it could only detect Methanol and its byproducts in very high concentrations.

That's like taking a carb tester [if there is such a thing] that only detects carbs if a food has at least 5g...Then, when it doesn't detect any, declaring that the food has "no detectable carbs." The insinuation is that it has 0g, which would not be true...it just has less than the machine can detect.

Alot of other crap like this went on in the NutraSweet Sponsored studies. Since NutraSweet did most of the studies, they proudly announce that hundreds of studies showed their product to be safe. Of course, the studies showed it to be safe...They performed all of those studies themselves. Noone's gonna do a study in a way that would show their product to be harmfull. That is why you should ignore all the studies done or paid for by NutraSweet. That leaves a good number of studies, all but one of which found problems with Aspartame.

Saccharine is the only Artificial Sweetener that's been around long enough (140 years) to see if it causes any long-term side effects. There have been a few (could probably be counted on one hand) complaints to the FDA since they first started something like 45 years ago about side effects from Saccharine. None of those were for major problems. In comparison, Aspartame which has been out only 20 years...generated 10,000 consumer complaints of side-effects before the FDA stopped taking new complaints. I'd rather use Saccharine anyday.

It is discouraged, but as for the rest, that's the kind of misinformation and rumor that urban legends are made of... Kind of like getting breast cancer from wearing a bra, or antiperspirant giving you cancer because you can't "sweat out" waste..nevermind the millions of OTHER sweat glands still functioning...<sigh>

Ahhhh..... the pleasant memories of drinking a bottle of Tab before work in the mornings. Cola with a "bite" that kick-started the day. Yum. Actually prior to saccharine Tab was sweetened with cyclamates (before they were banned in the US). The taste of TAB changed after that - it got milder - not so much of the "bite" that I liked about it. I stil would prefer to drink TAB instead of Diet Coke, but it tends to be sold at retail everywhere and almost never is on sale. Last spring Publix had a sale including TAB and my robotics team students actually bought me some to keep me happy on the long bus trips (so I wouldn't fuss at them too much, I guess). They think I'm strange for liking Tab.

I've never had any problem with any kind of sweetener stalling me, even sugar alcohols (.... in moderation tho...). But that may be just my metabolism and the fact that I'm only trying to lose about a pound or two a month at this time. With losing that slow it's kind of hard to notice a stall.

Joan

I will try to find out the info, but I don't think that it being bad for you is misinformation at all. I have heard from more than one person - albiet, non-experts on the subject - that its not good for you at all and there are toxic materials used in the making of the stuff.

Gotta say, I never heard the antiperspirant one before! Too funny!