I beg to differ Mrs B has PKU and aspartame in food and drink is a nightmare.
the claim that the two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid have neurotoxic effects. This is true in certain individuals and in high enough doses. The only subpopulation of individuals potentially susceptible to adverse effects from phenylalanine is homozygous phenylketonurics and in this case, food itself with much higher levels of phenylalanine from the protein in the diets contributes much higher toxicity for these unfortunate individuals. For those individual phenylketonurics that want to carefully control their intake levels of phenylalanine, they can do that by simply taking into consideration the amount of phenylalanine supplied by the aspartame product or, even more likely, simply refraining from use of these products. The USFDA requires that the aspartame product be labeled specially for phenylketonurics patients so that they will be aware of its presence in these products. As for the other amino acid in aspartame, the levels of aspartic acid ingested with aspartame use are many fold less than those levels responsible for causing adverse effects on the brain of animals and/or man. In fact, it is not clear that the experimentally derived data from animals is relevant to man. In any case, the levels of aspartic acid intake from aspartame are many fold below those needed to mediate neurologic effects.
Isn’t that basically like saying that she is allergic to aspartame? No-one claims that peanuts are evil because some people are allergic to them.
