WIL: artificial sweeteners

Thomas Hysselinckx
2 min readDec 14, 2021
Hi there!

As I don’t drink alcohol for the moment, and I already drink a lot of water (excuses, excuses…), I indulge myself and have a diet coke now and then. Well, it’s more than that: at noon, frequently, and in the evening I often have on too, decaffeinated that is.

Aurélie and I had a conversation recently about the impact of artificial sweeteners on our health. People always say: “diet coke is bad”, so I took a few minutes to read what the internet thinks about it.

Phenylalanine

Some — every? — artificial sweetened can states:

“Contains sources of phenylalanine”.

Did you ever wonder what it is? In short: it is actually simply an essential amino-acid. Our bodies need it to create dopamine and adrenaline, among others.

It appears to be very difficult to overdose on phenylalanine and what I read is that it in fact can only do harm for people with phenylketonuria, a metabolic anomaly affecting 0,04% to 0,01% of people.

Phenylalanine is found in the sweetener itself, which, in the case of a Pepsi Max, is Aspartame and Acesulphame K.

“Contains a source of phenylalanine”

Aspartame

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Thomas Hysselinckx

Problem solver and entrepreneur, building https://cashplannr.com. Generalist, interested in many different topics. Skier, runner, weight lifter.