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Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

foodscienceinstitute.com

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Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#41

Post by ChuckMcM »

colordrops wrote: post #34
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement about the toxicology of methanol is correct, but as the article alludes too, and the referenced paper goes into detail on, the dosage is below the point where it harms people. (I don't recall off hand if they considered an infant being fed an entire can of soda in the paper so I'm not going to say that as a blanket statement) As for the toxicology limit. If the maximum amount of methanol has been creat…

Is damage from methanol not cumulative? My understanding is that it rubberizes nerve and brain tissue.

Apparently not at the levels of hydrolyzed aspartame: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482121/

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#42

Post by theGeatZhopa »

coldtea wrote: post #10
zainhoda wrote: post #8

Recently I went to my office for the first time since the pandemic started. The Diet Coke in the office fridge tasted HORRIBLE.

Sorry, that was me. Had a Zoom meeting and couldn't leave the kitchen where the meeting's start found me for like 3 hours.

DON'T EAT THE CHOCOLATE MUFFIN！

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#43

Post by ChuckMcM »

robk wrote: post #40
ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does! (less water, so less hydrolysis) "name brand" syrup however isn't particularly economical at retail however[1]. Not too surprisingly there has been a rash of restaurant bankruptcies during the pandemic and so buying "used" soda fountain gear is actually pretty easy (at least in the western US) these days. I actually have an Elkay "water machine" which does carbonation (as well as chilled and not chilled stil…

Hello old Google coworker I had the same setup in Fort Mason in 2004 and was able to get the SF wholesaler to sell to us pretty regularly. Iirc it became a lot easier lately to just find generics on eBay and worry less about getting the hookup. Diet red bull was the holy grail but we found an okay proxy on eBay too.

Nice! And yes, I did consider the ebay route for a while but I felt I didn't have a good handle on how bad "bad" syrup could be.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#44

Post by pjerem »

ck2 wrote: post #29

Diet soda and artificial sweeteners is a gateway crutch. Took years to stop drinking soda and decade of diet but finally kicked it. Worth the effort and recommended. Everyone is quick to hand wave "doesn't cause cancer" blah blah but what they hop and skip over is it definitely changes gut microbe for the worse.

Actually, I totally stopped drinking any soda just by replacing it by sparkling water (self made with sodastream). It just worked (for me) and I can’t drink a coke anymore without having nausea due to the high sugar dosage.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#45

Post by fshr »

Ilverin wrote: post #31
Gigachad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Aspartame is one of the most studied and tested substances on the planet and they still haven't linked a single problem to it. At least not one that doesn't relate to sweeteners in general. Nothing else has gone under so much scrutiny (Maybe MSG). Seems like a too good to be true situation where people can't accept its actually this good.

It causes higher blood pressure and is statistically associated with heart problems. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/do-you-really...

I'm curious if that accounts for the effects of the caffeine in most diet sodas.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#47

Post by tapland »

eitland wrote: post #15
narag wrote: post #12

I noticed a similar thing with regular Coca Cola years ago. Some PET 2 l bottles went stale and tasted terribly, like mold. Other people thought that it wasn't so bad, but did detect the bad taste after being told about it. I suspected it was an effect of sunlight on sugar, but had no way to know for sure. Nobody would admit that the bottles were transported or stored in inadequate conditions either. Then I quit regu…

Here in Norway I think "Pepsi Max" was the gold standard for years while diet Coca Cola mostly sold because of the brand name. Then something happened: Coca Cola launched Zero and after a few iterations it tasted good! Meanwhile Pepsi Max always yaste stale now since the start of the pandemic or something. I don't really know what happened and it could just be my taste changing but I don't think so.

Same observation in Sweden. So I'm not going crazy! Not sure if our Pepsi is bottled in the same place, but our Coca Cola isn't.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#48

Post by thrown_22 »

>Later, when he licked his fingers to turn a page, he discovered a very sweet taste. Since he realized that the compound he made was unlikely to be toxic, he tasted it and found it extremely sweet indeed. In fact, aspartame is about 200 times as sweet by weight as sugar.

This is horrifying.

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#49

Post by chroma »

colordrops wrote: post #34
ChuckMcM wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement about the toxicology of methanol is correct, but as the article alludes too, and the referenced paper goes into detail on, the dosage is below the point where it harms people. (I don't recall off hand if they considered an infant being fed an entire can of soda in the paper so I'm not going to say that as a blanket statement) As for the toxicology limit. If the maximum amount of methanol has been creat…

Is damage from methanol not cumulative? My understanding is that it rubberizes nerve and brain tissue.

Methanol is toxic because it is eventually metabolized into formic acid (the same venom used by ants) which interferes with cell metabolism.[1] If the amount of formic acid is high enough, cells can't maintain homeostatis and die. Certain cells with higher metabolic demands (such as nerve cells) die first. If the dosage is below that threshold, you're fine.

The FDA considers 0.5mg/kg/day of methanol to be unlikely to cause deleterious effects for a person's lifetime. For a 70kg person that would be 35mg per day. For comparison: a can of diet soda has less than 200mg of aspartame. Assuming 100% of the aspartame breaks down into phenylethylamine, aspartic acid, and methanol, then less than 10% of that mass would be methanol, or less than 20mg. So even if you drank an entire can of disgusting old diet soda every day, you'd still be below the FDA's threshold for cumulative damage and you'd be nowhere near the threshold for acute methanol poisoning.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol_toxicity

Re: Why does my diet soda taste off? Aspartame hydrolysis

#50

Post by INTPenis »

ddtaylor wrote: post #21

Is the "jury still out" on Aspertame causing health problems like cancer?

Problem is that it's not alone on the market. These new proteinbars that are flooding stores here in Sweden have a careful balance of THREE different sweeteners just to get away with the low sugar content.

They do taste amazing but I'm skeptical to anything unnatural.

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