From: "Steve Harris" <sbharris@ix.netcom.com>
Newsgroups: sci.chem,sci.med.nutrition,sci.med
Subject: Re: What's in "Splenda" sweetener?
Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2003 14:40:22 -0800
Message-ID: <b0n6jg$mrn$1@slb4.atl.mindspring.net>

Eric Bohlman wrote in message ...
>Jonathan Silverlight <jsilver@merseia.fsnet.co.uk> wrote in
>news:lUc9koQlBuL+Ewdc@merseia.fsnet.co.uk:
>
>> Am I right in thinking that aspartame is a problem if you have PKU?
>
>Yes, though I think more so in children than adults (IIRC, children with
>PKU have to eliminate phenyalanine completely, whereas adults can tolerate
>a little more since the main concern is the effect on the developing
>brain).



Wrong.

Look, Einstein, pheyllalanine is an essential amino acid. Obviously any
child who got NONE of it would die. So the trick is in a growing kid with
PKU is to get enough phenylalanine for growth (14 mg/kg/day), but not too
much (somewhere upward of 20 mg/kg/day). Notice that the toxic amount is
only about 50% more than the required amount, and that's what makes the
disease tricky.

However. The amount of phenylalanine in any amount of Nutrasweet any kid
would realistically ingest (100 mg in a 12 can of diet soda), is a fraction
of the amount of phenylalanine which any growing kid (with PKU or not) needs
to stay alive and grow (a 40 kg kid needs 14x40 = 560 mg a day). That being
true, you will now realize that the flap about NutraSweet needing to be
labeled for phenylketonurics is somewhat of a piece of hysteria. There's
about as much of the stuff in a can of diet soda as there is in 2 ounces of
milk. But hysterics sometimes have a lot of political power, which is why
diet soda is labeled as though it was death food for phenylketonurics, but
milk isn't.

SBH