Is Aspertame made from E. coli?

Gary Cook

Active Member
[...]

I have been hearing about Aspartame and seemingly new information about a patent that mentions that it is produced by e-coli.

Would be useful for me to see whether people here think it is bunk or not.

Seems like a potential health issue but I don't believe everything I read on the internets of course.

Sincerely.
 
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I would like to know if and where can I post a question on this forum about a theory I have been hearing?

It is about Aspartame and seemingly new information about a patent that mentions that it is produced by e-coli.

Would be useful for me to see whether people here think it is bunk or not.

Seems like a potential health issue but I don't believe everything I read on the internets of course.

Sincerely.

Personally don't touch the stuff, but that's down to the taste rather than anything else. If it's going to be a health risk, then the millions who have been using the stuff for decades should be better placed to tell us than the process used to make it. It's just science, and we get all kinds of good things from weird places.
 
First bacteria do not poop!

Here is some information for you on this


The Manufacturing
Process

Although its components—aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol—occur naturally in foods, aspartame itself does not and must be manufactured. NutraSweet' (aspartame) is made through fermentation and synthesis processes.
Fermentation

Direct fermentation produces the starting amino acids needed for the manufacture of aspartame. In this process, specific types of bacteria which have the ability to produce certain amino acids are raised in large quantities. Over the course of about three days, the amino acids are harvested and the bacteria are destroyed.

1 To start the fermentation process, a sample from a pure culture of bacteria is put into a test tube containing the nutrients necessary for its growth. After this initial inoculation the bacteria begin to multiply. When their population is large enough, they are transferred to a seed tank. The bacterial
Aspartame
strains used to make L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine are B. flavum and C. glutamicum respectively.
2 The seed tank provides an ideal environment for growing more bacteria. It is filled with the things bacteria need to thrive, including warm water and carbohydrate foods like cane molasses, glucose, or sucrose. It also has carbon sources like acetic acid, alcohols or hydrocarbons, and nitrogen sources such as liquid ammonia or urea. These are required for the bacteria to synthesize large quantities of the desired amino acid. Other growth factors such as vitamins, amino acids, and minor nutrients round out seed tank contents. The seed tank is equipped with a mixer, which keeps the growth medium moving, and a pump, which delivers filtered, compressed air. When enough bacterial growth is present, the contents from the seed tank are pumped to the fermentation tank.
3 The fermentation tank is essentially a larger version of the seed tank. It is filled with the same growth media found in the seed tank and also provides a perfect environment for bacterial growth. Here the bacteria are allowed to grow and produce large quantities of amino acids. Since pH control is vital for optimal growth, ammonia water is added to the tank as necessary.
4 When enough amino acid is present, the contents of the fermentation tank are transferred out so isolation can begin. This process starts with a centrifugal separator, which isolates a large portion of the bacterial amino acids. The desired amino acid is further segregated and purified in an ion-exchange column. From this column, the amino acids are pumped to a crystallizing tank and then to a crystal separator. They are then dried and readied for the synthesis phase of aspartame production.[ex/]


Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-3/Aspartame.html#ixzz2nohGVhB3


A process using an enzyme from Bacillus thermoproteolyticus to catalyze the condensation of the chemically altered amino acids will produce high yields without the β-form byproduct.[ex/]


In some markets, aspartame manufacture takes advantage of modern genetic laboratory processes. A plasmid introduces genes into E. coli bacteria; the genes are incorporated into the bacterial DNA and they increase production of enzymes that enhance the production of phenylalanine. The bacteria produce more phenylalanine, serving as little living factories. The phenylalanine these workhorses produce for us is exactly the same as phenylalanine from any other source. It is disingenuous and inflammatory to characterize it as “derived from excrement.” Genetic processes like this are widely used today. One stunning example is Humulin. Diabetics used to develop allergic reactions to the beef and pork antigens in insulin derived from cows and pigs because it was slightly different from human insulin and contained impurities. Scientists found a way to put human insulin genes into E. coli bacteria and put them to work producing true, pure human insulin. This was such a great advantage to diabetics that animal insulins are no longer even available.[ex/]

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/are-artificial-sweeteners-safe/
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I would like to know if and where can I post a question on this forum about a theory I have been hearing?

It is about Aspartame and seemingly new information about a patent that mentions that it is produced by e-coli.

Would be useful for me to see whether people here think it is bunk or not.

Seems like a potential health issue but I don't believe everything I read on the internets of course.

Sincerely.
All a little like insulin then

http://www.abpischools.org.uk/page/modules/diabetes/diabetes6.cfm?coSiteNavigation_allTopic=1
 
Personally don't touch the stuff, but that's down to the taste rather than anything else. If it's going to be a health risk, then the millions who have been using the stuff for decades should be better placed to tell us than the process used to make it. It's just science, and we get all kinds of good things from weird places.

I would agree that there is worse health risks out there but at the same time something like that just doesnt sound healthy to me. Its not exactly natural. I would prefer just to consume sugar in moderation, personally. I think the real issue is whether people should just be more responsible for their health. Because, if they are act recklessly and cant control their consumption they will end up consuming all sorts of man-made nonsense.
 
I would agree that there is worse health risks out there but at the same time something like that just doesnt sound healthy to me. Its not exactly natural. I would prefer just to consume sugar in moderation, personally. I think the real issue is whether people should just be more responsible for their health. Because, if they are act recklessly and cant control their consumption they will end up consuming all sorts of man-made nonsense.
It's just science. We see the word e-coli and think the worst. Science has taken all manner of toxins and poisons and turned them into medicine. Hell, the whole concept of vaccines is that you take something that can make you ill and administer it in small doses to switch on the immune system. The venom from snakes, bacteria, mold, all are used as a base for modern medicine.

Read the links provided, science uses e-coli as a kind of manufacturing process to make other things. It's not that weird when you've studied biology. Still, the immediate reaction to anything that has e-coli is a knee-jerk fear. Understandable, to a point, as e-coli can kill.
 
Just to clear E. coli's name a bit, human E. coli will not kill/harm you unless it gets into the bloodstream. E. coli is part of the normal flora of the gut, so most strains are harmless to humans. The one that most people hear about in the news and that is potentially lethal is E. coli 0157:H7, which comes from cattle and produces toxins that will make you sick. Most labs that test for food/water quality will test for E. coli because it's mostly used as an indicator organism. Since these labs normally receive a lot of samples they can't test for every pathogen out there. Each pathogen requires different conditions to grow and it would take far too much tme and resources to test for all of them. Instead, we can test for E. coli and other indicator organisms (known as coliforms) to let us know that there is contamination in the samples we are testing and say that the presence of harmful organisms is likely. The logic being that if there is E. coli there, then it is likely that some sort of fecal contamination is present, which would mean that other potentially harmful enteric pathogens (giardia, norovirus, enterobactericea, etc.) are likely to be present.

So the fear of something being made by and extracted from E. coli is flawed in the first place.
 
E. coli is often the prefered organism due to the ease with which it can be genetically manipulated. Most of my genetics in ny first year Biology involved lab work with it, as was my microbiology.
 
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