You'd better drink a glass of cola than fresh orange juice

Say wine, snacks or haute cuisine and the food lovers of online food magazine FavorFlav know where to drink, how to eat and what to cook. This time our chefs serve: a light cola and no orange juice.

Do you want to eat healthy and watch your weight? Then you’d better take a glass of light cola than freshly squeezed orange juice, which saves you more than a hundred calories. And that sweetener? Completely safe, says professor of nutrition Martijn Katan.

Many people are suspicious when it comes to aspartame, the sweetener in many light soft drinks, such as Coca-Cola Light. Unhealthy, you could get heart and vascular diseases, behavioral problems, and cancer, if you believe alternative websites. Total nonsense, professor Katan makes clear in his book Nutritional Myths.

Strange substances
What is aspartame actually? They are sweet-tasting pieces of protein, he describes. It contains methanol (ouch, that sounds risky). No worries, says the professor. That methanol also occurs naturally in fresh fruit. In high quantities, it is harmful, you could go blind from it, but in a liter of light soft drink, there is as much methanol as in half an apple.

17 liters per day
If your light soft drink is past the expiration date, diketopiperazine can form. A scary name, but an innocent substance, the professor explains: ‘You can drink up to seventeen liters of expired light soft drink per day for a lifetime without getting a harmful amount of diketopiperazine.’

Ridiculous amount
Okay, in theory, light soft drinks with aspartame are not bad for you, and even better than regular soft drinks or a glass of orange juice when it comes to calories. But does that also show in practice? Professor Katan refers to a stack of scientific studies, and it also turns out that aspartame poses no risks. What about the link between aspartame and cancer? Studies with rats show that laboratory animals that were given a lot of aspartame had a higher chance of developing bladder cancer. They were fed such ridiculous amounts of aspartame, sometimes a thousand times the normal dose, that the sweetener formed crystals in their bladder. Those crystals damaged the bladder, and that eventually increased the chance of cancer in the rats.

Tap water
Conclusion of the professor: ‘Few E-numbers are scrutinized as closely as E-951: aspartame.’ So it is safe. But he does not recommend drinking too much light soft drink. They contain few calories, but they are just as acidic as regular soft drinks or fruit juice, so they are bad for your teeth. Just take a glass of tap water, he advises.