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We had a pretty good idea of what aspartame was, but we searched for the word in Yahoo! to make sure we were right. It came as no surprise that aspartame is the generic name for the artificial sweetener marketed as NutraSweet and Equal. Taking the direct approach, we typed www.nutrasweet.com into our browser's location field. We eventually made our way to the site's Consumer Center, where we found the answer in the Student FAQs section: Aspartame is largely made of two building blocks of protein called amino acids. The two amino acids are aspartic acid and phenylalanine (as the methyl ester). Aspartic acid helps our bodies convert food to energy, and
infants and children especially need the phenylalanine found in such foods as milk and meats for building muscles. The third ingredient, called a methyl ester, is also found naturally in fruits, tomato juice and other foods. The Equal web site at www.equal.com had nothing to say on the subject. There are a lot of critics of aspartame these days, many of whom charge that the artificial sweetener causes any number of health problems. Head over to Yahoo!'s NutraSweet Kelco Company > Consumer Opinion category to explore the controversy from both sides.
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