Why Aspartame Might Play a Role in Your Bad Breath Problem

There’s a raging debate about aspartame, better known under the brand names Equal, Equal-Measure, NutraSweet and Spoonful.

Aspartame has been blamed from everything from panic attacks and seizures to vision impairment, memory loss and migraines. What’s more, a recently concluded Italian study showed that it caused cancer in lab rats, although the FDA pooh-poohed these findings, saying they were at odds with other controlled studies on aspartame.

And another symptom that’s sometimes linked with aspartame use is … you guessed it, bad breath. Not surprising, since bad breath can often accompany underlying health problems.

The irony here is that many people suffering from bad breath pop mints and chew gum like there’s no tomorrow. And if they’ve done a little reading about this, they realized that products with sugar can make their breath worse, leading tooth decay-causing bacteria to multiply in their mouths. The upshot? Seeking relief from halitosis, these people often unwittingly turn to products containing aspartame.

Anecdotally, some people who have chewed aspartame-containing gum throughout the day, for smoking-cessation purposes or just out of habit, have reported developing a case of bad breath that could only be solved by stopping their intake.

But it’s the potentially larger health implications of ingesting this controversial substance on regular basis, whether through chewing gum or diet sodas, that deserves your focus. If you’re knocking back aspartame-containing sodas like Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi in an attempt to get your caffeine fix without the possible bad-breath effects of coffee, you might want to reconsider. And if you really want to stop but need a motivator, check out My Aspartame Experiment, a sobering (and graphic) study of rats fed aspartame-sweetened water over a period of two-plus years.

As for breath mints or chewing gum, what you really need are products with xylitol, which actually improves the bacterial situation in your mouth. Read labels carefully, though, because some products trumpeting “xylitol” on the packaging also contain aspartame, a much cheaper sweetener.