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it’s a wee mixer! whee!

63456_lAin’t it cute! I’m waiting with bated breath for the arrival of my next toy – that Denon mixer over there. I’m mildly concerned though – the sound card I had shipped last week was via USPS Express International which was tracked from the moment the seller logged the item for shipment online. This time, it’s coming via USPS Priority Mail International which has markedly mixed reports around the internet.

So I think it was sent last Tuesday – and I do have a tracking number. The concerning bit is just that it’s been nearly a week now and USPS track & confirm still says “There is no record of this item.”

I hope it’s en route and it’s just that some slackers haven’t bothered to scan it. I want toys, dammit! Ah well, time will tell.

Update: So it, uh, hadn’t actually been shipped yet. That would be why there was no record of it. And here I was getting all excited it would arrive soon! I blame independence day.

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right, so the methanol/formaldehyde claim…

Blood is a pH buffered solution, and the average adult has around 5 liters of it. A standard can of diet coke has approximately 200mg of aspartame, 10% of which is metabolised to methanol. That 20mg of methanol is metabolised rapidly by alcohol dehydrogenase into formaldehyde. This formaldehyde is then rapidly metabolised into formic acid via formaldehyde dehydrogenase – alcohol dehydrogenase is the rate limiting step in this process. By and large, the pathological effects of methanol are related to metabolic acidosis (a drop in blood pH) from build-up of formic acid.

I’ve been messing around with the chemistry for an hour or so, but am way too out of practice to write anything sensible about it. So for now, I’m going to go with the following bits and pieces I’ve found out:

  • The lowest recorded fatal dose of methanol is 6 grams. That’s 300 times the amount of methanol produced by the metabolism of one can’s worth of aspartame.
  • Methanol is metabolised with a half-life of around 1.5 to 2 hours in humans at levels found in artifically sweetened drinks, fruit juices and red wine.
  • A glass of tomato juice contains enough pectin to produce approximately 85mg of methanol during metabolism – as compared to apple juice (21mg) and diet coke (20mg).

Draw whatever conclusions you like from that. Perhaps when I’ve got a bit more free time I might have another stab at calculating the ability of blood to buffer the formic acid. If you feel like having a stab, here’s a journal article outlining the buffering capacity of human blood.

Oh and check out this article too, on aspartame metabolism relating directly to methanol production.

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on the home stretch

Oh yeah. On the home stretch now. Three and a half more days to go. Oh yeah, and I just ordered a Denon DN-X120 off eBay. eBay spree!

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it’s okay, people. the diet coke isn’t going to kill me.

Aspartame-3D-ballsI drink quite a bit of diet coke. Probably two cans, each day that I work. I’m forever being told by people “that’ll give you brain cancer you know” or “that stuff’s gonna kill you!”

I admit, it’s not the best habit to be drinking some kind of synthetic beverage a couple of times a day. It’d probably be more healthy if I drank water instead. However, water doesn’t taste fizzy and delicious so I choose the browner, tastier option. There are several fronts on which people base their concern but certainly the most adamant opposition is due to the use of aspartame as an artificial sweetner. Here’s a quote from the FDA in 1999: “[aspartame is] one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved.” Just putting that out there, to begin with.

Over the next little while, I’m going to try and bust up some myths using a collection of theoretical biochemistry and citation of empirical studies. I want to debunk the toxicity of each of the first-order metabolic products of aspartame – methanol, phenylalanine and aspartic acid.

I’ve half-written and half-researched methanol thus far. I intend not only to quote the numerous studies and facts everyone else does, but also to show theoretically that the amount of methanol produced from the metabolism of aspartame is far from enough to overcome the blood’s various pH buffering mechanisms. It is metabolic acidosis which leads to the typical symptoms of methanol poisoning.

If I’m not bored after debunking aspartame, I’ll treat you to a couple of other debunkings I’ve come across – like the one about how caffeinated beverages dehydrate you.

Stay tuned! I’m on my little high-horse!

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shitty days and new toys

edirol_fa66_fbGod damn I had an arse day yesterday. 8 or so hours of slightly incoherent, fragmented teaching on 5 hours of sleep. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing worse than trying to teach a class when feeling confused and tired.

On the plus side, I bought the delightful Edirol FA-66 firewire soundcard you see to your right over the weekend. Now I just have to wait for it to be shipped. Toys! Oh and I bought a new wardrobe, but that’s far less exciting.

Edit: Okay, there are worse things. But it’s still pretty bad.