“So, you know that artificial sweetener that soft drink companies are telling you is perfectly safe? Well, aspartame might be safe, but apparently it’s made with, um, a bacterial byproduct. And not even a natural byproduct, but genetically-modified bacteria byproduct. Anyway, the patent for aspartame production, filed in 1981, is now available online, and it turns out that aspartame is made by feeding genetically modified E. coli bacteria, harvesting their protein waste (which contains the aspartic acid-phenylalanine amino acid segment aspartame is made from) and then adding methanol to the harvested proteins. So think about that the next time you chug down your morning Big Gulp of diet soda.

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