What? I thought I heard wrong. So I went online and dug up a confirmation of the doctors' views on this subject.

quote:

---

HUTCHESON: Right, and a number of myths. But let's start there with
aspartame because it's got this, oh, the aluminum in it, you know, it causes
brain problems.
SCHWARCZ: Well, aspartame has all kinds of scare stories. And the reason I
talk about it so much is because those stories are just nonsensical. I go by
the scientific method. That's where my allegiance is, to the peer-reviewed
literature. And there are over 200 studies that attest to the safety of this
product. There are close to 100 million users in North America every day.
It's approved in 90 countries. We have 20 years of safe use. There are
studies at Duke University, studies at MIT, have
shown that there's no problem. Of course, in rare cases you can have people
having headaches, but people drink red wine and have headaches.
HUTCHESON: Exactly. And aspartame would be in products like this, right? In
diet pops?
SCHWARCZ: Oh, it's in products like this. And there are other sweeteners,
too, which are fine.
Sucralose is an approved sweetener. All additives in Canada are approved,
which means that they're studied and they're researched. And there is really
no reason to fear that. Sometimes some sweeteners will portray themselves as
being more natural, like sucralose -- you know, because it's made from
sucrose. But this doesn't hold any water at all. They're all approved and
equal -- sweeteners.
HUTCHESON: And genetic modification is a huge topic now among a lot of
people.
SCHWARCZ: It is. And decidedly so. I mean deservedly so, because there are
questions to ask. But once again, when you look at the scientific literature
and you look to see who's publishing and who's standing on which soapbox and
if you go by just the science you find that the benefits outweigh the risks.
You can never say that anything is completely safe and will always be.

---

quote:

---

Aspartame is banned in all childrens products in the European Common Market. Why not here? Is not the life, health and safety of our children more important than corporate profits and greed?

---

Why is aspartame banned in all childrens products in the European Common Market but fed to us like pigs here in North America?
Check out the website posted for a list of companies using this poison and their products.

quote:

---

NOTE On the European Common Market Aspartame is banned for all children's products. Why not in Canada and the USA? Because Monsanto pays off the FDA, the American Medical Association, The American Dietetic and Diabetic Associations, Congressmen and Senators and virtually anyone who gets in the way, and in other countries too. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation caught them red handed and aired a program where Monsanto was trying to bribe a couple of Canadian Doctors at Health Canada.

Author Peter Sills writing in the Toronto Globe and Mail said, after a three and a half year court case against Monsanto, brought by railroad workers exposed to dioxin following a train derailment had ended and in which the jury awarded a $16 million in punitive damages against Monsanto, "The evidence of Monsanto executives at the trial portrayed a corporate culture where sales and profits were given a higher priority than the safety of products and it's workers. They (Monsanto) just didn't care about the health and safety of their workers. Instead of trying to make things safer, they relied on intimidation and threatened layoffs to keep their employees working.

---

Dr. Joe Schwarcz is the director of McGill University’s Office for Chemistry and Society.

Edited to read "Why is aspartame banned in all childrens products in the European Common Market but fed to us like pigs here in North America" vs. "Why is aspartame banned in Europe ... "

[ 01 March 2005: Message edited by: mary123 ]

quote:

---

Why is aspartame banned in Europe but fed to us like pigs here in North America?

---

It is not banned in Europe, but used in a number of products. In fact, the European market is saturated with a number of artificial sweeteners. It is virtually impossible to find a juice in the UK that has not had the sugar removed and substituted with a sweetener, all so that the label can read 'Sugar-free!'

quote:

---

Aspartame is one of the most dangerous food supplements ever approved by the FDA.
The FDA's approval of NutraSweet was very murky in the first place. That's why the FDA will never admit it's harmful, even though it did publish a list of serious reactions to NutraSweet. All the FDA says is that victims of aspartame poisoning are either "mistaken" or "over-reacting."

My own daughter was first incapacitated due to Aspartame poisoning about twelve years ago, but she was consuming diet soda for perhaps two years before anyone realized what it was doing to her. She had epileptic-type seizures, a drastic personality change, and unbelievable intellectual changes. She began to lose her memory. She also had many other problems from Aspartame including a loss of some of her vision. She stopped consuming diet soda after a long fight that nearly drove us insane. There was no Internet then, so my husband and I had to spend nearly a year writing to doctors and scientists all over the country to collect information to convince her to stop drinking Aspartame. We even took her to a hospital in Boston and had electrodes implanted into her brain for three days to see what was going on. The "what" was clearly Aspartame Poisoning.

All her problems were a direct result of her consumption of Aspartame/NutraSweet. She finally stopped drinking sodas containing Aspartame, and she had a complete recovery and has had an excellent job since then. (My daughter is a brilliant girl who once won a prestigious scholarship in competition with more than one million students from the entire country. To see her nearly destroyed by diet soda was devastating.)

---

Go ahead Dr. Joe Schwarcz and consume this stuff on a regular basis and we'll see how much of a vegetable you turn into.

Speaking of vegetables, President George Bush is also an avid consumer of these aspartame laced soft drinks.

From the Will Thomas website.

quote:

---

Choka Cola
Another big clue to Dubya's displays of dementia comes in "photo-ops" showing him slugging back diet Coke with other Aspartame addicts, like Chicago's mayor Richard Daley. Their beet red faces spell either embarrassment over Bush's hijacking of America, or aspartame poisoning. [Chicago Sun Times, Sept. 27, 2002]

According to Carol Guilford, an Aspartame expert and support worker, the President-Select's "pretzel" pratfall was most likely an Aspartame seizure. Bush, like Carter, Al Gore and millions of Americans, is addicted to this constant caffeine hit. Among the FDA's listed 92 symptoms for Aspartame poisoning are: "Difficulty Swallowing", "Fainting" and "Unconsciousness".

Bush's facial lesions, removed as a result of "Too much sun" is another sign of Aspartame poisoning. So was his recent knee surgery: Aspartame depletes synovial fluid lubricating the joints.

Would you drink 6 to 12 cans of formaldehyde a day? It turns out that methanol in Aspartame converts to formaldehyde in the tissues. As Guildford wrote to USN Captain Eleanor Marino, Physician to the President (Feb. 21, 2002): 10% of a 200mg can of diet soda is straight methanol wood alcohol! Methanol is such a gross cumulative poison, the EPA's limit for drinking water is 7.8 mg daily. For serious addicts like Bush, the methanol intake can exceed 32 times the EPA's recommended limit..

Now the punch line: Clinical case studies shows that, among other symptoms, Aspartame ingestion results in "mind fog", feeling "unreal", poor memory, confusion, anxiety, irritability, depression, mania, and slurred speech. [Neurology 1994]

Alcohol-related brain damage is not helped by chugging formaldehyde. James Turner, consumer protection lawyer and author of The Chemical Feast learned that an Oct. 1980 FDA inquiry found that the formaldehyde formed by Aspartame actually eats microscopic holes and triggers tumors in the brain.

That finding banned Aspartame from the food supply. But three months later, Searle CEO ***Donald Rumsfeld *** told that pharma giant's sales staff he would get Aspartame approved pronto. The next month, the FDA commissioner was replaced by Dr. Arthur Hayes. In Nov. 1983 the FDA approved aspartame for soft drinks. Under fire for accepting corporate bribes, Hayes went to work for Searle's public-relations firm. Searle lawyer Robert Shapiro coined the name NutraSweet. Monsanto bought Searle. Rumsfeld received $12 million for his help. Shapiro now heads Monsanto.

The same "revolving door" swings wide for arms makers and the oil mafia. The Big Question is: Why hasn't Dick warned George that the diet drinks he's swilling are eating his brain and making him crazy?

Crazy? Am I calling the President-Select of the Excited States crazy? Not me. As a journalist, I can only point out that published medical evidence goes frighteningly far in explaining GW's behavior. For certain, this good ol' boy should go in for a brain scan before being allowed to command more firepower than the next 11 nations combined. If George W. Bush is not crazy - he's sure acting like it.

---

[ 01 March 2005: Message edited by: mary123 ]

Helk even sugar is.

And mary123, its common practice to include the link to the stories you post (electrode girl's story is no where to be found in the links you posted, or at least not by me).

quote:

---

Originally posted by mary123:
Stevia is a far healthier alternative to aspartame.

Helk even sugar is.

Funny that.

---

Unless, of course, one happens to be a diabetic, in which case, I don't imagine it would be too "funny".

Sugar is healthy? So tell us, when did obesity and tooth decay become healthy?

That having been said, I wish the "aspartame is bad!" people would learn some freakin' biochemistry and learn what phenylalanine actually is.

The hint is in the postfix "alanine". This is alanine! Gosh golly me, look at that! It's an amino acid! SO HARMFUL!

This points out that alanine by itself is not a necessary amino acid in humans, but that does not, of itself, make alanine or its derivatives harmful to humans, since we have the metabolic capability of breaking down any amino acid, once ingested into the body, into its most basic constituents.

For the chemistry and biochem folks among us, some more technical info on the L isomer.

[ 01 March 2005: Message edited by: DrConway ]

[ 01 March 2005: Message edited by: DrConway ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by DrConway:
Cyclamates, funnily enough, seem to induce cancers in rats/mice but not in humans. I suspect that the greater body mass of humans makes it harder to reach the threshold.

---

quote:

---

That having been said, I wish the "aspartame is bad!" people would learn some freakin' biochemistry and learn what phenylalanine actually is.

---

The most egregious claims about aspartame have to do with the fact that aspartame is a methyl ester, and can hydrolyze to produce methanol (methyl alcohol). Certainly this is a deadly poison, but it is not a carcinogen (at least there is nothing to suggest that it is one on its MSDS) so below a certain threshold level it will not be a hazard. You'd have to eat a huge amount of aspartame to get anywhere near a dangerous amount of methanol being produced, and that much aspartame would taste so crappy that you'd probably puke it up before it could hurt you anyway.

[ 02 March 2005: Message edited by: Mike Keenan ]

quote:

---

Unless, of course, one happens to be a diabetic, in which case, I don't imagine it would be too "funny".

---

I am not diabetic, but I'm supposed to limit my intake of refined sugars and carbohydrates for health reasons (well, really it'd probably be better if mosts people would do that...) but I still get cravings for sweetened beverages once in a while. Although I'd rather get cola sweetened with stevia, it's not available as far as I know.

As to how sugar is conventionally produced... that is freaking scary and nasty business, and the less sugar I consume, the better I feel, morally speaking.

It can however be called a "food suplement" or something like that. I buy a stevia-sweetened simulated maple syrup and I think it's legal because it's cosidered a baking ingredient rather than food itself. It's pretty easy to bake with and works well enough as syrup (not as good as real maple syrup, but better than any aunt jemima I've tried).

I find stevia works really well in lemonade (either pwdered or liquid extract) and reasonably well with fruit baking (muffins and the like). It does not work well with chocolate though.

quote:

---

Originally posted by PereUbu:

Unless, of course, one happens to be a diabetic, in which case, I don't imagine it would be too "funny".

---

Yes funny how sugar can be and is a life saver for diabetics. Let me explain it all to you, sweetie.

In emergency situations, ok, if you are diabetic, right, and oh you have, say, a low blood sugar reaction (ie hypoglycemic) you will need to raise it, and FAST.

Well you will go to 'tada' sugar.

Diet soft drinks with get this, *** aspartame *** will not raise your sugar level if you have hypoglycemia. And off into coma you go.

Bye-bye!!

PereUbu, this link's for you, cause education is a wonderful thing!

And swirrlygrrl I have finally posted the correct link to the quote you mentioned.

[ 01 March 2005: Message edited by: mary123 ]