ASPARTAME FACTS

Aspartame is marketed as Nutrasweet, Equal, or Spoonful, and is found as a sugar substitute in many “diet” foods and drinks; most notably diet soda pop drinks.

Aspartame is 180 times sweeter than sugar but has no calories.

Aspartame started out in 1965 as a drug being developed for the treatment of ulcers.

Aspartame accounts for more than 75% of all adverse reactions reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) with 90 types of documented reactions including:

• initiation or aggravation of diabetes
• convulsions
• depression or other psychiatric states
• headaches and tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
• hyperthyroidism
• hypertension
• arthritis
• stimulation of Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer’s and Lupus
• carpal tunnel syndrome
• an apparent causative role in brain tumors
• hypoglycemia
• a neurological condition in overweight young women called pseudotumor cerebri
• fibromyalgia symptoms; including spasm, joint pain, cramps, leg numbness

Aspartame consists of phenylalanine and aspartic acid (amino acids) and methyl ester. The first two are amino acids that are normally supplied by foods we consume. In those foods they are harmless due to the presence of other amino acids. When they are separated out, however, they enter the nervous system in abnormally high concentrations and act as neurotoxins (toxic to the nerves), causing damage to neurons and even cell death.

Methyl ester breaks down into methanol after ingestion. Methanol is a nervous system toxin also known as wood alcohol. Methanol is further metabolized into formaldehyde (a known carcinogen and neurotoxin) and formic acid (the poison in ant stings).

The journal, Navy Physiology and Flying Safety, reports that a pilot who drinks a diet pop is more susceptible to vertigo, epileptic activity, memory loss, dizziness and gradual loss of vision.

Nutrasweet gained FDA approval without ever undergoing human testing.

Eric Millstone, a researcher at the Science Policy Research unit of Sussex University, documented the following facts about the research that got Aspartame on the market:

• Laboratory tests were faked and dangers concealed
• False and misleading statements were made to the FDA
• Tumors were removed from lab animals, and animals that had died were “brought back to life” in order to confuse or hide research results
• A crucial fetal safety study was conducted by a researcher whose sole experience was a field study of a cottontail rabbit for the U.S. Forest Service
• The two U.S. attorneys charged with bringing fraud charges against Aspartame manufacturer G.D. Searle Company, took positions with Searle’s law firm after the case dragged on long enough that the statute of limitations for the prosecution ran out
• A Public Board of Inquiry in 1980 resulted in a three-person vote that unanimously rejected the approval of aspartame. The FDA commissioner, Dr, Arthur Hull Hayes, created a five-person commission to review the PBOI decision. He realized they would uphold the PBOI decision by a 3-2 vote. He then added another panel member creating a deadlocked vote allowing him to cast the deciding vote for aspartame approval.
• Shortly after that vote Dr. Hayes took a consulting position with Burson-Marsteller, G.D. searle’s public relations firm.

The best advice is that if a product says sugar free on the label, “Don’t even think about it!”