• Day 130: Stay Away from Aspartame!

    Date: 2010.07.07 | Category: Uncategorized | Tags:

    I should talk, really, because I’ve slipped a bit with my ban on Diet Coke in recent weeks after not drinking any for months.   But I know how horrendous the chemical sweetener aspartame – which is found in Diet Coke as well as a billion other products – is for living things.

    By the way, for a great blog about giving up the devil’s favorite beverage, check out my friend and NBC super-exec Kevin Goldman’s A Year With Diet Coke (yes he freely admits getting the idea from me!)

    Read Dr. Joseph Mercola’s screed against the Satanic sweetener aspartame in today’s Huffington Post here and also as reprinted below:

    Aspartame is the most controversial food additive in history, and its approval for use in food was the most contested in FDA history. In the end, the artificial sweetener was approved, not on scientific grounds, but rather because of strong political and financial pressure. After all, aspartame was previously listed by the Pentagon as a biochemical warfare agent!

    It’s hard to believe such a chemical would be allowed into the food supply, but it was, and it has been wreaking silent havoc with people’s health for the past 30 years.

    The truth is, it should never have been released onto the market, and allowing it to remain in the food chain is seriously hurting people — no matter how many times you rebrand it under fancy new names.

    The Deceptive Marketing of Aspartame

    Sold commercially under names like NutraSweet, Canderel and now AminoSweet, aspartame can be found in more than 6,000 foods, including soft drinks, chewing gum, table-top sweeteners, diet and diabetic foods, breakfast cereals, jams, sweets, vitamins, prescription and over-the-counter drugs.

    Aspartame producer Ajinomoto chose to rebrand it under the name AminoSweet, to “remind the industry that aspartame tastes just like sugar, and that it’s made from amino acids — the building blocks of protein that are abundant in our diet.”

    This is deception at its finest: begin with a shred of truth, and then spin it to fit your own agenda.

    In this case, the agenda is to make you believe that aspartame is somehow a harmless, natural sweetener made with two amino acids that are essential for health and present in your diet already.

    They want you to believe aspartame delivers all the benefits of sugar and none of its drawbacks. But nothing could be further from the truth.

    How Aspartame Wreaks Havoc on Your Health

    Did you know there have been more reports to the FDA for aspartame reactions than for all other food additives combined?

    In fact, there are over 10,000 official complaints, but by the FDA’s own admission, less than 1 percent of those who experience a reaction to a product ever report it. So in all likelihood, the toxic effects of aspartame may have affected roughly a million people already.

    While a variety of symptoms have been reported, almost two-thirds of them fall into the neurological and behavioral category consisting mostly of headaches, mood alterations, and hallucinations. The remaining third is mostly gastrointestinal symptoms.

    This chart will familiarize you with some of the terrifying side-effects and health problems you could encounter if you consume products containing this chemical.

    Unfortunately, aspartame toxicity is not well-known by doctors, despite its frequency. Diagnosis is also hampered by the fact that it mimics several other common health conditions, such as:

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