An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener

An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener

www.huffingtonpost.com

Aspartame provides food, soft drinks, candy and chewing gum manufacturers with substantial cost savings compared to sugar

It is also used in vitamins and pharmaceuticals, including syrups and antibiotics for children.

In January 1976, then Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner had been charged with falsifying toxicological data on the sweetener.

Under the explicit provisions of the 1958 Delaney Law, which requires an automatic ban on carcinogenic food additives, it is anticip

(visit the link for the full news article)

the prestigious Italian Ramazzini Foundation confirmed that aspartame is unequivocally carcinogenic.

Article also mentions brain tumors, oddly enough it doesn't mention formaldehyde, I found that odd.

Can we finally see a ban on this poison?
I myself do consume it, I love my single malt with diet 7UP, it's lovely.

But I'd much prefer something better and not toxic.



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Just curious.

How much aspartame does a person have to ingest to possibly have toxic effects?

I, personally, try hard not to eat anything that does not have all natural ingredients.

I make most all my food from scratch.

Takes me hours to shop as I read all the labels.

Star and flag for you.

One can only hope it does get banned.

I tell my children that if the agricultural industry, which is mostly owned by the chemical industry, had it there was, they would have the FDA make a law that we can only consume petrochemicals.

Aspertame was a profit-making scam. And until recently, no one even questioned the circumstances under which it was brought to market.

These people develop all these uses for things they can brew up in chemical plants, THEN they tell the FDA to tell us there is nothing wrong with it, and they tell the media that we need to perceive we can't live without it.

Meanwhile, people get sick and die..., nice work MBA's of the world!

i seriously doubt it will get the ban. too much fn money....


i have been telling everyone i know that this stuff is terrible. finally got some old people that email everyone under the sun to pick it up.

side note: i think old people result in 80% of worlds spam mail with their forwarded "jokes" ....

Prohibition Round 6....

i don't like prohibition..., people should choose want they want to put in their bodies...the only thing the government should do warn about the dangers..but that is all..they should not ban...

-- If you think is dangerous to you then don't drink it... there is no reason to take away other people's enjoyment..

This is good, maybe people will wake up and realize what they're eating is dangerous to their mental, psychical, and spiritual health. This makes me glad I grow my own food.

This is wonderful news!

I bet it's even more wonderful news if you have stock shares in McNeil Nutritionals, LLC. that manufactures Splenda.

Although Splenda isn't much of an improvement over Aspartame. You are trading the formaldehyde for chlorine bleach. The health risks of Splenda are a matter of dispute currently.

But now that you mention it, the same could be said about Saccharin, Neotame, and Acesulfame Potassium.

The FDA isn't going to ban all artificial sweeteners are they? Of course they won't! Even if they do issue a consideration to ban Aspartame, it will go the same course as Saccharin did (for those that don't remember, in 1977 the FDA proposed to ban the use of Saccharin, but after fourteen years, in 1991 the FDA formally withdrew their ban proposal. Later, in 2000, the U.S. Congress repealed the law that required products containing Saccharin to carry Warning Labels).

And alas, as far as non-diabetic, natural, sugar alternatives with no recognized health risks, the only viable option is Stevia which is not approved for safe consumption by the FDA because it is classified as an Herbal Dietary Supplement under the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (read: It cannot be patented because it is natural, and therefore it is not marketable in a protectionist economy).

Oh how I wish this would come to be, but having seen this go round once with Saccharin to no avail, I can't say I'm very optimistic.

[edit on 3-8-2009 by fraterormus]

reply to post by ModernAcademia


If they do ban it, it will for once be AN APPROPRIATE GOVERNMENTAL ACTION.
Hell yes. They had some girl on the local news here some years back, subject to seizures from aspartame, and as I recall besides the formaldehyde (which I think occurs during ethanol metabolism in the liver anyways) the local reporter was saying that if it gets heated up (like a 2-liter of Diet Coke on the back seat in the summertime) aspartame turns into methanol, wood alcohol. (Possibly I have the methanol and formaldehyde transposed, either way, it didn't sound good).
I do avoid aspartame completely anyhow.
Now if they would just take the fluoride out of the local water supply (and just for fun ban mercury fillings) I will dress up like a forest creature and sing the colorful folksongs of my homeland...

reply to post by ModernAcademia



We can again thank Rumsfeld and his evil peeps for helping to push this through -
when they knew it was toxic and untested.
I guess he's made enough money off of Tamaflu stocks and sales now -
that he can let this poison go.

Originally posted by dizziedame
Just curious.

How much aspartame does a person have to ingest to possibly have toxic effects?

That, sir, is the key question. Does it take 1000% the normal ingestion rate of a single day's worth of aspartame to produce "toxic" intake, the same way they test on lab mice? Or have they conducted tests with say regular groups of people drinking say three diet sodas per day for years? I doubt it.

You can't rush research by injecting something with a hundred or a thousand times the average intake of something to simulate the "over time" rate of ingestion and expect the result to be the same.

There's so much information on the toxicity of this chemical out there it's overwhelming. Here's a quick example taken from just one (referenced) article that mainly focusses on possible birth defects:

The most disturbing research on phenylalanine is found in recently published studies of its effects on the normal human brain. These studies show that elevated phenylalanine levels caused significant, widespread EEG (brain wave) slowing in neurologically normal subjects. The effects are reversible when the phenylalanine levels are lowered.

Additional research by Woodrow Monte, the director of the Food Science and Nutrition Laboratory at the Arizona State University shows that when aspartame breaks down in the body, it releases methyl alcohol (a brain toxin) into the bloodstream. Dr. Monte thinks the neurological problems reported by aspartame consumers might be caused by this toxic by-product.

It is important for the public to be aware that the safety of aspartame is controversial, (especially during pregnancy) since aspartame may soon be an ingredient in more and more processed foods. NutraSweet, a subsidiary of the Monsanto Company, has recently announced that it has perfected a process to keep aspartame from breaking down at the high temperatures required for baking. This new process could open the door to the $l5 billion-a-year sweet baked goods market.

Source


It's high time this issue was taken seriously by those in a position to do something about it. And that's an understatement.

Originally posted by Next_Heap_With
Prohibition Round 6....

i don't like prohibition..., people should choose want they want to put in their bodies...the only thing the government should do warn about the dangers..but that is all..they should not ban...

-- If you think is dangerous to you then don't drink it... there is no reason to take away other people's enjoyment..

Sorry, but there is a HUGE difference between prohibiting marajuana, booze, etc. and prohibiting cancer causing poisons from purposefully being added to foods for pure profit.

The BIGGEST flaw in your argument is the simple fact that the vast majority of those that partake in aspartame do not KNOW that it is a poison. They are told that it is 'DIET' this and 'DIET' that so it MUST be good for you.

It was a weak argument because prohibition does NOT relate to banning a substance like this poison.

what is to say, that small amounts over time will not show immediate signs of toxic overload, however a slowly administered poison may be harder to detect could show up as cancer as the body can no longer resist the toxins.

Originally posted by ModernAcademia

the prestigious Italian Ramazzini Foundation confirmed that aspartame is unequivocally carcinogenic.

Article also mentions brain tumors, oddly enough it doesn't mention formaldehyde, I found that odd.

Can we finally see a ban on this poison?
I myself do consume it, I love my single malt with diet 7UP, it's lovely.

But I'd much prefer something better and not toxic.



www.huffingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Just curious...
Why ruin the flavor of a single malt with diet soda? If you have a whiskey habit, surely diet soda isn't going to help much anyway. That shot has lots more calories than a glass of 7up.

Originally posted by suicydking
Just curious...
Why ruin the flavor of a single malt with diet soda? If you have a whiskey habit, surely diet soda isn't going to help much anyway. That shot has lots more calories than a glass of 7up.

Well diet 7up tastes slightly different than normal 7UP.
And it seems to go very well with whiskey.

Honestly I usually just use gingerale with whiskey or scotch, but for some reason diet 7up with whiskey gives something different.

reply to post by fraterormus


There's one product that still has saccarine in it, and I can't imagine why it has "gotten a pass" -- Diet Canada Dry Tonic Water. Now, I love tonic water, either with a lovely adult beverage, or just by itself, but don't want to drink even the 6 mg./fl oz.

In regard to Stevia, we've been successful growing it, from seeds from a company in Oregon. U2U me if you want more info. It's kind of a pain inna rear to process it, as it doesn't mix cleanly like sugar does, however it takes a lot less (we're talking about powdered leaves here) than sugar to achieve the same level of sweetness.

We've been off aspartame and splenda for years. Shame that something that tastes sooooo good has to have such ill health effects attached to it. When I read the correlations between breast cancer and aspartame -- while I couldn't directly confirm it myself -- that was enough.

S&F! , Now if they follow through and conduct actual scientific research world wide there would be a permanent ban everywhere (well I would think so ) barring the special interest groups involved with the government don't start to lose profits which they presumably would. I try and inform family and friends about the dangers of Aspartame even though they don't necessarily want to hear it I guess word of mouth does have some power even if it's almost insignificant.

[edit on 3-8-2009 by Solar.Absolution]

Originally posted by mahtoosacks
i seriously doubt it will get the ban. too much fn money....

Yep and you could generate more money finding an alternative... like stevia... Not that it's perfect.. but you get my idea...

Originally posted by sos37

Originally posted by dizziedame
Just curious.

How much aspartame does a person have to ingest to possibly have toxic effects?

That, sir, is the key question. Does it take 1000% the normal ingestion rate of a single day's worth of aspartame to produce "toxic" intake, the same way they test on lab mice? Or have they conducted tests with say regular groups of people drinking say three diet sodas per day for years? I doubt it.

You can't rush research by injecting something with a hundred or a thousand times the average intake of something to simulate the "over time" rate of ingestion and expect the result to be the same.

I suspect anything my genes hasn't been consuming for generations already...

However, you are correct in that lots of this stuff uses crazy amounts... and everything is toxic in some amount.

Either way, I stay away from it as much as I can.

What was wrong with diet sodas just not containing sweetners... just flavors?