Blog & Food Journal

My husband is an absolute DIET COKE junkie!  (I don't drink the stuff.)  My kids have always seen their Dad drinking pop.  They know that they are not allowed to have Diet Coke, but of course, pop (or should I say soda :) is one of their favorite treats to this day (particularly Rootbeer).  We have a standing "tradition" that the kids each get a can of pop every Sunday.  They can have it with dinner or open it in the morning and take sips all day long.  It is something they look forward to with eagerness and not necessarily something I want to take away from them.  I recognize that there is absolutely NO nutrient value in pop, but I guess this is one area that I chalk up to my 10% rule (eat 90% healthy and don't worry about the other 10% too much).

Anyway, I have gotten into the habit recently of buying diet pop.  Mainly to try and avoid high fructose corn syrup.  I decided this week to do a little research to answer my own question:  How bad is Aspartame....really?

Well I was blown away by the research.  The short of that answer is REALLY REALLY BAD!  It is a toxic chemical!  (Remember that toxic is anything that has the ability to cmutate our cells).

There is so much information out there on ASPARTAME that it is almost overwhelming.  The good, the bad and the ugly are available to anyone that is looking.  I truly believe that you can find any opinion that you are looking for.  I recently had a family member (another Diet Coke addict) say that he had researched the Internet to find out more about Aspartame.  He concluded that the evidence that he found said that it was fine (which included a long endorsement from the FDA).

My experience (not surprisingly) was completely the opposite.  I am now writing in words my commitment :  I WILL NEVER AGAIN GIVE MY KIDS DIET POP!  Even as I am writing this, I am questioning my ability to stick to this statement.  But I have made up my mind. NO MORE ASPARTAME.  There is WAY TO MUCH EVIDENCE showing the incredible dangers of this chemical.  And remember, it is a chemical. 

Aspartame was invented in a laboratory quite accidentally.  For over eight years the FDA refused to approve it because of the seizures and brain tumors this drug produced in lab animals.

In 1981 it was approved in only dry foods.  After a few "rearrangements" of FDA commissioners (with deep pocket friends/manufacturers) it eventually became approved in soft drinks.  Since then it has earned it's status as the single additive with THE MOST COMPLAINTS TO THE FDA. Aspartame accounted for more than 75% of all adverse reactions reported to the FDA's Adverse Reaction Monitoring System (ARMS).  The book "Skinny Bitch" was the first time I had ever heard of the history behind Aspartame.  The authors go into great detail regarding the efforts made by the manufacturers to get it FDA approved (they even hired one FDA commissioner to work for them after he suspiciously resigned as commissioner).  MONSANTO manufactures Aspartame (Get familiar with this company - they are not necessarily consumer advocates).

I won't get into anymore details about how we now have this "sweet" little toxic chemical in so much of our food chain.  All I can do is try to convince some people out there that our bodies were not meant to consume it.  Here's the low down on it:

• Aspartame (nutrasweet) breaks down into methanol (wood alcohol).
   
• Methanol quickly converts to formaldehyde in the body.
   
• Formaldehyde causes gradual and eventually severe damage to the neurological system, immune system and causes permanent genetic damage at extremely low doses.

Here are a few professional opinions on Aspartame:

DR. BLAYLOCK - "With the public concern over childhood obesity and diabetes few are being told of the overwhelming evidence that early exposure to excitotoxins as found in aspartame consistently produce gross obesity and insulin resistant diabetes, just as we are seeing in our youth. The promoters of aspartame use have been lying from the beginning and continue to use their money and political clout to cover up the real and present dangers of this toxic product."  

DR. MARTINI -  (Founder of Mission Possible International, a worldwide volunteer force which for 14 years has exposed chemical sweeteners) "How shall we count aspartame atrocities? Our FDA once listed them, named 92 symptoms from more than ten thousand volunteered complaints by American consumers. Their Buchenwald list included four kinds of seizures, blindness, sexual dysfunction, mental destruction and death. Then FDA shut the report window and no longer take and tabulate reports. I've sent them more cases than they listed, but you can't get the death list now; they deny it existed. Think of FDA simply as the branch office of the pharmaceutical industry in Washington!"

For even more overwhelming evidence that we need to AVOID ASPARTAME there is a website that is dedicated to this exact message.  www.dorway.com