Why you shouldn't have it or anything containing aspartame
by Chris Wheeler
Several weeks ago the Wrigley's Corporation mailed me a sample of their latest product, X.Cite - "40 sugarfree crunch pearls in a resealable package". Its on TV ads and supermarket checkout counters with Airwaves and Extra gum. The artificial sweetener, they all contain, aspartame, has been described as "a Pandora's box of chameleon-like toxins and tumour agents that have 92 FDA (the US food regulatory body) acknowledged ways to ruin your life, death being one of them".
Aspartame is 180 times as sweet as sugar, with fewer calories and it's a 100 per cent certain bet that most New Zealand dieters and diabetics are consuming aspartame in some form with the full approval of their doctors and local diabetic club.
Animals and insects have a lot more natural intelligence than human beings when it comes down to food and they all avoid aspartame - cockroaches won't eat it, cats and dogs won't eat it, ants won't eat it and flies won't eat it - but politicians and food regulators worldwide consider it safe enough for us.
Aspartame, that synthetic, genetically engineered sweetener, is now found in everything from Coke and Pepsi diet drinks, Wrigley's sugarless chewing gum and Weight Watchers products to common drugs and dietary supplements available at your local pharmacy and "health food" shop. Labelled as additive 951 it has been available to the Western diet as a sweetener since 1981 under various brand names - Nutrasweet, Equal, Spoonful, Benevia or Equal Measure.
On food items in New Zealand, usually the only mention of aspartame you'll get is that the item "contains additive 951" or the warning label "PHENYLKETONURICS: Contains phenylalanine", which has to be included for the sake of a small population group of people who suffer permanent brain damage if exposed to any excess phenylalanine in their diet. Medicines do not have to be labelled.
Aspartame is a chemical combination of wood alcohol, aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Wood alcohol chemical name methanol is a cousin of ethanol, the alcohol in alcoholic drinks. Methanol, a very poisonous clear liquid, is mixed with a purple dye to make methylated spirits, used as a cleaner or fuel. In their natural, non-synthetic form both aspartic acid and phenylalanine are present in the human body in minute amounts as essential amino-acids involved in vital body functions. Their presence in these vital functions is carefully monitored by the body's self-correcting mechanisms.
Guzzling Diet Coke or chewing Wrigley's sugarless gum, however, releases excess amounts of these critical chemicals. At temperatures reached in sunbaked drinks seen outside service stations or in the human body, aspartame breaks down into its hazardous components that further degrade into even more dangerous byproducts. Methanol produces poisonous, carcinogenic formaldehyde (embalming fluid) and formic acid (ant sting poison). Phenylalanine converts to diketopiperazine (DKP), a tumour agent. Aspartic acid, though essential to normal brain function, in excess stimulates nerve cells to death, ultimately making holes in the brain.
Most aspartame poisoning victims go on for years getting gradually sicker and plaguing their doctors with symptoms which imitate a host of more easily named conditions. Hardly anyone thinks to query an additive approved by government, regulators and health authorities.
The supporters of aspartame safety including our Australia New Zealand Food Authority (ANZFA now called Food Standards Australia New Zealand FSANZ) admit to the 10% methanol content, but state that fruit has more methanol, which is untrue. Recent studies (e.g. Monte [l984] and Nisperos-Carriedo and Shaw [l990]) using gas chromatography demonstrate that methanol concentrations in fruit are extremely low and are outweighed by an abundance of ethanol, the natural antidote. Aspartame has no ethanol to counter its methanol toxicity.
Ah, but what's the evidence for all these assertions I hear you say?
Aspartame has been one of the most widely investigated food poisons in the past 50 years. It outranks monosodium glutamate (MSG), another popular food additive, in the sheer volume of adverse reactions listed in the over 100 scientific papers now listing aspartame health problems. In a recent survey of aspartame research the pro-aspartame group of scientists - who all asserted aspartame's safety - were all connected with Monsanto or Nutrasweet Corporation either by direct employment or as contractors or consultants.
Aspartame has been documented as causing headaches, numbness, fatigue, blurred vision and blindness, heart palpitations, brain lesions and tumours, memory loss, dizziness, muscle spasms, miscarriages, sexual dysfunction, irritability, anxiety attacks, vertigo, epileptic seizures, rashes, tachycardia, tinnitus, joint pain, nausea, mood alterations and depression, hearing loss, slurred speech, loss of taste, and insomnia, as well as eroding intelligence and short-term memory. It also helps trigger multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, Epstein Barr, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, diabetes, mental retardation, lymphoma, and birth defects.
