60 Minutes on the artifical sweetner Aspartame

USDA Certified Organic’s Dirty Little Secret: Neotame

By Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

Just when we thought that buying “Organic” was safe, we run headlong into the deliberate poisoning of our organic food supply by the FDA in collusion with none other than the folks who brought us Aspartame. NutraSweet, a former Monsanto asset, has developed a new and improved version of this neurotoxin called Neotame.

Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. (Holisticmed.com)

But surely, this product would be labeled! NOT SO!!! For this little gem, no labeling required. And it is even included in USDA Certified Organic food.

The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:

• USDA Certified Organic food items.
• Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels. (Janet Hull)

I told you not to drink that crap when you were pregnant

Danish population study shows link between diet soda consumption and pre-term birth.

(Natural News) Regular consumption of artificial sweeteners by pregnant women may increase their risk of premature birth, according to a study funded by the European Union and published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Researchers interviewed almost 60,000 pregnant Danish women about their soft-drink consumption, then compared these data with the results of the women’s births. They found that drinking one can of diet soda per day increased her risk of giving birth prematurely by 38 percent compared with women who never drank diet soda. Drinking four or more of the beverages per day increased the risk of preterm birth by 78 percent.

A preterm birth is defined as taking place before the 38th week of pregnancy.

No connection was found between sugared soda consumption and premature birth, suggesting that artificial sweeteners may be playing a role in the effect. The researchers suggested that premature births may be triggered in part by the neurotoxin methanol, which is generated by some artificial sweeteners. Sweeteners may also generate formaldehyde, another known toxin.

Read more on Natural News…

I’ll move this rant down below cause I’m not trying to make this all about myself, but my blood is boiling right now so I’ll tell you about my personal experience with methanol pop and pregnancy..

I literally BEGGED my (now x) wife when she was pregnant with our son to stop consuming diet coke.  The “compromise” we arrived at was to reduce it to 1 can per day.  Luckily he wasn’t premature but the toxic effects of methanol and formaldehyde are well known so it would be foolish to assume it had no effect.

It was as obvious to me then as it is now that pregnant women should not consume the stuff at all.  Nobody should, but when you hold someone else’s future in your hand/womb, please try to use common sense.   I know the phenylalanine in it is addictive, but you can quit, especially if it means protecting your baby and placenta from methanol and formaldehyde.

Being vindicated by this study is no consolation at all.  I’m just sorry for my son that I wasn’t able to confince his mom to do the right thing.  He’s totally healthy, but I find it pathetic that some women don’t want to give their children every possible advantage in life.  Diet coke is disgusting, and has no redeeming value.  Aspartame is addictive and poisonous and was rammed thru the FDA by some nasty political maneuvering on the part of president Ronald Reagan and Monsanto/Searle.

So congratulations.  I told you and you refused to listen.  You put our kid at risk for some tangy chemical soda, and mark my words, increased preterm birth risk is only the tip of the iceberg when poisoning a fetus with methanol and formaldehyde.  We may not know the impact of what you did for years. We may never know.  Hope it was worth it!

Note to other expecting parents:  Formaldehyde is what we use to embalm DEAD babies. We don’t feed it to the live ones.

Here’s a documentary about it:

Choosing healthy foods now called a mental disorder

Tuesday, June 29, 2010
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger

(NaturalNews) In its never-ending attempt to fabricate “mental disorders” out of every human activity, the psychiatric industry is now pushing the most ridiculous disease they’ve invented yet: Healthy eating disorder.

This is no joke: If you focus on eating healthy foods, you’re “mentally diseased” and probably need some sort of chemical treatment involving powerful psychotropic drugs. The Guardian newspaper reports, “Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder” and goes on to claim this “disease” is called orthorexia nervosa — which is basically just Latin for “nervous about correct eating.”

But they can’t just called it “nervous healthy eating disorder” because that doesn’t sound like they know what they’re talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn’t). That’s where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means “bones with holes in them”).

Getting back to this fabricated “orthorexia” disease, the Guardian goes on to report, “Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out.”

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there’s something wrong with you.

But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be “normal?” If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that’s okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

What is “normal” when it comes to foods?

I told you this was coming. Years ago, I warned NaturalNews readers that an attempt might soon be under way to outlaw broccoli because of its anti-cancer phytonutrients. This mental health assault on health-conscious consumers is part of that agenda. It’s an effort to marginalize healthy eaters by declaring them to be mentally unstable and therefore justify carting them off to mental institutions where they will be injected with psychiatric drugs and fed institutional food that’s all processed, dead and full of toxic chemicals.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, “The obsession about which foods are “good” and which are “bad” means orthorexics can end up malnourished.”

Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating “good” foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That’s about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I’ve ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

Shut up and swallow your Soylent Green

It’s just like I reported years ago: You’re not supposed to question your food, folks. Sit down, shut up, dig in and chow down. Stop thinking about what you’re eating and just do what you’re told by the mainstream media and its processed food advertisers. Questioning the health properties of your junk food is a mental disorder, didn’t you know? And if you “obsess” over foods (by doing such things as reading the ingredients labels, for example), then you’re weird. Maybe even sick.

That’s the message they’re broadcasting now. Junk food eaters are “normal” and “sane” and “nourished.” But health food eaters are diseased, abnormal and malnourished.

But why, you ask, would they attack healthy eaters? People like Dr. Gabriel Cousens can tell you why: Because increased mental and spiritual awareness is only possible while on a diet of living, natural foods.

Eating junk foods keeps you dumbed down and easy to control, you see. It literally messes with your mind, numbing your senses with MSG, aspartame and yeast extract. People who subsist on junk foods are docile and quickly lose the ability to think for themselves. They go along with whatever they’re told by the TV or those in apparent positions of authority, never questioning their actions or what’s really happening in the world around them.

In contrast to that, people who eat health-enhancing natural foods — with all the medicinal nutrients still intact — begin to awaken their minds and spirits. Over time, they begin to question the reality around them and they pursue more enlightened explorations of topics like community, nature, ethics, philosophy and the big picture of things that are happening in the world. They become “aware” and can start to see the very fabric of the Matrix, so to speak.

This, of course, is a huge danger to those who run our consumption-based society because consumption depends on ignorance combined with suggestibility. For people to keep blindly buying foods, medicines, health insurance and consumer goods, they need to have their higher brain functions switched off. Processed junk foods laced with toxic chemicals just happens to achieve that rather nicely. Why do you think dead, processed foods remain the default meals in public schools, hospitals and prisons? It’s because dead foods turn off higher levels of awareness and keep people focused on whatever distractions you can feed their brains: Television, violence, fear, sports, sex and so on.

But living as a zombie is, in one way quite “normal” in society today because so many people are doing it. But that doesn’t make it normal in my book: The real “normal” is an empowered, healthy, awakened person nourished with living foods and operating as a sovereign citizen in a free world. Eating living foods is like taking the red pill because over time it opens up a whole new perspective on the fabric of reality. It sets you free to think for yourself.

But eating processed junk foods is like taking the blue pill because it keeps you trapped in a fabricated reality where your life experiences are fabricated by consumer product companies who hijack your senses with designer chemicals (like MSG) that fool your brain into thinking you’re eating real food.

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don’t expect to be popular with mainstream mental health “experts” or dieticians — they’re all being programmed to consider you to be “crazy” because you don’t follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals.

But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

Some people are ready to take the red pill, and others aren’t. All you can do is show them the door. They must open it themselves.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There’s nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

Oh, and by the way, if you want to join the health experts who keep inventing new fictitious diseases and disorders, check out my popular Disease Mongering Engine web page where you can invent your own new diseases at the click of a button! You’ll find it at: http://www.naturalnews.com/disease-…

Sources for this story include:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2…

Artificial Sweeteners Alter How Body Handles Real Sugar

Total Sellout: American Academy of Family Physicians Lets Coca-Cola Sponsor Health Advice

Natural News
Friday, March 19, 2010 by: David Gutierrez, staff writer

The American Academy of Family Physicians has come under fire for a controversial decision to partner with the Coca-Cola Company in a new public outreach campaign about the health risks of soda consumption.

“Coca-Cola, like other sodas, causes enormous suffering and premature death by increasing the risks of obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, gout, and cavities,” said Walter Willett of Harvard University. “[The academy] should be a loud critic of these products and practices, but by signing with Coke their voice has almost surely been muzzled.”

The academy claims that its health message will not be compromised by accepting tens of thousands of dollars from Coca-Cola. However, it has also stated that a goal of the program is “to develop educational materials to help consumers make informed decisions so they can include the products they love in a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle.”

Dr. William Walker, a health officer for Contra Costa County, Calif., said that the partnership is reminiscent of old advertisements in which doctors endorsed the safety of mild cigarettes. Although he had been a member of the academy for 25 years, he and 20 other doctors in his practice recently resigned in protest of the deal.

According to academy chief executive officer Douglas Henley, Coca-Cola’s money will help fund a Web site containing information on the connection between soft drinks and obesity, and promoting sugar-free beverages.

Twenty-two health specialists and consumer advocates have responded with a letter challenging the endorsement of artificial sweeteners as safe, and asking the academy to condemn sugary drinks “in the strongest language.”

Alliances between medical associations and corporations promoting unhealthy products are not as uncommon as some might believe. In 2005, the American Academy of Family Physicians partnered with McDonald’s to produce a fitness program. Its Web site also carries advertisements for deli meat and other commercial products. The American Academy of Pediatrics drew criticism in 2002 for allowing an infant formula company to advertise on breast feeding materials, and prior to that the American Medical Association stirred up anger by agreeing to endorse Sunbeam home appliances without even testing them.

Sources for this story include: www.foxnews.com.

Consumers of aspartame (Nutra-Sweet): check out this documentary

Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World

Aspartame has been renamed and is now being marketed as a natural sweetener

Friday, February 12, 2010 by:
Ethan Huff, citizen journalist
NaturalNews

In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.

Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.

Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.

G.D. Searle & Company first patented aspartame in 1970. An internal memo released in the same year urged company executives to work on getting the FDA into the “habit of saying yes” and of encouraging a “subconscious spirit of participation” in getting the chemical approved.

G.D. Searle & Company submitted its first petition to the FDA in 1973 and fought for years to gain FDA approval, submitting its own safety studies that many believed were inadequate and deceptive. Despite numerous objections, including one from its own scientists, the company was able to convince the FDA to approve aspartame for commercial use in a few products in 1974, igniting a blaze of controversy.

In 1976, then FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt wrote a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy expressing concern over the “questionable integrity of the basic safety data submitted for aspartame safety”. FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill believed that a grand jury should investigate G.D. Searle & Company for lying about the safety of aspartame in its reports and for concealing evidence proving the chemical is unsafe for consumption.

Despite the myriad of evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market with the exception of a few countries that have banned it. In fact, it continued to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.

The details of aspartame’s history are lengthy, but the point remains that the carcinogen was illegitimately approved as a food additive through heavy-handed prodding by a powerful corporation with its own interests in mind. Practically all drugs and food additives are approved by the FDA not because science shows they are safe but because companies essentially lobby the FDA with monetary payoffs and complete the agency’s multi-million dollar approval process.

Changing aspartame’s name to something that is “appealing and memorable”, in Ajinomoto’s own words, may hoodwink some but hopefully most will reject this clever marketing tactic as nothing more than a desperate attempt to preserve the company’s multi-billion dollar cash cow. Do not be deceived.

Sources:

Ajinomoto brands aspartame ‘AminoSweet’ – FoodBev.com

Aspartame History Highlights – Janet Starr Hull

FDA’s approval of aspartame under scrutiny – The Globe and Mail (Canada)

An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener – Huffington Post