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Artificial Sweetener Dangers


If you consume the artificial sweetener aspartame—also known by the brand names NutraSweet and Equal—you may be making a deadly mistake.

A recent study by the Ramazzini Foundation concluded that aspartame was directly related to an increased risk of developing leukemia, lymphoma and breast cancer.

In the study, rats were fed between 20 and 100 milligrams of aspartame per kilogram of body weight in order to mimic the amount of the sweetener some humans would consume. The lower dosage can be compared to a 50 lb child drinking 2.5 cans of Diet Pepsi or Diet Coke each day, and a 150 lb adult drinking 7.5 cans. The study found that even the rats fed the lower dose of aspartame were more prone to develop cancer.

Don’t think you’re off the hook because you only drink a couple diet beverages a day. Aspartame is also found in many other food products, such as sugar-free candy, chewing gum and dessert, instant breakfasts, wine coolers, yogurt, gelatin, juice beverages, and even over-the-counter and prescription drugs (listed under “inactive ingredients”).

Together, the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), as well as a dozen toxicology and epidemiology experts, are asking the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to review the study and change aspartames safety rating.

Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of CSPI said that, “…consumers, particularly parents, shouldn’t wait for the FDA to act. People shouldn’t panic, but they should stop buying beverages and foods containing aspartame.”

[Source: Article in Consumer Reports, June 27, 2007]


Here is a previous post on Aspartame

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2 responses to “Artificial Sweetener Dangers”

  1. Fred Avatar
    Fred

    More than 20 years ago, when my daughter was in her early 20’s and studying for
    a Master’s Degree,
    she noticed that she was experiencing bizarre symptoms that were quite
    alarming .

    This truly bright girl – (whose college tuition was entirely funded by
    scholarships and who won a Telluride Association Scholarship in competition
    with more than one million students from the entire US) –realized that she
    was becoming very confused. She would go to a grocery store and couldn’t
    remember why she was there. She would be driving her car and couldn’t
    remember how to get home. She had déjà vu experiences.

    And she got much worse. In addition to her drastic personality change and
    intellectual deterioration,

    she had epileptic-type seizures,
    she began to lose her vision in both eyes
    she had severe headaches and trouble forming words, panic attacks, a
    rapid heart rate, tremors, tingling and numbness of the extremities,
    profound exhaustion and severe drowsiness, insomnia, suicidal thoughts
    and numerous other problems including a very short temper, gastrointestinal
    problems, and joint pains.

    Her marriage ended and she lost her job.

    She consulted a neurologist, and he told her that she had temporal lobe
    epilepsy.
    He began treating her with medication, but the medication didn’t work,
    because the doctor was wrong in his diagnosis and he was treating her for a
    condition she didn’t have! What she really had was ASPARTAME
    POISONING/TOXICITY!

    I had heard about Dr. H. J. Roberts (Florida), so I contacted him and he
    confirmed what I suspected – that she was suffering from a reaction to the
    artificial sweetener in diet soda. My daughter owes her life to Dr.
    Roberts, because thanks to him, she stopped drinking diet soda, and
    gradually, every one of her problems disappeared. Today, she is a
    successful computer programmer and financial analyst.

    It took a year or more for all her symptoms to vanish. She got better slowly with bad days thrown in.

    To follow up, we took her to Boston for special studies on her brain, and
    the doctors confirmed that it was the NutraSweet that had made her so sick.
    They said that she had been totally misdiagnosed by the neurologist and that
    she did not have temporal lobe epilepsy at all. ( These men were in the
    Clinical Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of
    Technology. ). We also took her to a highly-respected ophthalmologist who
    explained why her vision loss was due to aspartame.

    She was fine for 12 years. Then, she began
    drinking diet soda again and had the same severe reaction. Luckily, we
    realized what was happening to her and were able to convince her to stop
    using NutraSweet. Why did she start again? It’s addictive!

    Many other members of our family also have noticed a reaction to NutraSweet.
    I get severe classic migraines from diet soda – my son, who is a physician and pharmacist,
    can’t see to drive if he drinks diet soda – another young man in the family,
    a lawyer, had double vision. His ophthalmologist thought he had a brain
    tumor, but all the tests were negative. He stopped drinking diet soda, and
    within 3 months, the double vision was gone. My sister-in-law acted like a
    “raving maniac” when she drank diet soda.

    And, by talking to others in my community for 18 years, I have learned that
    reactions to NutraSweet are quite common.

    Unfortunately, most physicians are clueless when it comes to connecting the
    many symptoms of NutraSweet poisoning/toxicity with the consumption of what
    is supposedly a safe substance.

    By approving NutraSweet, the FDA caused many problems for many innocent
    people.

    Because my daughter was so disabled by diet soda, she lost at least $50,000
    in wages she would otherwise have earned. And, the years of heartbreak that
    her father and I had to endure can never be erased from our memories.

    The FDA should be protecting Americans, but sadly, Americans have to protect
    themselves.

    Barbara Metzler

    All this happened to my daughter 20 years ago, long before I had a computer and could check out aspartame there. I had to spend an entire year writing to doctors and scientists and congressmen to learn about aspartame. When my daughter recovered by stopping diet soda (and she only drank 2 cans a day), I knew that I had to fight aspartame for the sake of others.

    Reply
  2. Eusebio Accornero Avatar
    Eusebio Accornero

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    Reply

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