Healthy Living Editors September 30, 2012 8:34 am
Aspartame, the not-so-natural sugar substitute
linked to a host of negative health effects
from headaches to cancer, is found in a lot of products that you might not
suspect. Check out the top 10 offenders below.
Scary
Sweetener Haunted by Ugly Past
Michelle
Schoffro Cook November
4, 2010 5:11 pm
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,”
claimed Shakespeare. Conversely, a sweet name for a potential toxin, does
not make it sweet.
Aspartame, has had a makeover. Thanks to
slick marketers, the artificial sweetener now goes by the
ever-so-sweet-sounding name of “AminoSweet.” Surely a substance with such
a lovely name is safe for use? Before I answer that, let’s consider
aspartame, er, I mean AminoSweet’s history.
First developed in 1974, by 1980, an FDA Board
of Inquiry voted unanimously AGAINST approving aspartame for human consumption,
but the vote was overruled by the FDA commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes Jr. by
1983. Only one year after the approval, an FDA task force learned that
some of the original data showcasing aspartame’s safety had been falsified to
hide results showing animals fed aspartame had developed seizures and brain
tumors; however, the FDA maintained its approval of this product.
In 1983, the same year aspartame was approved for
use in carbonated beverages, a neuroscientist published reports in The New
England Journal of Medicine that aspartame may increase body weight by
stimulating a craving for calorie-laden carbohydrates.
By 1991, the National Institutes of Health
catalogued 167 adverse effects linked to aspartame use. In 1992, the
U.S. Air Force issued a warning to pilots not to fly after ingesting
aspartame. And by 1994, the US Department of Health and Human Services
had linked the artificial sweetener aspartame to the risk of 88 symptoms of
toxicity.
Research confirms that aspartame is an excitotoxin.
An excitotoxin is a substance that literally excites brain or nervous system
cells until they die.
According to Lynne Melcombe, author of Health
Hazards of White Sugar, research links aspartame to the following health
conditions: anxiety attacks; appetite problems such as binge-eating and sugar
cravings; birth defects; blindness and vision problems such as blurred vision,
bright flashes, and tunnel vision; brain tumors; chest pain; depression and
emotional problems; dizziness and vertigo; edema; epilepsy and seizures;
fatigue; headaches and migraines; hearing loss and tinnitus; heart palpitations
and arrhythmia; hyperactivity; insomnia; joint pain; learning disabilities;
memory loss; menstrual irregularities and PMS (premenstrual syndrome); muscle
cramps; nausea; numbness of extremities; psychiatric disorders; reproductive
problems; skin lesions; slurred speech; and uterine tumors. Research even links
aspartame to death. Aspartame’s effects can be mistaken for Alzheimer’s
disease, chronic fatigue syndrome, epilepsy, Epstein-Barr virus, Huntington’s
chorea, hypothyroidism, Lou Gehrig’s disease; Lyme disease, Ménière’s disease,
multiple sclerosis, and postpolio syndrome.
According to Randall Fitzgerald, author of The
Hundred-Year Lie, some of the cancers linked to aspartame include:
brain, liver, lung, kidney, and lymphoreticular cancer.
Aspartame is found in many diet products, including
soft drinks, as well as a wide variety of prepared foods. Shockingly, it
is also found in some multivitamins, supplements, and pharmaceutical drugs.
And, here’s a shocker. According to the
authors of the book Hard to Swallow: When a diet drink containing
aspartame is stored at 85 degrees Fahrenheit for a week or longer, “There is no
aspartame left in the soft drinks, just the components it breaks down into,
like formaldehyde, formic acid, and diketopiperazine, a chemical which can
cause brain tumours.
All of these substances are known to be toxic to
humans.”
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