Now this is not a great documentary. It's low-tech. I wish there were a filtered version that included the 30-45 minutes most valuable of the 90 minute total production.
Does anybody know anything about Stevia? Apparently the FDA won't look at it...
If you're still eating foods containing the artificial sweetener aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal, diet drinks, etc.), you need to watch this documentary. Aspartame was approved for widespread use in the U.S. in July of 1983. Within six months, brain tumor rates climbed 10%, diabetes went up 30% and brain lymphoma tumors skyrocketed 60%. Learn how this toxic chemical was scandalously approved by the FDA and is now one of the most widespread food additives in the U.S.
Watch it now: http://www.organicconsumers.
Aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed in healthy people. First, all the misguided concern about aspartame has been wrongfully created by a combination of errors that started with the original Searle work, were perpetuated by a misguided aspartame internet conspiracy theory, and supported by two also wrongly designed 2006 and 2007 studies. In the eyes of misguided FDA evaluators of the original Searle work, there were tumor concerns evident in the original Searle safety study. Then the internet conspiracy theorists have kept this fable alive for twenty years. But those original results were simply false positives stemming from an error that nobody, even FDA, caught. The Searle work and everything since (including both highly quoted Soffritti et al (that is Rammazini), 2006 and 2007 studies) used a simple, yet wrong experimental design. They used control rats (fed no aspartame) and treated rats (fed different, graded doses of aspartame to get a dose response). The problem with this design is that it is simply improperly balanced. Even a high school science fair student can recognize this fact once it is made clear. Methanol from aspartame degradation is converted to formaldehyde. Formaldehyde has long been known to react with and deplete a portion of the vitamin folate in exposed rats, but that issue is resolved if folate is replaced by daily and microgram sustenance supplements. But this degradation of folate only happens in the treated animals, because only they get the aspartame source of the methanol. Control animals were not given equivalent methanol. The consequence is that only the rats receiving the aspartame will show a dose-dependent increase not in tumors arising from aspartame, but from a dose-dependent induction of folate deficiency induced tumors. Proper design would involve feeding folate supplements; it would best have used three groups, control rats, aspartame treated rats, and folate supplemented, aspartame treated rats. This design would not have given rise to tumors, because the rats would not have been depleted of folate, which causes exactly those tumor types reported in the 2006 and 2007 lifetime exposures.
ReplyDeleteSecond, all the matter above deals with the rat experimental studies, but there is another totally separate issue, human safety. That issue only exists because of the false claims that aspartame causes problems including tumors in humans. In a corollary of the first line, the fact of the matter is that many people in this country are not healthy; they are intrinsically susceptible to a natural cause of tumors that internet conspirators have wrongly attributed to aspartame. Many people, particularly women, are deficient in this vitamin (folate) and some are seriously deficient in it. The “health weight” trend not to eat sweet rolls, doughnuts and other grain products that have been fortified with folate since 1998 only worsens the underlying problem. Still others have biochemical issues with their folate processing enzymes called polymorphisms that raise their susceptibility to folate deficiency. Widespread folate deficiency, not aspartame, is the real problem causing much of the tumors and cancers epidemic in America today. And alcohol abuse by women is a major factor in increased folate deficiency and contributes greatly to the incidence of breast cancer today.
There have recently been calls for a second round of grain product fortification to again overcome these problems. But the only real solution to the many folate deficiency linked tumors is use of folate supplements. Folate is made not by us, but by bacteria in our gut; given even a folate rich diet (“healthy living”), we simply cannot make sufficient folate to prevent the widespread occurrence of disease associated with folate deficiency. Then, many dietary substances including antibiotics, abusive levels of ethanol, and many commonly used pharmaceuticals (antiepileptic and others) adversely affect either folate or the bugs that generate the folate; they only make us more deficient.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Toxicology)
(Information detailing the fatal error in all rat aspartame research is new. It was presented in March, 2008 at the national Society of Toxicology meeting in Seattle and in April 2008 at the Agriculture & Food Chemistry section of the national American Chemical Society meeting in New Orleans).