Alex T writes: “A lot of time is spent these days talking about eating locally produced food for a variety of reasons: to cut down your carbon footprint, to support your community and farmer, to live a healthier life. All of these are excellent idealogical, communal and nutritional reasons to make a switch.
But sometimes, people need to be hit over the head with the realities that our mechanized food system ‘brings to the table.’ I offer the following link with a serious caveat: Do not click it unless you are prepared for extremely graphic reasons to change certain food habits. The link goes to a personal account of a woman trying to convince her family to stop drinking Diet Coke. What follows is her descriptions and photos of a controlled group of rats fed weight-equivalent amounts of Diet Coke and the extraordinary physical damage that they suffered as a direct result. Here is the link to myaspartameexperiment.com
The Internet appears to be full of people against aspartame (the sweetener in many ‘Diet’ products). The FDA continues to stand by their approval of Aspartame as a food additive despite a public outcry including 10,000 complaints to the Dept. of Health detailing nearly 100 different health issues. Other studies have demonstrated Aspartame’s carcinogenic nature while The University of Wisconsin, among others, have found it to be safe for human consumption.
It’s tough not to feel like a fear-monger when sharing information of this nature. Not being a scientist, I can’t confirm or deny any of the findings presented here. But if an additive is documented to cause brain damage, is bioaccumulative and breaks down into formaldehyde in the body, all points specifically mentioned by the University of Wisconsin study, I think that I’m going to keep Diet-anything-that-contains-aspartame out of my body.”
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3 responses so far ↓
1 Harriett S. // May 30, 2008 at 11:12 am
Good for you, Alex.
Check this out, too
from a group of anti-aspartame activists.
Aspartame Fact Sheet
Equal® - NutraSweet®
The “Real Facts” - Are You At Risk?
http://www.dldewey.com/aspar508.htm
2 Eric Belsey // Jun 1, 2008 at 1:57 pm
I’ve avoided aspartame for years, and begged my family to do so, with varying degrees of success. It is highly addictive, as anyone who who knows a Diet COke addict is probably aware. How about this for an Aspartame fun fact: the CEO of G.D. Searle (now part of Pfizer) when aspartame was approved by the FDA in the face of evidence of toxicity in animal testing was, you guessed it, a man who has managed to bring you even more death, torture and suffering later in his career, Donald Rumsfeld!
3 renee // Jun 4, 2008 at 2:01 pm
wow. we get so many customers asking for diet soft drinks and asked why we as a “health conscious” restaurant wouldn’t carry them. This study is a good reminder. thanks guys.
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