by Rachael Woodhouse
As Americans continue to develop odd health problems, there is a substance added to thousands of food products that has come under increasing scrutiny: aspartame. In contrast to the reasoned, scientific, widespread warnings regarding this “food additive” (originally intended for use as a pharmaceutical), our government has repeatedly and nonchalantly brushed aside the public’s concerns.
Dr. H. J. Roberts, author of Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, said in his practice, he began seeing symptoms in patients soon after the “diet” sweeteners (NutraSweet, Equal, etc.) hit the market. He found these clinical observations alarming, and felt compelled to publish his 1000+ page book in an effort to heighten awareness.
Roberts recently appeared on GCN’s Crash! Are You Ready? to sound the alarm about aspartame. “Basically, what it amounts to is that this product, this chemical, should never have been approved in the first place”, Roberts said.
“The in-house consultants and scientists and the general accounting office…all came to the conclusion that it should not have been released, that it was potentially dangerous, especially relative to brain tumors that was demonstrated initially in research on rats.” He stressed that subsequent studies have come to the same conclusion.
The rabbit hole goes deeper though. Roberts said aspartame is highly addictive, especially when people consume large amounts of products such as diet sodas and instant drink mixes containing the artificial sweetener. He also claims the health issues span a shocking gamut, from convulsions, to vision problems, to depression. He says that to add insult to injury, people who consume “diet” drinks which substitute aspartame for sugar will often gain weight. “Many people take this to lose weight and they put on fifty to eighty pounds of weight”, Roberts said.
Contrast his corporate-neutral research with the official government stance of the Food and Drug Administration. The bureaucracy’s response to a 2007 European study not favorable to aspartame says “FDA reviewed the study data made available to them by the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) and finds that it does not support ERF’s conclusion that aspartame is a carcinogen. Additionally, these data do not provide evidence to alter FDA’s conclusion that the use of aspartame is safe.”
The FDA explains that “when metabolized by the body, aspartame is broken down into two common amino acids, aspartic acid and phenylalanine, and a third substance, methanol.”
But what FDA doesn’t explain is what happens when these substances metabolize further. According to an article by Robert K. Frazer on suite101.com, “Each diet soda with aspartame produces about 20 mg of methanol. The methanol breaks down further into 6 mg of formaldehyde which is three times the daily EPA limit.”
Since aspartame first hit the U.S. market in the mid-70s, doctors contend that tumors and lupus have been skyrocketed in the general population. There is also the mysterious rise in diseases such as fibromyalgia. The term fibromyalgia was first coined in 1976 in an effort to describe its primary symptom, but it wasn’t until 1990, when the American College of Rheumatology developed a diagnostic criteria for doing fibromyalgia research, that the term fibromyalgia gained wide usage.
The bottom line, according to Dr. Roberts: “Think about aspartame disease, and the easiest thing is to … stay away from these products for a short time. Let’s see what happens, without doing anything else. That seems logical.”