Made from Genetically Modified Bacteria Waste, Aspartame Risks Public Health

Natural Society ^ | March 26, 2012 | Andre Evans

[w4women]

Aspartame is an addictive substance. Most people who consume diet sodas regularly soon develop a craving for it. This is because of aspartame’s addictive quality. Soon after consuming the ingredient on a normal basis, many people find themselves unable to kick the habit. - snip-Aspartame, essentially, feeds cancer cells. If this weren’t enough to convince you to drop the diet soda habit, the process by which aspartame is made involves a highly toxic and volatile and genetically engineered form of bacteria waste — hardly something that would be considered safe by a reasonable standard.

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/made-from-genetically-modified-bacteria-waste-aspartame-risks-public-health/#ixzz1qKgMNhoz

Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/made-from-genetically-modified-bacteria-waste-aspartame-risks-public-health/#ixzz1qKg6rLw0

[miss marmelstein]

Oh, how I love that movie! Peter Sellers’ greatest performance.

[Manic_Episode]

Diet soda makes my knees hurt. Seriously. I stopped drinking 3-4 cans a day and in just a few days my knees were pain free, dramatically. I dont know if it was the sweetener or the acid or some other ingredient but all I know is my knees feel 20 years younger almost overnight. Of course your mileage may vary but I am not joking, I feel great.

[rawcatslyentist]

Try Tonic water or just plain Seltzer.

It's actually the Co2 that gives DC that throat clearing acidic bite, and seltzer has it in spades.

[jakerobins]

Don’t forget fermented and dried meats....Sausages like Salami. YUM!!

[Cyman]

Our waste comes from bacterial waste. If “natural “ stuff is/was so good for you why don’t we see evidence of 400 year old cave men. I guarantee their lives were 100% natural AND organic.

Big Pharma has a lot to answer for but the REAL crooks out there are anyone that is required to slap a label on their latest,greatest break through product( blueberries seem to be the fruit of the year this year) proclaiming it to be a food and not a treatment.

[Strategerist]

I don’t know, everyone knows that “natural” chemicals are always healthier.

So perhaps Aspartame could be replaced with botulin toxin, tetrodotoxin, etc.

[Mike Darancette]

Aspartame is an addictive substance.

I avoid aspartame like the plague only drink diet cola with sucralose.

[Yaelle]

It’s poison. The saddest thing is that for 20 or more years packaged food producers have shoved sweet taste down our throats rather than include evil fat.

Now we learn that healthy fats, from healthy animals or certain cold pressed plant oils like coconut and olive, are the secrets of health, brain and neurological functioning, and life.

Sugar over a small amount (for a non athlete not much carbohydrate is necessary) is poison to us. Cancer loves sugar. It changes our bodies from good fat burning machines to sugar burning machines with a host of aches and conditions. And fake sugar is poison period. It can’t possibly help you in any way, only hurt you. Years of drinking it means the end of your life probably won’t be fun as it causes so many neurodegenerative diseases.

Do-gooders trying to make us slim and healthy did the exact opposite.

I’m sure, for one evening somewhere over cocktails, welfare must have sounded like a great idea too.

[wbill]

Meh, these are the same fools (or maybe different ones with the same agenda) that panicked over Alar, and Saccharine, and coconut oil, and grilling food, and and and and and.....

They way they determined Saccharine caused cancer in rats, for instance, was to feed them the equivalent of drinking 100's of cans of Tab a day. The rats got sick from it. Imagine that.

Some people just can't accept the fact that LIVING is bad for you. And, others can't accept the fact that somewhere, someone might doing something that they enjoy so they work hard to stop it. (Lots of these control freaks are called "liberals", but I'm editorializing.... :-) )

IMHO, Moderation is the key. Nothing wrong with a Diet Coke or two. If you're going through a case or two a day, though, maybe you've got something to worry about.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

This article is as biased as you can get. They are pushing their own warped agenda.

Some people may have a sensitivity to aspartame and get headaches, etc., but the vast majority of people have no problem consuming it.

As for addictive, I don't believe that either. I drink diet sodas in spurts, especially in the summer. Have never had any withdrawal in stopping suddenly.

Reminds me of a whacked-out woman that is married to my BIL. She believes that Splenda is the same as consuming DDT. lol

[Kirkwood]

What a bunch of baloney.

[LibLieSlayer]

If you do not like it... do not drink it. Coke has a Diet Coke with Splenda... buy it but STFO of my food choices!

LLS

[commish]

MY wife and I finally made the move and stopped drinking Diet Coke about a month ago. Had to fight through a couple weeks of feeling like crap and having horrible headaches, but now I have no craving what-so-ever.

We also stopped all other artificial sweeteners.

We are now buying drinks sweetened with Stevia and using raw stevia in our tea.

Best drinks I have found so far are STEAZ green tea and ZEVIA sodas (the Black Cherry is to die for!). Most Organic/Health food stores (Whole Foods, Fresh Market, etc.) carry them.

[Kirkwood]

Stop spouting nonsense. Your body is a glucose producing machine. It converts carbs to produce sugar. It converts fat to produce sugar. It converts alcohol to produce sugar. If sugar is directly available it uses it directly. If your body doesn’t produce sugar or get it directly from food, you DIE.

[ArrogantBustard]

MY wife and I finally made the move and stopped drinking Diet Coke about a month ago. Had to fight through a couple weeks of feeling like crap and having horrible headaches,

And ... what?

You think that had something to do with the aspartame?

Seems to me that had something to do with a certain completely natural compound ...

[B4Ranch]

From the same link that you posted. In Comments:

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition) says:
March 26, 2012 at 6:36 pm

For the record aspartame has never been shown to produce any direct response in any unbiased, correctly done study, but there is an internet conspiracy theory to the contrary as made clear by Snopes.com and many other truth websites. And comments about it being made with genetically modified bacteria are irrelevant; most drugs are made that way today. My comments will provide you and your readers with a rarely discussed, but exceedingly important explanation for all “side-effects” the conspiracy theorists attribute to aspartame. And that covers everything! Or perhaps I should say nothing fails to be explained by this paradigm. Readers should examine old criticisms or any new allegations against aspartame with these points in mind. (By the way I have no connection to the aspartame industry; what I share is why FDA, EFSA, and virtually all relevant world authorities will NOT ban this substance.)

There has never been any substantiated, reproducible evidence of any harm from aspartame, cancer included. The US and other governments have wasted more money on this than misguided and false concern than it has on virtually any other substance known to man. Corn contains more dangerous components. To demonstrate this, two points will be made.

First, the fundamentals of toxicology (the science of poisons) say “everything is toxic.” And that everything includes aspartame and all its three decomposition products, aspartate, phenylalanine, and methanol. But where the aspartame critics fail to understand and then mislead the reader is that dose is paramount. Everything about toxicology is dose; the words ‘toxic’ or ‘poison’ mean nothing without a specific dose for that substance. And dose alone separates a food/drug from a poison. For example botulinum toxin (Botox), which is the most toxic substance known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin), is used extensively in cosmetic procedures. Highly toxic cyanide is found in plant products we all consume; however, cyanide is readily detoxified by a cyanide-specific enzyme, rhodanese, at those doses (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodanese). In contrast ‘low-toxicity’ water drowns hundreds of people yearly. So the informed reader should understand that words like toxic or poison that fill all the anti-aspartame literature are irrelevant. That is any claim a chemical substance is “toxic” or a poison is by itself is absolutely MEANINGLESS. Such claims MUST include a specific toxic response at a specific dose. Aspartame critics cannot now do this and never could! That is part of the reason why they cannot get any regulatory agency to even listen to their long-failed arguments.

Second, the fact is that aspartame is perfectly safe used as directed. However, there appears to be a defined class of people for which labeling might be insufficient. And that class of people is those with an ongoing insufficiency of the vitamin folic acid (and/or vitamin B12). Actually folate (B12) deficiency can explain all the “highly cited, but incorrect 92 symptoms attributed to aspartame toxicity”. However, the dilemma here is that the people with this insufficiency are often unaware of it. That fact stems either from direct deficiency or because of a genetic requirement for more folate/vitamin B12. These people often, but not always display related issues like hyperhomocysteinemia (too much homocysteine in their blood). Homocysteine is a potent and true excitotoxin that poses a serious human health hazard that is detoxified by folate, see wikipedia]. Some aspartame users repeatedly get headaches after using aspartame, so they blame aspartame consumption for their acute headache, for example. But really they are at risk for these bigger problems for these other personal reasons that exist silently whether or not they use aspartame. Folate deficiency and lesser so vitamin B12 are directly connected to a large body of diseases, including breast and other types of cancers, etc. And folate insufficiency is still a real world problem both alone and because of polymorphism-associated genetic predispositions [requiring extra folate], including one directly associated with headache; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19619240.

The connection between aspartame and folate deficiency arises because aspartame contains a methyl ester; methanol is released upon GI hydrolysis. The purpose of the vitamin folate is to recycle methanol’s oxidation products formaldehyde and formate into methyl groups. Deficiency can lead to the same “symptoms” as methanol toxicity—but only in people that are otherwise deficient in this vitamin. Methanol from untainted food consumption alone never leads to poisoning, but folate insufficiency amongst a segment of the population can have the longer term consequences mentioned in the previous paragraph. Vitamin B12 takes the folate-generated methyl groups and transfers them to homocysteine making a vital amino acid called methionine. Too little of either causes the same or similar ultimate problems.

These facts explain everything about the whole “internet conspiracy” theory suggesting aspartame is unsafe. But you have to realize too that there is more methanol (read that as formaldehyde) in juice drinks (pectin is a polymeric methyl ester) than in aspartame drinks. And there is twice the amount of formaldehyde generated from caffeine than from the same molecular amount of aspartame. So again the problem is one of folate (B12) deficiency still being a human health problem, even after the US, Canada, and Chile required grain product folate fortification starting in 1998. That date is relevant also because all viable concerns with aspartame were raised before that date. But the frank malformations and teratology in infants of folate deficient mothers is what led to forced folate fortification to combat this widespread folate deficiency. Those issues have dropped dramatically amongst the population, since that action. They have not been eliminated because of these genetic issues (called folate polymorphisms) in up to 40% of the population; these make some people require even more folic acid than others.

But the take-home message here is that aspartame toxicity is a myth. All papers showing any issue with aspartame failed adequately to ensure folate sufficiency in either their animal work or use populations (including diabetics and others), most of whom have a documentable ongoing folate-deficiency in the first place. [The antidiabetic drug metformin actually reduces folate, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21896879.

Aspartame critics often cite work by Soffritti et al in support of their argument. However, regulatory agencies pay no attention. While their reasons relate to specific health of test rats, the real fact is that the health of those rats was affected by fundamental errors in their work. The 2006-2008 work by Soffritti et al is loaded with as many as five fatal, scientific errors. This list includes the use of a type of rat (Sprague-Dawley) known to become folate deficient at one year of age; but their experiment lasted three years. And this doesn’t even mention Soffritti’s use of a folate deficient diet for those three years. [FYI, this same error was originally made by aspartame makers and went unrecognized for decades. That accident is what helped make this into a conspiracy theory. Later work used corn diets high in folate and from then on problems could not be reproduced.] Still other fundamental scientific errors therein totally dismiss their work. And that includes work with other substances beside aspartame. FDA is aware of these issues and will not ban aspartame based on an OVERWHELMING scientific assessment of safety. FYI, this whole folate insufficiency issue in methanol metabolism has been known for roughly four decades, because of the work of Tephly (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1997785); the genetic polymorphism aspects linkable to folate deficiency issues are relatively new, however.

John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)

[commish]

You think that had something to do with the aspartame?

Well, considering we were still drinking tea, coffee and Stevia sweetened sodas it sure as hell wasn't caffiene withdrawal.

[B4Ranch]

>>Diet soda makes my knees hurt. Seriously. I stopped drinking 3-4 cans a day and in just a few days my knees were pain free, dramatically.<<

And it never occured to you that drinking 32 ounces of processed fluids daily wouldn’t have a harmful effect on your body? Did you also drink 32 ounces of water to flush it out of your body?

I don’t think you are going to live a long life if you continue these brainless habits.

[ArrogantBustard]

Interesting.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Don’t talk about facts, PANIC!!!!