(Reprinted in its entirety, with permission from Eddie’s Corner, the blog of Eddie Rose, at www.eddierose.org)
Prior to the November 2012 election, Big Ag, Big Chem, and assorted other evildoers, willingly poured mega-millions into their deceitful campaign against Prop. 37 in California, in order to dupe gullible voters into voting against that Proposition. And their lies worked.
Now, the proverbial chickens have come home to roost. We see that the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) has just petitioned the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not only to allow the carcinogenic artificial sweetener, Aspartame, to be added to our milk and other dairy products, but also to NOT BE REQUIRED to list Aspartame or any other artificial sweeteners on the milk or dairy product container!
Presently the FDA requires milk and other dairy products that are artificially sweetened to clearly state that on the list of ingredients. And that’s the way it must remain. If the dairy industry wants to put noxious chemical additives in our milk, we have an ABSOLUTE RIGHT TO KNOW!
The Honorable Eddie Rose
Former Laguna Niguel City Councilman
“A Voice—Not an Echo”
Not sure if everyone views the same ads I see, but I find it pretty humorous that there’s an ad for http://www.aspartame.net (which refutes the content of the article) and for Truvia, an alternative sweetener.
Comical, right?
Or ironic….
I get the aspartame ad, but also one for “Monkey Bread,” cinnamon “pull-aparts” from Bridgford, maker of fine pull-aparts. (Are they mocking me?)
This seems like a legitimate story. Add it, if they must, but don’t fail to label it.
*Don Rumsfeld, our pal worked for the company that invented Aspartame! – Before he joined the Bush Administration. Dick Cheney worked as CEO of Haliburton for five years before he ran for Vice President with George and Laura. Small world isn;t it>
Donald Rumsfeld In Bed With Aspartame | Genetically Modified …
todayyesterdayandtomorrow.wordpress.com/…/donald-rumsfeld-in-b…
Aug 10, 2007 – Donald Rumsfeld was the Chairman of Searle, a company who invented aspartame. Rumsfeld used all of his influence to legalize this drug,
…
*Just Google: Who invented Aspartame? You will be rewarded with
more info than you might want.
no
How many people know about aspartame poisoning?
Is that for people suffering from PKU?
Here’s any interesting piece on it: http://www.fda.gov/ohrms/dockets/dailys/03/Jan03/012203/02P-0317_emc-000199.txt
Yep. That’s the stuff. Pretty sad that the only place talking about this (that I see anyway) is just a few pics on Facebook.
What is the world coming too?
I heard about a radio show (TV?) where they had the contesdents drink water until the winner beat all others. Then died of water overdose.
A strange contest… “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” competition.
Won (and lost) by Jennifer Strange.
Another case of too much of a good thing.
*The water contained Flouride….right?
Probably died of Sodium Fluoride poisoning! What’s in YOUR water?
There is so much misinformation out there about aspartame it is ridiculous. The fact is that aspartame is safer than the milk it is proposed to sweeten. Even more, it is ridiculous that people buy into this aspartame conspiracy theory. Virtually all the relevant regulatory agencies in the world complete approve aspartame. So let me explain this issue in a variety of ways.
First, milk already contains much phenylalanine and aspartate, so neither warrants posting for phenylketonuria, although aspartame should be posted when used alone. Second, toxicological risk assessment is about balancing risks. This whole issue is about getting children to drink milk, instead of sugary beverages. If it takes chocolate, aspartame-sweetened milk to make this switch, overall children are far better off with this change.
Now claims of safety concerns with aspartame are ridiculous. It is the most tested substance in history; the furans from corn are more threatening. And actually any sensitivity to aspartame probably involves a preexisting personal issue such as a nutritional inadequacy. I will explain both starting with the perception by some that aspartame is toxic.
The fundamentals of toxicology (science of poisons) say that “everything is toxic.” This fundamental tenet of toxicology was established by Paracelsus in the 1500’s (Wikipedia: Paracelsus). But everything about toxicology is dose; the words ‘toxic’ or ‘poison’ mean nothing without a specific dose for the substance. The words ‘toxic’ or ‘poison’ are used when the doses required for effect are very low and thus exposure represents a hazard. But dose alone also separates a ‘poison’ from a food/drug. For example botulinum toxin (Botox), which is the perhaps the most toxic substance known (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin), is also used extensively in cosmetic procedures. Highly toxic cyanide is found in plant products we all consume; however, cyanide at those doses is readily detoxified by a cyanide-specific enzyme, rhodanese, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhodanese. In contrast ‘low-toxicity’ water drowns hundreds of people yearly, but water isn’t considered ‘toxic’ or a ‘poison’. This principle of toxicology is as established as the concepts that the world rotates about the sun and that the world is basically spherical; these are not up for debate.
Again everything is toxic–that includes aspartame and all its three decomposition products, aspartate, phenylalanine, and methanol. Where the aspartame critics fail to understand and then mislead the reader is that dose is paramount to effect. That includes 99% of aspartame critics. Aspartame critics cannot now do this and never could! They believe there is no safe dose and this very outlandish claim is part of the reason why they cannot get any regulatory agency to even listen to their long-failed arguments. Realize, just this year–2013–the European Food Safety Authority again validated the safety of aspartame as have 90+ governmental regulatory agencies throughout the relevant world.
Now concerning aspartame itself, here are facts people fail to understand. To reiterate the point that these substances pose little risk at the doses involved, note that formate and formaldehyde are [quoting another] “produced in the body during the endogenous demethylation of many compounds, including many foods [fruit juices] and drugs. For example, the demethylation of the caffeine found in one cup of coffee produces 30 mg of formaldehyde (Imbus, 1988). Formaldehyde is essential in one-carbon pool intermediary metabolism. The metabolite of formaldehyde, formic acid, is a substrate for purine nucleotide synthesis (Sheehan and Tully, 1983). It can be calculated that more than 50,000 mg [that’s 50 g] of formaldehyde is produced and metabolized in an adult human body daily and that an adult human liver will metabolize 22 mg of formaldehyde per minute (Clary and Sullivan, 1999). Consequently, it is quite clear that the formaldehyde from aspartame provides a trivial contribution to total formaldehyde exposure and metabolism in the body” (p 18 in and refs from http://www.fte.ugent.be/vlaz/Magnuson2007.pdf).
So the facts suggest clearly that any sensitivity issues with aspartame are PERSONAL issues; ALL can be explained by PERSONAL matters affecting metabolism of formaldehyde/formate like folate deficiency and corollary issues (both known and some likely yet unknown) like often genetic folate enzyme issues (polymorphisms, Wikipedia: methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase), B12 deficiency (often vegetarian-related), (genetic) methionine synthase enzyme issues, and/or (genetic) homocysteine accrual.
Moreover, the folate system is not independent; folate, B12, and homocysteine are all functionally interrelated (Wikipedia: the metabolism of folic acid under Vitamin_B12). All contribute to not just the normal, natural recycling of otherwise essential formaldehyde and formate produced from methanol into methyl groups, but the availability of these methyl groups to regulate vital-to-life (DNA) itself. Ethanol (through its antagonist metabolite acetaldehyde) is also known inhibitor of these vital folate reactions. So in these borderline cases of aspartame sensitivity, alcohol consumption may be a prime factor explaining any increased sensitivity to aspartame as well. Realize ethanol, not methanol, is the cause of fetal alcohol syndrome, and ethanol is a documented factor in facilitating many cancer types, for example these scientific papers http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22218157, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16508294, and this popular press article http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-204_162-57569649/alcohol-causes-20000-cancer-deaths-in-the-u.s-annually/.
Critics suggest aspartame causes about every ill effect known to man claiming some 92+ symptoms for aspartame. Analysis of these, however, directly links all of these issues to the above described personal issues. Consider aspartame’s most widely reported issue, migraine headaches. In what I have written above I note that various folate, B12 and related issues better explain problems with aspartame. In this case that is even more likely because migraines have been linked directly to the MTHFR C677T folate polymorphism (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19619240 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19384265). Both papers report complete resolution of these migraines with added folate alone. These investigations revealed that more than the normal daily recommended amounts are needed (2-5 mg), but in these papers increased folate doses ALONE solved the migraine problem [and aspartame was not even involved]. That alone suggests a human sub-population that is even more deficient in folate for which resolution of their symptoms requires even more folate. This year’s Norwegian autism study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403681, only confirms the current importance of the deficiency issue, but those results may also reflect the fact that most of Europe still has not mandated folate fortification. But this isn’t particularly surprising both in view of methanol’s requirement for folate for metabolism, but also because folate uptake into brain has been linked to childhood autism, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23314536.
One of the aspartame critic’s latest inventions is autism; they have spread this nonsense all over the web (Google ‘aspartame autism’ to see some of these claims). But a recent finding from Norway reported in JAMA found that autism incidence there is markedly reduced by folate, http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1570279. That discovery only further documents my argument.
In summary each alleged symptom for aspartame can also be explained similarly by the issues discussed above and all are personal issues, not safety issues with aspartame itself.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
Thanks for all that info, Doc. But it still sounds like it should at least be labeled, don’t you think? After all, you admitted yourself, a few times, that SOME people suffer adverse effects from it, whatever the reason.
So do you agree it should be labeled?
Thank for the information. Why should it be labeled individually but not in milk? I presume from your comment that the difference is in the amount consumed. What assumptions does this make about the maximal amount of milk that one might drink?
My initial (and maybe sole) concern is with PKU. I’m OK with (as was done from the outset with NutraSweet) posting a warning to PKU-tics about the content and expecting them to know to, say, limit themselves to 8 oz or 16 oz of aspartame-added milk. But without such a warning, how are they to know that they need to limit their consumption of that milk at all?
I’m also interested in your thoughts, if you’re willing to provide them, about sucralose (Splenda) as an alternative to aspartame. Why not put that — duly labeled — in milk instead? Cost? Ease of production? Or, pardon my saying so, aspartame lobby?
Another alternative is the natural, non caloric Stevia, but don’t call it a sweetener…. the FDA requires us to call it a dietary supplement.
This is my understanding of the issue (from another website):
“The petition is not to allow aspartame in milk products without showing it on the label. It is to not show “Reduced Calorie” on the label when a non-nutritive sweetener, such as aspartame, is added. I first heard of this error in the reporting from Whole New Mom. I went to the petition myself and read it and yes, it’s not about adding aspartame without a label.”
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
Greg:
My understanding of Splenda is that it is not absorbed, so it simply passes through the GI tract and presents little risk.
Aspartame is likely to be labelled and in fact may still have to be labelled to protect those allergic to it/methanol metabolites, but given that the phenylalanine and aspartame content of milk overwhelms that little added from aspartame, I would guess (and it is just a guess) that that other issues might be milk folate content and the aspartame/milk methanol metabolites. Milk is not a major source of folate, but it does contain some folate and may even provide 10–15% of the daily folate intake(http://jn.nutrition.org/content/134/1/31.full.pdf+html). It would not surprise me if milk already contains some methanol (from plant products cattle consume, especially in summer), but I simply don’t know the answer to this question; if it did, then the folate-methanol balance might impact the risk analysis issue too.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
All this gibberish reminds me of the deceitful propaganda disseminated by the Monsanto/Dupont/Big Ag hired gun in their multi-million dollar anti-Prop. 37 TV ad campaign last year. We don’t need a PhD (or anyone else for that matter) to tell us that we DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW what Big Ag and the Big Chem want to put in our food supply!
Well, apparently it WILL still be labelled; apparently this is not what the dairy petition is about. Or so claims our PHD. Do either of you – Eddie or Dr Garst – actually have a copy or link to the petition, or is this all hearsay from other websites?
Eddie:
Phenylalanine and aspartic acid are amino acids that are the building blocks of proteins. They are produced by GI protein digestion; they are present in the proteins digested from even every glass of milk or piece of meat you eat and frankly just about everything labelled “nutritious”. There is more methanol in a glass of fruit juice and twice as much formaldehyde liberated from caffeine than from aspartame. Review http://www.fte.ugent.be/vlaz/Magnuson2007.pd for more simple facts.
Concerning Vern’s comment and for other interested parties, here is the actual Federal Register link, https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/02/20/2013-03835/flavored-milk-petition-to-amend-the-standard-of-identity-for-milk-and-17-additional-dairy-products .
Point one says “…flavored milk could contain a non-nutritive sweetener without bearing a nutrient content claim (e.g., “reduced sugar”) as part of its name.” That is nutrient content, not the name of sweetener.
From point two that they have every intent of labelling aspartame is this which says “Will the inclusion of the non-nutritive sweeteners in the ingredient statement provide consumers with sufficient information to ensure that consumers are not misled regarding the characteristics of the milk they are purchasing?
Eddie, clearly you will be told what will be in that milk and, as with an aspartame containing product, you don’t have a gun to your head making you or anyone you care about consume it.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)
Clearly, Dr. Garst is being disengenuous. The intent of the petition is to persuade the FDA to DROP THE REQUIREMENT THAT MILK AND OTHER DAIRY PRODUCTS BE LABELLED AS “ARTIFICIALLY SWEETENED” IF THEY CONTAIN ASPARTAME. The real question is if Aspartame is so good for us, WHY DOESN’T BIG AG, BIG CHEM, the NMPF, AND THEIR HIRED GUNS WANT US TO KNOW ITS IN THERE?
The truth is Aspartame has been linked to (1) a higher risk of type-2 diabetes; (2) depression; and (3) heart attack and stroke; and it is a known carcinogen, despite what Dr. Garst (a PhD, not an MD) opines.
More information on this matter can be readily obtained from “Artificial Sweeteners in Milk? Yahoo! Health”, Day in Health by Lisa Collier Cool; as well as a similar article in the Huffington Post.
Eddie, I gave you the link to the Federal Register; how it that being disingenuous? But if you want disingenuous, let’s address some of your ridiculous hearsay.
There are two papers from Collison pertinent to diabetes, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Collison%2Caspartame. Both were poorly done studies irrelevant to risk assessment of aspartame. Both failed to take into any account the supreme issues with subject folate and homocysteine status that affects each of the study endpoints; in fact folate/homocysteine were not even mentioned. Google PubMed, go there (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed), and enter these endpoints into the Pub Med search line against folate or homocysteine and see all the papers that would make these two papers totally irrelevant to the risk assessment of aspartame: for example, entering ‘learning and folate’ (without the quotes) provides 235 references. Entering metabolic ‘syndrome and folate’ and entering ‘insulin tolerance test and folate’ provide 32 references. [These numbers listed might have increased as this issue was explored several months ago.] So where was any understanding of this vital factor?
While the above citations refer mostly to human issues, the science here was also misguided, because Collison et al used the wrong controls. Mice in this paper were treated with aspartame or water controls. This specific study is irrelevant to risk assessment, because their choice of control is invalid. The proper control would have used equal molecular amounts of methanol rather than water to counterbalance aspartame’s methanol-oxidized formaldehyde’s natural, small yet significant depletion of folate (and/or associated homocysteine increases). So in essence the aspartame treated mice (and only those) were made deficient in folate, but their control mice were not made deficient. You cannot deplete a vitamin in any science experiment, especially in just one group of test animals! So congratulations to Collison et al; they once again proved problems of folate deficiency, but they proved nothing about aspartame.
Next let’s look at depression and aspartame, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=depression%2Caspartame (only 6 citations). More importantly, note that NONE of these citations took under any consideration the status of folate, B12, or homocysteine. In fact this is particularly true of the widely cited, but old 1993 Walton paper. It is old, because in 1998 the US, Chile, and Canada mandated the fortification of grain products with folate to correct an epidemic of deformities in children of deficient mothers. Of course the fathers were deficient too, but they don’t have children. Both, however, are susceptible to the diseases associated with folate deficiency, see table in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2592326/pdf/0541545.pdf for just a few. Grain fortification would deal with the overall deficiency problem to both parents and children. You can read more about the dependency of methanol metabolism on folate here— http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=methanol%2Cfolate%2CTephly+TR. So you see this issue has been known since before 1980, but Walton and other physicians, etc. who are critical of aspartame were and still are unaware of this very relevant issue in 1993. Do you ever read about folate or any of these other issues on aspartame critic sites? My point is this: all aspartame critical papers and any FDA allegations or other conspiracy theory arguments prior to the 1998 folate fortification likely reflect not aspartame safety issues, but well-known vitamin deficiency issues. And this is especially true in Europe, where folate fortification generally has not been done even today.
‘In a nutshell’ this overlooked issue is the same problem defining all the arguments that aspartame is linked to leukemia, lymphoma, or depression or any of the other 92+ alleged symptoms. Repeat my PubMed analyses above for the other 92+ symptoms and you will find essentially the same story, directly for most, but indirectly for some diseases/ailments, because diverse factors, like as iron status, can impact the folate issue too.
As to other issues (for example, cardiovascular disease), consider just four other aspartame-linked ‘diseases’ as teaching examples (taken from Monte’s ridiculous Amazon book ‘While Science Sleeps’): heart disease, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune diseases, and autism. Find these results heart disease first (these numbers were gathered several months ago so current numbers might differ): heart disease, folate (1405 citations); heart disease, folate deficiency (252), heart disease, homocysteine (2364); heart disease, vitamin B12 (691); heart disease, folate polymorphisms (171) [this topic exists for each issue, but is typically smaller, so is not enumerated further]. Repeat this process for multiple sclerosis and find the following numbers, folate (48); folate deficiency (20); homocysteine (41); vitamin B12 (134). FYI, multiple sclerosis fits with B12 far better than anything else. B12 deficiency is most often linked to vegetarianism and that must make one wonder about that a vegetarianism connection to multiple sclerosis. Repeat this process again for autoimmune diseases like lupus, for example: folate (84); folate deficiency (21); homocysteine (157), and vitamin B12 (53). Lastly, let’s examine autism: folate (71), folate deficiency (10), homocysteine (22), and vitamin B12 (19). Note that these numbers were obtained before the recent JAMA Norwegian study that directly and solidly linked folate deficiency to autism, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403681.
Next, let’s consider aspartame’s most widely reported issue, migraine headaches. In what I have written above I note that various folate, B12 and related issues better explain problems with aspartame. In this case that is even more likely because migraines have been linked directly to the MTHFR C677T folate polymorphism (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19619240 and http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19384265). Both papers report complete resolution of these migraines with added folate alone. These investigations revealed that more than normal daily recommended amounts are needed (2-5 mg), but in these papers aspartame was not involved and increased folate doses ALONE solved the migraine problem. That alone suggests a human sub-population that is even more deficient in folate for which resolution of their symptoms requires even more folate. This year’s Norwegian autism study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23403681, only confirms the current importance of the deficiency issue, but those results may also reflect the fact that most of Europe still has not mandated folate fortification.
This aspartame sensitivity issue arises because of personal metabolism issues, which are potentially numerous. Many people are deficient one or even in both vitamins and up to 40% of some (S European) populations have these folate polymorphisms that require even more folate, but most don’t even know they have this problem. It is very uncommon to even test for this. For more read http://download.cell.com/AJHG/pdf/PIIS0002929707614001.pdf?intermediate=true. Yet these types of polymorphisms have cancer connections too, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=methylenetetrahydrofolate+reductase+polymorphism%2Ccancer. The aspartame conspiracy theorists would rather think the problem is aspartame, but the facts indicate clearly it is not.
You are correct, I hold a PhD, not an MD, so let’s examine what physician/surgeon and MD HJ Roberts claims. I question whether he has ever even heard of folic acid or what it does. After all none of his work has ever even entertained folate-methylation issues in his own patients, but his “aspartame toxicities” (thrombocytopenia, for example http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17534100), are often claimed in letters to the editor and often the only time the issue has even ever associated with aspartame, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=aspartame%2Cthrombocytopenia. But let’s look at his thrombocytopenia claim in detail. While his is the only claim of association, a search of thrombocytopenia reveals over 110 references connecting it to folate deficiency, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=folate%20deficiency%2C%20thrombocytopenia. A search of thrombocytopenia even reveals 4 references connecting it to folate polymorphisms, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=folate+polymorphhisms%2C+thrombocytopenia. A search of thrombocytopenia reveals 22 citations connecting it to homocysteine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=homocysteine%2C+thrombocytopenia. And a search of thrombocytopenia reveals 103 references connecting it to vitamin B12 issues, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=B12%2C+thrombocytopenia. I could go on and on with virtually any of the purported 92 aspartame symptoms; they all are better explained by the folate-methylation paradigm than by aspartame per se.
More information about aspartame can be obtained from the 90+ regulatory authorities worldwide that have approved aspartame.
John E. Garst, Ph.D. (Medicinal Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Nutrition)