Dying for a Diet Coke? - the truth about ASPARTAME
A popular artificial sweetener in all diet drinks, "sugarless" gum, icecream and a host of "sugar-free" diet, fitness and drug products, is probably creating health problems for a good number of ordinary consumers worldwide.
This account was originally published in an abridged version in New Zealand’s Investigate magazine (September 2007 issue) for a South Pacific audience, hence the parochial nature of the discussion. This does not diminish the impact of the information, however. As will be seen, the evidence for the prosecution is established from truly international sources and if anything this account gains strength from the fact that at the highest international regulatory levels aspartame, the sugar-free diet sweetener in question, has been given blanket approval. This sorry state of affairs, given the evidence of significant hazard in a product genetically engineered from raw sewage, indicates the level of corruption that exists over food safety issues since corporate globalisation imperatives have become the deciding factor over what we permit into the human food chain.
The Whistleblower
Professor Elsas blew the warning whistle on that popular diet sweetener, aspartame or Additive 951, some 23 years ago now. As he stressed at the time, the rat studies which were used to “prove” aspartame’s safety are inappropriate because human beings are not rats, a point which New Zealand and indeed world food safety regulators, toxicologists, doctors and politicians still refuse to recognise. We, in possession of a bit more elementary commonsense, may choose to differ on the point of whether we are all being treated as the real laboratory rats by the time the sad – but also absurd - tale of aspartame is finally spelled out in these pages.
But what about our children?
Consider for a moment how many cities around New Zealand and Australia are opening new hospitals and setting up increased facilities especially for treating children who in ever-increasing numbers are going down with what used to be relatively rare adult diseases like diabetes, leukaemia, brain tumours and weird new diseases like autism and hyper-activity that turn tiny kids into monsters. Generations who had children before the 1950s would wonder why we so nonchalantly accept the huge toll of chronic disease in children that now exists, with so little comment and such apparent acceptance of the inevitable.
Chaotic behaviour
Junk food addicts in Rotorua, New Zealand put a baby through a spin drier. Apart from “P”, was Diet Coke involved? Aspartame reacts with methamphetamine to produce totally lunatic behaviour. The 2002 Lundy murders down in Palmerston North were committed by a husband and father, Mark Lundy, who slugged back over a litre of aspartame-containing beverages every day before finally murdering his wife and daughter.
We are the laboratory rats!
Without a question of doubt, we are the real rats in the laboratory for a large number of food additive poisons in the food chain, but we are unlikely to be exposed to anything much more virulent and disabling than the scientifically established neurotoxin aspartame, (2) officially known as Additive E951 or 951 and technically defined as L-Aspartyl-l-phenylalanine methyl ester, 98%, aspartame CAS #22839-47-0, C14H18N2O5, which is now present as a sweetener in literally thousands of supermarket food and beverage products, as well as medicines and popular supplements.
The politics behind aspartame’s approval
Of course the main reason aspartame is approved in New Zealand is because aspartame is approved in the United States. Aspartame is a heavily politicised issue because it is a major American corporate profit base worth billions of dollars and, as every New Zealand adult should know by now, we usually bend over backwards to please Uncle Sam.
FSANZ denies toxicity
Aspartame, as we have seen, is fully approved as part of our food chain by the combined regulatory agency, Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) and our own NZFSA. FSANZ was formerly known under the rubric of ANZFA (Australia New Zealand Food Authority), but changed its name, according to popular Internet myth, because when you do a spell-check the suggested correction for ANZFA is always "unsafe"!
NZFSA & FSANZ misunderstand science
The confusion our regulators suffer over aspartame’s potential hazard lies in a very common area of ignorance suffered particularly by toxicologists, dieticians and, in fact, anyone with an elementary background in university-level chemistry – the sort of people who, in other words, end up as “experts” in our national and state regulatory system. Both aspartic acid/aspartate and phenylalanine are common amino-acids found in Nature in foods as well as in the human body.
Why was the NZSIS interested in Betty Martini?
One thing every New Zealander learns by the age of ten is that everyone of us four million or so knows everyone else – sooner or later. The long arm of coincidence or Jungian synchronicity obviously aids in this process, which brought Abby Cormack, dedicated Wrigley’s gum addict and Dorothy Charles, wife of an NZ Security Intelligence Service (NZSIS) agent, together in – of all places – Susie Clemens’ Auckland Pilates studio at the high point of Betty Martini’s 2007 tour. Certainly neither expected to see the other and, as we all know, a spook - which Dorothy’s husband most certainly is - can never retire.
Chris Wheeler ~ 2009