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Sugar Substitutes: Healthy or Deadly? "Why do things taste so good? I'm telling you why, NutraSweet is why…" So went the song in a 1990 television advertisement. The video backed it up with images of family fun, male bonding, and cute kids - all consuming or presumably on the verge of drinking a diet soda. Sweeteners like aspartame would usher in an era of thin and happy. Barry Sears, the biochemist who came up with the Zone diet, says it's not that simple. "We now know data from Harvard Medical School in children who consume diet sodas gain weight," Sears...

You drink diet soda, so you must be healthier. Right? That's what New York Gov. David Paterson is talking about with his proposal for an "obesity tax" — a 15 percent slap on non-diet sugary soft drinks. Think $1 for a Diet Coke, $1.15 for a Coke. There's just one problem: Studies have found links between drinking diet sodas and obesity and diabetes. A 2005 study at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio, and separate studies released in 2007 at the University of Alberta in Canada and the University of Massachusetts found that diet soda drinkers were...

USING an artificial, no-calorie sweetener rather than sugar may make it tougher, not easier, to lose weight, US researchers said today. Scientists at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, studied rats that were fed food with the artificial sweetener saccharin and rats fed food with glucose, a natural sugar. In comparison to rats given yogurt sweetened with glucose, those that ate yogurt sweetened with saccharin went on to consume more calories and put on more weight and body fat. The researchers said sweet foods may prompt the body to get ready to take in a lot of calories, but when...

A U.S. consumer group called for an urgent Food and Drug Administration review of the safety of aspartame on Monday, but the FDA said there was no immediate need to do so despite a new study showing the sweetener may cause cancer.  Italian researchers published a new study last week that showed aspartame -- widely used in soft drinks -- might cause leukemia, lymphoma and breast cancer in rats.   "This is the second study by the same lab showing that aspartame causes cancer in rats," Center for Science in the Public Interest executive director Michael Jacobson said in a telephone...

Kids Eating And Snorting Aspartame To Get High By Dr.Janet Starr Hull June 5, 2006 Can you imagine discovering that your 12-year-old child is using dry, powdered forms of aspartame to get high? I recently received an email from a woman who discovered her daughter had been eating dry aspartame to get "high." "I learned months ago," she wrote, "that a friend of my 12-year-old daughter had turned her on to ingesting Crystal Lite® (with aspartame) without water to get "hyper." I consulted with our doctors, called Poison Control, and met with school administrators to see if they were aware...

See for example this thread first. The Times let itself in for flame When it published that aspartame was involved in a suit but their point, it is moot: There's neither case, lawyers, plaintiff, nor blame!

TCS Daily Those Dirty Rats By Duane Freese February 21, 2006 Here's some advice: If you want to avoid getting cancer, die young. And if you're a journalist, here's some more: if you want to make a big splash about the above fact, spin it with an old story linking cancer to a popular food ingredient and wed that to 30-year-old alleged cover up. That's essentially what The New York Times did in a 2,600-word expose in its Sunday, Feb. 12, paper. "The Lowdown on Sweet?" by Melanie Warner has overshadowed the good news on the cancer front this month,...

WHEN Dr. Morando Soffritti, a cancer researcher in Bologna, Italy, saw the results of his team's seven-year study on aspartame, he knew he was about to be injected into a bitter controversy over this sweetener, one of the most contentiously debated substances ever added to foods and beverages. Aspartame is sold under the brand names Nutra-Sweet and Equal and is found in such popular products as Diet Coke, Diet Pepsi, Diet Snapple and Sugar Free Kool-Aid. Hundreds of millions of people consume it worldwide. And Dr. Soffritti's study concluded that aspartame may cause the dreaded "c" word: cancer. The research...

<p>A study of rats links low doses of aspartame -- the sweetener in NutraSweet, Equal, and thousands of consumer products -- to leukemia and lymphoma.</p> <p>But food industry officials point out that many other studies have found no link between aspartame and cancer.</p>

Sweetener 'linked' to leukaemias Fresh doubts about the safety of an artificial sweetener have been raised by Italian scientists who have linked its use to leukaemias in rodents.Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sugar and is used throughout the world in low-calorie drinks and foods. Regulators say existing studies show it is safe, but will look at the European Journal of Clinical Oncology study. But they said it was unlikely that the sweetener was harmful to humans to the same extent as in rats. If a risk to humans does exist, it will almost certainly be very small Dr...

Ok here it is.....The headline reads something like this "RACKETEERING CHARGES FILED AGAINST NUTRASWEET CO." and the story goes on to say Rumsfeld and Reagan conspired to force nutrasweet on America. Here are the facts: It appears a class action lawsuit has been filed by someone from the "World Natural Health Organization". The WNHO may only have one member. The headline is starting to appear on the Wacko Left websites. I have not provided links, you can google it if you want, it's a waste of time.

NutraSweet: The NutraPoison by Alex Constantine "I recognized my two selves: a crusading idealist and a cold, granitic believer in the law of the jungle." Edgar Monsanto Queeny, Monsanto chairman, 1943-63, The Spirit of Enterprise, 1934. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The FDA is ever mindful to refer to aspartame, widely known as NutraSweet, as a "food additive"-never a "drug." A "drug" on the label of a Diet Coke might discourage the consumer. And because aspartame is classified a food additive, adverse reactions are not reported to a federal agency, nor is continued safety monitoring required by law.1 NutraSweet is a non-nutritive sweetener. The...

There are soooooo many nutrition books, and diet books on the market. It can be a bit overwhelming and confusing for a beginner like me to sort out the junk science, and voodoo gimmicks, from the well respected books, and web sites. In the last couple of years I've been extremely tired, sleepy and fatigued for some reason. I've never really been into the nutrition thing, so I would appreciate any of your recommendations on good nutrition, and advice on the following: 1) Sodium. What's the story? How much is too much. How little is too little. Is it true...