health, food, drug companies, and profit

Why Are Smart People So Ignorant When it Comes to Health, Vaccines and Vitamin D? A heart disease patient of late Had an IQ of 168. His brain was immense But it lacked common sense And it never engaged when he ate.

As an observer of human behavior, one of the most fascinating things I've ever witnessed is really smart people dying of diseases that are easily preventable through basic nutrition (vitamin D, plant juices, targeted supplements, superfoods, etc.). I know doctors dying of cancer who take chemotherapy over vitamin D supplements. I know members of MENSA who are killing themselves with junk foods and diabetes. I know extremely intelligent attorneys and physicists who are among the smartest people in their respective fields; but when it comes to basic health, they're completely ignorant.

In fact, if you look around at all the "smart" people you know, you're likely to find the vast majority of them are incredibly ignorant when it comes to their own health. They know nothing about basic nutrition, the benefits of superfoods or the dangers of pharmaceuticals. They eat processed junk foods, dairy products and food products contaminated with pesticides and toxic chemicals. They may be the smartest people in the world in their labs or offices, but when it comes to their own bodies, they are among the most ignorant people on the planet.

How can such high-IQ people remain so utterly ignorant when it comes to their own health?

There are two reasons, it turns out. And one of them will blow your mind... How to become an expert in one area while abandoning the basics To be an expert in astrophysics, you have to spend many years studying astrophysics. To get really good at law, you have to study law. If you want to get good at anything, you have to focus on it, learn about it, and invest some time learning how it works.

That's what I've done with the subject of health and nutrition (and you too, probably). And yet I'm not an expert in astrophysics, nor law, nor brain surgery. Importantly, I don't have to be an expert in those areas because I don't practice in those areas.

And yet -- here's the important part -- all those physicists, attorneys and surgeons do have a physical body they need to take care of. They all need to become proficient in basic human health, regardless of whatever other specialties they might pursue.

In other words, everyone with a body needs to learn the basics of taking care of that body. And yet most of the smartest people in the world today have spent essentially zero time learning about human health. So even with their high IQs, they make childish, ignorant decisions when it comes to their own health. They may be doctorate-level academic thinkers in their own fields, but when it comes to protecting health and preventing disease, these people haven't even graduated from kindergarten yet.

You see this quite frequently in the geek community, by the way. Junk food, pharmaceuticals and caffeinated soda drinks seem to go hand-in-hand with the wired, pale and frenzied computer brainiacs who are, after all, smarter than everybody else. They can write DRM decryption code with one hand while they eat MSG-laden fried snack chips with the other. Like everybody else, they are high-IQ, highly-specialized experts in their fields who remain woefully uneducated when it comes to their own health.

But how can so many smart people be so utterly unaware of the basics of nutrition? That vitamin D prevents cancer and influenza? That aspartame kills your brain cells? That processed meat (beef jerky, bacon, sausage, pepperoni) contains cancer-causing coloring chemicals designed to make the meat look rosy fresh?

The real reason is more insidious than you may have imagined. If you want to learn it, read on... Good health is bad for business Here's the real reason why so many smart people remain so uninformed when it comes to their own health:

The institutions of power in our modern world go out of their way to keep people nutritionally ignorant.

By "institutions of power," I mean our governments, our private industries (health care and others) and the corporations that pull all the strings behind the curtains.

What are the most powerful corporations in our world? Aside from the military bombs-and-bullets companies (who have their own scams running), the most powerful corporations are drug companies, media companies, agriculture companies and food & beverage companies.

Now think about this clearly for a minute: What do all these companies have in common? How do all these companies keep their economic machines running?

You see, the agriculture companies depend on nutritional ignorance in order to keep selling their processed ingredients to food companies which then turn around and sell those nutritionally-depleted products to consumers. Media companies depend on the advertising revenues from the promotion of junk foods and junk beverages, and drug companies depend on the revenues from all the diseases caused by the widespread consumption of all those products.

These four industries -- Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Media and Big Food -- have a dark, incestuous relationship that generates huge profits... but only as long as the masses remain nutritionally ignorant.

If people became proficient in nutrition, superfoods, vitamin D and natural foods, all four of these industries would suffer huge financial losses. Their sales and profits would plummet in a world where nutrition is common knowledge. Their continued financial success requires nutritional ignorance among the masses.

Enforcing nutritional ignorance Powerful corporations, of course, require the services of oppressive government to enforce nutritional ignorance across the population. In the USA, the Food and Drug Administration is the primary enforcer of nutritional ignorance.

The FDA, as most NaturalNews readers well know, makes one of its primary missions the destruction of knowledge about nutrition and natural remedies. This is accomplished by outlawing any honest speech about nutrition from supplement companies, even going as far as threatening them with arrest and criminal prosecution if they dare link to scientific studies about nutrition (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html).

Meanwhile, the FDA openly approves health claims on processed food products sold by powerful corporations. This is designed to convince consumers that junk foods are healthful foods, even while healthful foods can make no claims whatsoever about their health benefits.

The FTC also gets in the game with its own brand of censorship, arresting and imprisoning owners of companies that offer natural cancer treatments based on good science. That's why no real cancer cures are offered in the U.S. anymore -- all the scientists who know the subject have either been imprisoned or run out of the country.

Medical journals also play a part in the ongoing nutritional ignorance of the masses by promoting intellectually dishonest information about the supposed benefits of pharmaceuticals while attacking natural remedies and ignoring nutritional cures.

The disease non-profit groups also play a big part in the nutritional ignorance scam. Note, carefully, how the cancer non-profits dare not teach people to take vitamin D supplements? If they did, cancer would cease to be such a big problem and those non-profits would lose membership (and power). So they continue the grand charade of ignoring known cancer cures while claiming they're still "searching for a cure."

I've even seen lots of smart people jogging along in those "race for the cure" events -- which are of course just a fundraising fraud. When I've asked these people where the money goes that they're donating, they just shrug their shoulders and say, "I dunno. I guess it goes to find a cure!"

These are very smart people, mind you, who have been sucked into this sucker's fundraising trap. They have no clue where the money is going (hint: almost all of it goes to cancer "recruiting" and screening efforts to scare more women into chemotherapy) and yet they jog along with all the other sheeple, somehow believing they are doing good in the world.

In all, these institutions and power centers accomplish something quite remarkable: The complete nutritional ignorance of virtually the entire population.

And with that, they shore up their own profit centers by keeping the American people ignorant and nutritionally illiterate. What does it feel like to be a slave? I can't help but bring up a touchy chapter of American history -- made even more touchy by the recent racial profiling debate regarding the police arrest of Prof. Henry Gates. It is an historical fact that slave plantations in America forbade their slaves to learn how to read or write. Literacy, you see, empowers people, and when slaves are empowered, they're harder to control.

Keeping the slaves illiterate made them easier to dominate. If you can't read road signs, it's harder to escape. If you can't write, it's difficult to secretly communicate with others (you can't even write a note!). Illiteracy, it turns out, is a highly effective strategy for keeping people enslaved.

Americans today are kept nutritionally illiterate for precisely the same reasons: To make them easier to control. To enslave them -- economically, medically and even chemically. Banning knowledge about natural remedies (the FDA) while promoting false science as truth (the medical journals) accomplishes the seemingly impossible task of enslaving an entire nation (including nearly all of the "smart" people).

It is a system that grows our (genetically modified) crops. That processes grains into depleted foods. That feeds us through vending machines and fast food restaurants. That sells us medicine when we become predictably sick. It is a system that turns free-thinking, intelligent people into blabbering, diseased victims who are so deeply entrained in the philosophy of enforced ignorance that they will actually defend it.

Power over the people. Power to dominate minds. Power to make money off the suffering of others.

What the cruel, white plantation owners did to their black slaves in the 1800's, Big Government is doing to all of us today.

By the way, if the phrase "Ignorance is Power" seems familiar, that's because it's a paraphrase of one of the lines in George Orwell's novel 1984, which states:

This philosophy, it turns out, is embodied by our government today. "War is Peace" refers to the idea that the only way to achieve peace is to wage war. (This is precisely the foreign policy of the U.S. today.) "Freedom is Slavery" means that in order to achieve freedom, we must give up our rights and become slaves. (Also a key principle of the crooks running Washington today.) "Ignorance is Power" is as I've described here: The more the population can be kept ignorant and illiterate, the more easily they can be controlled by advertisers, government regulators and so-called "authority figures" like conventional medical doctors. No coincidence Thus, it is no coincidence that the U.S. population is kept nutritionally ignorant. The knowledge destruction campaigns of the FDA, combined with the health disinformation efforts of the medical establishment, have managed to keep even really smart people completely in the dark on nutrition fundamentals. People don't even know the truth about vitamin D! (http://www.naturalnews.com/025495_c...) and (http://www.naturalnews.com/021892.html)

And that, my friends, is how even really smart people can seem so incredibly unintelligent when it comes to nutrition. It is not mere coincidence; it is a devious, intentional plot to keep the population docile and ignorant. And you can really see the effectiveness of this scheme when it comes to things like vaccines. Thanks to widespread ignorance of vitamin D, people foolishly believe their only protection against influenza is a vaccine injection (even smart people!).

That so many people willingly line up to be injected with an untested, unproven and utterly ineffective vaccine cocktail is proof of how easy it is to control a population as long as the people are kept illiterate. People who lack good information have no way to ask questions. So they go along with whatever disinformation the "authorities" are pushing at the time, even if it's complete nonsense.

Even smart people, I've learned, have very poor discernment skills when it comes to questioning authority. Why the schools are dumbed down Now that you know all this, you instantly know why the public schools continue to be dumbed down: Keeping the population illiterate is easier if you start early!

For the most part, public education today is really just a shadow of a real education. Some students graduate from high schools with virtually no ability to read or write -- much like the slaves in America's plantation days. As illiterates, they are ripe for exploitation by powerful corporations and governments. They have no real ability to question what they're being told, or to stand up for their own rights. They have no ability to defend themselves against the campaigns of disinformation promoted by those in power.

America's schools do a very poor job of teaching critical thinking skills, but they do a fantastic job of churning out the next generation of illiterate wage slaves. And this, of course, is entirely the point. That's why you can't even call public schools a "failure" -- because they are actually quite good at what they're designed to do: Train people to be mind slaves who get along in society without asking too many questions.

Getting back to the question at the top of this article, the truth is that even really smart people are mind slaves, too, because you don't get through the world of academia by asking lots of questions. You survive academia by conforming. You get through medical school by swallowing whatever you're told and shutting down that part of your brain that used to ask skeptical questions. People who ask too many questions get flunked out.

Thus, all the people who become the top doctors, academics and leaders in our nation are, by definition, conformists. That's how they are so easily fooled by the disinformation campaigns waged by Big Pharma, the FDA and the medical journals. And that's how they end up with a double-doctorate degree in physics while chowing down a greasy, genetically-modified cheeseburger in the other. Solutions Ultimately, what's more important than teaching people nutritional knowledge is teaching people the skills of thinking for themselves. A population of independent thinkers would naturally embrace knowledge of nutritional remedies and natural cures. They would naturally resist the FDA's pro-drug propaganda, and they would be able to more readily recognize the value of safe, effective and low-cost natural medicine.

The reason why this isn't happening right now in modern society is obvious when you realize that people are not trained to THINK, they are trained to follow orders.

This is especially true with doctors, where the art and craft of medicine has been stolen away from well-meaning physicians by state and federal bureaucrats who wish to centralize all the medical decision making. They want doctors to be robotic enforcers of a centrally-planned medical agenda, not local decision-makers operating with autonomy.

In today's health care reform debate, for example, all the big players want to dictate to doctors how they should make their decisions -- insurance companies, drug companies, state governments and the federal government. Nobody wants to empower doctors with the ability to make reasonable decisions based on human compassion and necessary medical care, because that would cost too much (and it might not involve monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals).

But it isn't only doctors who are taught to abandon independent thinking: It's all of us. Through our conformist, dictatorial public education system and incessant television programming, we are all taught to cast away independent thought and conform with the masses. Why we are genetically programmed to follow the herd This tendency, in fact, is genetically programmed behavior among not just humans, but many other species. It's actually a shortcut survival strategy for quick decision making. If you're standing in a forest, for example, and a stampede of 100 people run towards you, screaming in fear, you may not know what they are afraid of, but in the back of your mind, your brain concludes "Well, one hundred people can't all be wrong. I'm gonna run too!" And you turn around and run in the same direction they are running, oblivious to any reason why.

Following the masses as a decision-making shortcut pays off much of the time, but it misleads us when the masses have been misdirected. And the masses, it turns out, are incredibly easy to misdirect through propaganda, advertising and deliberate disinfo campaigns.

In fact, I would say that on all the big issues of our modern society -- health, economics, the environment, politics, etc. -- the masses have been deliberately misdirected to pursue beliefs and actions that serve only the interests of those who covet profits and power. Thus, using the convenient mental shortcut of following the masses in modern society is a sure recipe for engaging in actions that betray your own personal interests. Much of modern advertising, for example, could be accurately described as a campaign to convince individual consumers to make purchasing decisions that go against their own self interest. (This is especially true in the banking and credit card industries.)

The situation has become so strained that it could even be argued the smartest strategy is to do the OPPOSITE of what the masses are doing. In the stock market, this earns great dividends for many "counter investors" whose profits are extracted from the predictable investment decisions of the easily-swayed masses.

In terms of health care, when the masses are lining up for swine flu vaccines, the informed critical thinkers are skipping those lines and heading for the health food stores to stock up on anti-viral herbs and immune-boosting superfoods.

In the grocery stores, while the impressionable masses are committing a slow processed-food suicide by purchasing toxic processed foods, the critical thinkers are heading straight to the fresh produce section and loading up on unpopular, health-enhancing natural foods.

In this way, doing what's intelligent is very often unpopular. Going with the (ignorant) flow of the masses, however, is easy. It takes no courage, nor thought, nor intelligence to simply do what everybody else is already doing. What really requires some gumption is the pursuit of precisely those well-informed actions that are unpopular with the masses -- or even derided by them. "What do you mean you're not going to get a vaccine shot? Everybody's getting a vaccine shot!" False rationality Many doctors, scientists and medical researchers like to imagine they are the sole protectors of truly rational thought. And yet, upon closer inspection, it turns they merely follow the same "group think" process while hiding behind a scientific-sounding linguistic jargon used as cover. Underneath the mumbo-jumbo, they are the same as the rest of the masses: They go along with what the (scientific) group thinks for no other reason than the group thinks it.

This is the reason why mercury fillings have persisted for so long in modern dentistry, by the way. There's no sense to putting toxic heavy metals in the mouth of a child, but it's just been done that way for so long that few dentists bother to question it. Same story with chemotherapy: It makes no sense to poison a patient and harm their vital organs as a "healing therapy," but it's been done for so long that it's simply accepted as medical fact.

• At one level, some individuals may believe that a false fact is real (such as mercury fillings be safe).

• At another level, there exists the meta-belief that the person's beliefs are based in fact rather than fiction.

• At a deeper level still, there exists the meta-meta-belief that the person expressing the belief is an individual who exists separate from the other people or elements in the universe. (The myth of the id.)

• At a deeper esoteric level, there rests another persistent that the universe in which all this takes place is "real" and not merely illusion. (The "persistent reality" myth.)

And yet, the person subscribing to the false beliefs about mercury fillings is, in reality, invoking a cascade of falsehoods about what they believe, how they believe it, who is the container of that belief and the very nature of reality itself.

As such myths are arranged in layers, dispelling them is often best accomplished through a layers approach as well:

• First, it may be useful to show them evidence that convincingly disproves their top-level incorrect belief. (At this point, most people will simply reject the contradictory evidence, but some will have their curiosity raised enough to consider more questions...)

• Second, by showing the mistake of their first belief, you can invite them to question the accuracy of their entire belief system. This is essentially inviting them to ask "Wow, how could I have ever believed that before? There must be something wrong with the process I previously used to conclude that was true..."

• If you wish to take it further you can even invite the person to begin to question who the vessel is that held those false beliefs, and you can begin to peel away the false layers of the id and its obsession with separateness and ego.

For those who make it that far, they can then gain a perspective from which belief systems in the material world can be reconstructed or rearranged from the core.

This is all pretty advanced stuff, admittedly. We can't reasonably expect the masses to transform themselves into self-reflective enlightened beings as a strategy for health care reform. Those who understand these concepts, however, can at the very least strive for a persistent and gradual uplifting of the consciousness of the human race as a worthy pursuit.

Because, let's face it: At its core, nutritionally illiteracy is not merely about a lack of facts. It's actually a symptom of the unrealized potential of human consciousness.

With greater consciousness comes deeper independent thought, and with independent thought comes the natural tendency to recognize and value knowledge while casting away falsehoods. This is the true pathway to wisdom, and this is the corridor through which the human race must now pass if it wishes to coexist with Mother Nature as a viable form of life on our planet.

Where do you get your information? Snopes? Some people can tolerate a lot of toxins. Some of us can’t. That doesn’t make us nuts! The FDA is in bed with business and is not protecting us.

Aspartame’s Hidden Dangers
If a product is approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and composed of natural ingredients, would you assume it is safe to consume?

If the same product is an artificial sweetener, would you assume it helps control your weight?

Millions of people use aspartame, the artificial sweetener known as NutraSweet™, with these assumptions in mind.

Aspartame can be found in thousands of products such as:

•instant breakfasts
•breath mints
•cereals
•sugar-free chewing gum
•cocoa mixes
•coffee beverages
•frozen desserts
•gelatin desserts
•juice beverages
•laxatives
•multivitamins
•milk drinks
•pharmaceuticals and supplements, including over-the-counter medicines
•shake mixes
•soft drinks
•tabletop sweeteners
•tea beverages
•instant teas and coffees
•topping mixes
•wine coolers
•yogurt

However, aspartame’s tainted history of approval and potentially toxic ingredients cast serious doubt on the safety of this sugar substitute. Furthermore, aspartame may actually increase your appetite (Farber 52).

While the FDA approval may signal the green light for safe consumption, 85 percent of all complaints registered with the FDA are for adverse reactions to aspartame, including five reported deaths. A closer look at the unscientific studies, suspicious approval methods, and its harmful ingredients, reveal the hidden dangers of this artificial sweetener. In reality, aspartame poses a public health threat.

Ailments Resulting From Aspartame

The components of aspartame can lead to a wide variety of ailments. Some of these problems occur gradually while others are immediate, acute reactions.

A few of the many disorders associated with aspartame include the following:

•Birth Defects
A study funded by Monsanto to study possible birth defects caused by consuming aspartame was cut off after preliminary data showed damaging information about aspartame. Additionally, in the book, While Waiting: A Prenatal Guidebook, it is stated that aspartame is suspected of causing brain damage in sensitive individuals. A fetus may be at risk for these effects. Some researchers have suggested that high doses of aspartame may be associated with problems ranging from dizziness and subtle brain changes to mental retardation.

•Cancer (Brain Cancer)
In 1981, an FDA statistician stated that the brain tumor data on aspartame was so “worrisome” that he could not recommend approval of NutraSweet.(14)

In a two-year study conducted by the manufacturer of aspartame, twelve of 320 rats fed a normal diet and aspartame developed brain tumors while none of the control rats developed tumors, and five of the twelve tumors were in rats given a low dose of aspartame.(15)

The approval of aspartame was a violation of the Delaney Amendment, which was supposed to prevent cancer-causing substances such as methanol (formaldehye) and DKP from entering our food supply. A late FDA toxicologist testified before the U.S. Congress that aspartame was capable of producing brain tumors. This made it illegal for the FDA to set an allowable daily intake at any level. He stated in his testimony that Searle’s studies were “to a large extent unreliable” and that “at least one of those studies has established beyond any reasonable doubt that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals ... “ He concluded his testimony by asking, “What is the reason for the apparent refusal by the FDA to invoke for this food additive the so-called Delaney Amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act? ... And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?”(16)

In the mid-1970s it was discovered that the manufacturer of aspartame falsified studies in several ways. One of the techniques used was to cut tumors out of test animals and put them back in the study. Another technique used to falsify the studies was to list animals that had actually died as surviving the study. Thus, the data on brain tumors was likely worse than discussed above. In addition, a former employee of the manufacturer of aspartame told the FDA on July 13, 1977 that the particles of DKP were so large that the rats could discriminate between the DKP and their normal diet.(12)

•Diabetes
The American Diabetes Association (ADA) is actually recommending this chemical poison to persons with diabetes, but according to research conducted by a diabetes specialist, aspartame: 1) Leads to the precipitation of clinical diabetes. 2) Causes poorer diabetic control in diabetics on insulin or oral drugs. 3) Leads to the aggravation of diabetic complications such as retinopathy, cataracts, neuropathy and gastroparesis. 4) Causes convulsions.

In a statement concerning the use of products containing aspartame by persons with diabetes and hypoglycemia, the researchers says:

“Unfortunately, many patients in my practice, and others seen in consultation, developed serious metabolic, neurologic and other complications that could be specifically attributed to using aspartame products. This was evidenced by the loss of diabetic control, the intensification of hypoglycemia, the occurrence of presumed ‘insulin reactions’ (including convulsions) that proved to be aspartame reactions, and the precipitation, aggravation or simulation of diabetic complications (especially impaired vision and neuropathy) while using these products ... Dramatic improvement of such features after avoiding aspartame, and the prompt predictable recurrence of these problems when the patient resumed aspartame products, knowingly or inadvertently.”

Another researcher stated that excitotoxins such as those found in aspartame can precipitate diabetes in persons who are genetically susceptible to the disease.(5)

•Emotional Disorders
In a double blind study of the effects of aspartame on persons with mood disorders, findings showed a large increase in serious symptoms for persons taking aspartame. Since some of the symptoms were so serious, the Institutional Review Board had to stop the study. Three of the participants had said that they had been “poisoned” by aspartame. Researchers concluded that “individuals with mood disorders are particularly sensitive to this artificial sweetener; its use in this population should be discouraged.”(18) One researcher stated about aspartame, “I know it causes seizures. I’m convinced also that it definitely causes behavioral changes. I’m very angry that this substance is on the market. I personally question the reliability and validity of any studies funded by the NutraSweet Company.”(19)

Additionally, there are numerous reported cases of low brain serotonin levels, depression and other emotional disorders that have been linked to aspartame and often are relieved by stopping the intake of aspartame.

•Epilepsy/Seizures

With the large and growing number of seizures caused by aspartame, it is sad to see that the Epilepsy Foundation is promoting the “safety” of aspartame. At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 80 people who had suffered seizures after ingesting aspartame were surveyed. Community Nutrition Institute concluded the following about the survey:

“These 80 cases meet the FDA’s own definition of an imminent hazard to the public health, which requires the FDA to expeditiously remove a product from the market.”

Both the Air Force’s magazine, Flying Safety, and the Navy’s magazine, Navy Physiology, published articles warning about the many dangers of aspartame including the cumulative delirious effects of methanol and the greater likelihood of birth defects. The articles note that the ingestion of aspartame can make pilots more susceptible to seizures and vertigo. Twenty articles sounding warnings about ingesting aspartame while flying have also appeared in the National Business Aircraft Association Digest (NBAA Digest 1993), Aviation Medical Bulletin (1988), The Aviation Consumer (1988), Canadian General Aviation News (1990), Pacific Flyer (1988), General Aviation News (1989), Aviation Safety Digest (1989), and Plane & Pilot (1990) and a paper warning about aspartame was presented at the 57th Annual Meeting of the Aerospace Medical Association (Gaffney 1986).

A hotline was even set up for pilots suffering from acute reactions to aspartame ingestion. Over 600 pilots have reported symptoms including some who have reported suffering grand mal seizures in the cockpit due to aspartame.(21)

Why don’t we hear about these things?

The reason many people do not hear about serious reactions to aspartame is twofold: 1) Lack of awareness by the general population. Aspartame-caused diseases are not reported in the newspapers like plane crashes. This is because these incidents occur one at a time in thousands of different locations across the United States. 2) Most people do not associate their symptoms with the long-term use of aspartame. For the people who have killed a significant percentage of their brain cells and thereby caused a chronic illness, there is no way that they would normally associate such an illness with aspartame consumption.

How aspartame was approved is a lesson in how chemical and pharmaceutical companies can manipulate government agencies such as the FDA, “bribe” organizations such as the American Dietetic Association, and flood the scientific community with flawed and fraudulent industry-sponsored studies funded by the makers of aspartame.

Erik Millstone, a researcher at the Science Policy Research Unit of Sussex University has compiled thousands of pages of evidence, some of which have been obtained using the freedom of information act 23, showing: 1. Laboratory tests were faked and dangers were concealed. 2. Tumors were removed from animals and animals that had died were “restored to life” in laboratory records. 3. False and misleading statements were made to the FDA. 4. The two US Attorneys given the task of bringing fraud charges against the aspartame manufacturer took positions with the manufacturer’s law firm, letting the statute of limitations run out. 5. The Commissioner of the FDA overruled the objections of the FDA’s own scientific board of inquiry. Shortly after that decision, he took a position with Burson-Marsteller, the firm in charge of public relations for G.D. Searle.

A Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) was conducted in 1980. There were three scientists who reviewed the objections of Olney and Turner to the approval of aspartame. They voted unanimously against aspartame’s approval. The FDA Commissioner, Dr Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr. then created a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the PBOI findings. After it became clear that the Commission would uphold the PBOI’s decision by a vote of 3 to 2, another person was added to the Commission, creating a deadlocked vote. This allowed the FDA Commissioner to break the deadlock and approve aspartame for dry goods in 1981. Dr Jacqueline Verrett, the Senior Scientist in an FDA Bureau of Foods review team created in August 1977 to review the Bressler Report (a report that detailed G.D. Searle’s abuses during the pre-approval testing) said: “It was pretty obvious that somewhere along the line, the bureau officials were working up to a whitewash.” In 1987, Verrett testified before the US Senate stating that the experiments conducted by Searle were a “disaster.” She stated that her team was instructed not to comment on or be concerned with the overall validity of the studies. She stated that questions about birth defects have not been answered. She continued her testimony by discussing the fact that DKP has been shown to increase uterine polyps and change blood cholesterol and that increasing the temperature of the product leads to an increase in production of DKP.(13)

Revolving Doors

The FDA and the manufacturers of aspartame have had a revolving door of employment for many years. In addition to the FDA Commissioner and two US Attorneys leaving to take positions with companies connected with G.D. Searle, four other FDA officials connected with the approval of aspartame took positions connected with the NutraSweet industry between 1979 and 1982 including the Deputy FDA Commissioner, the Special Assistant to the FDA Commissioner, the Associate Director of the Bureau of Foods and Toxicology and the Attorney involved with the Public Board of Inquiry.(24)

It is important to realize that this type of revolving-door activity has been going on for decades. The Townsend Letter for Doctors (11/92) reported on a study revealing that 37 of 49 top FDA officials who left the FDA took positions with companies they had regulated. They also reported that over 150 FDA officials owned stock in drug companies they were assigned to manage. Many organizations and universities receive large sums of money from companies connected to the NutraSweet Association, a group of companies promoting the use of aspartame. In January 1993, the American Dietetic Association received a US$75,000 grant from the NutraSweet Company. The American Dietetic Association has stated that the NutraSweet Company writes their “Facts” sheets.(25)

What is the FDA doing to protect the consumer from the dangers of aspartame?

Less than nothing.

In 1992, the FDA approved aspartame for use in malt beverages, breakfast cereals, and refrigerated puddings and fillings. In 1993 the FDA approved aspartame for use in hard and soft candies, non-alcoholic favored beverages, tea beverages, fruit juices and concentrates, baked goods and baking mixes, and frostings, toppings and fillings for baked goods.

In 1991, the FDA banned the importation of stevia. The powder of this leaf has been used for hundreds of years as an alternative sweetener. It is used widely in Japan with no adverse effects. Scientists involved in reviewing stevia have declared it to be safe for human consumption—something that has been well known in many parts of the world where it is not banned. Some people believe that stevia was banned to keep the product from taking hold in the United States and cutting into sales of aspartame.(26)

What is the U.S. Congress doing to protect the consumer from the dangers of aspartame?

Nothing.

What is the U.S. Administration (President) doing to protect the consumer from the dangers of aspartame?

Nothing.

Aspartame consumption is not only a problem in the United States—it is being sold in over 70 countries throughout the world.

Where do you get your information? Snopes? Some people can tolerate a lot of toxins. Some of us can’t. That doesn’t make us nuts!

Oh, good grief. You chemicalphobes are all the same. While guys like me were suffering through grad courses in biochemistry, physiology and nutrition, and then slaving away in private industry as an R&D scientist for a global food ingredient supplier, you were buying any bogus piece of information the food Nazis and toxic terrorists would publish.

The FDA is in bed with business and is not protecting us.

I spent a lot of years shepherding products through the regulatory nightmare that is the FDA. Anyone who thinks the FDA exists to protect industry and that the relationship isn't highly adversarial has no clue how industry or the FDA operates. The FDA gains nothing from cooperating with industry.

Let's ignore the data dump you copied and pasted from god knows where and ask you to answer a simple question in your own words. But first, let me provide some factual background. We know for a fact that aspartame is made up of phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. Phenylalanine is one of the essential amino acids that is common in proteins. Aspartic acid is also an amino acid found in dairy and meats. Methanol is found naturally in fermented foods and beverages as well as fruits and vegetables.

For anyone not suffering from PKU, how can aspartame be bad for you when you consume these three components bound together but not bad for you when consumed separately? To believe what you're saying you'd have to believe that you're poisoning yourself when you eat a steak with baked potato, green beans and have a glass of red wine. How many rational people believe that the foods we eat every day are going to cause the ridiculous list of maladies you've cited in your post? You get three times more methanol from a glass of apple juice than you do from a diet coke. Some fools believe that when you consume amino acids individually they all of a sudden become dangerous. What these ignorant people don't understand is that your gut breaks down chains of amino acids into individual amino acids (except for a few small peptides) before being cleared by the liver. Ignorant people make ignorant claims and ignorant people, not having taken the time to educate themselves on the topic, believe what they're told.

So, this doesn't make sense, does it? Aspartame, along with sucralose and olestra are the three most tested ingredients in the history of food. If all these afflictions you suggest were caused by aspartame where are all the sick people from 25 years of consumption? Yeah, right.

Now, answer the question: why does aspartame cause birth defects, brain damage, central nervous system disorders, cancer, diabetes and global warming when the three components are bound together but not when they're consumed individually, many times in much higher quantities?

Feel free to be as technical as you'd like. Standing by.

In the meantime:

From MIT (Massachessets Institute of Technology):
“Even daily large doses of the high-intensity sweetener aspartame, also known as NutraSweet, had no adverse effect on study subjects' health and well-being, a visiting scientist at MIT reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition last week.
"We conclude that aspartame is safe for the general population," said Paul A. Spiers, visiting scientist in the Clinical Research Center (CRC). Mood, aggression and selected cognitive functions were tested during a study in which some of the subjects consumed doses of aspartame nearly 20 times the daily amount taken by the vast majority of the general population.
During a four-month period, subjects received either aspartame, sugar or a placebo and underwent physical and psychological testing. Some subjects were given doses of up to 45 milligrams per kilogram of body weight--the equivalent of 17 to 24 12-ounce diet beverages for males and 14 to 19 12-ounce drinks for females. In the general population, most Americans who consume aspartame take in 3 milligrams per kilogram of body weight a day, the equivalent of one or less 12-ounce diet beverage.

Despite the high consumption of aspartame, the 48 normal subjects showed no changes in mood, memory, behavior, electroencephalograms (which record the electrical signals of the brain) or physiology that could be tied to aspartame, Dr. Spiers found. Although some subjects reported headaches, fatigue, nausea and acne, the same number of incidences were reported by subjects taking placebo and sugar as those taking aspartame.”

Study reaffirms safety of aspartame

You did not debate my information, you just wrote it off as “from who knows where”.

Your source is unknown. You never provided a link. There are no sources. It's just baseless opinion and nonsense. You can find just about anything you want on the internet but using Google as a replacement for an education in science doesn't work.

I happen to know a lot about all of these things

LOL! If you did you would never have posted this ridiculous article in the first place.

. If you really know chemistry like you claim to then you know that 3 chenicals combined making a 4th chemical are not the same and will not act the same in the body as the 3 original chamicals

Oh, please. Your gut breaks down aspartame into the individual components before clearing them just like if you consumed them individually from various sources. That's why you can't answer my question and is one of the many reasons why your claims about aspartame are nonsense.

How arrogant.

Arrogant? Maybe you need to look up the definition for that word. You fear toxins in food without realizing that foods you eat every day contain many deadly toxins. Orange juice contains limonene (it gives orange juice it's flavor) which is also used as paint stripper. Potatoes contain arsenic. Lima beans contain cyanide. Strawberries contain all sorts of toxic compounds. Roasting coffee beans and beef creates some of the most powerful carcinogens known to man. Apples and peanuts have aflatoxins. Benzene is found in fruits, vegetables and dairy. Apple juice, cider and red wine contain methanol. Fortunately, the amounts are so small that your liver easily clears them without harming you. You fear these things because you're a chemicalphobe. You fear MSG even though your body needs glutamate to survive. You get ten times more glutamate from naturally occurring sources than you do from added sources. But here you are telling us that glutamate kills brain cells and causes Alzheimer's. What a bunch of crap.

Again you write off my opinion as emotion this time

Your opinion is based on junk science that appeals to emotion. The people offering this garbage up are either just plain ignorant, looking for grant money from the government or they're charlatans looking to sell you something. When the facts don't support you, your only option is to appeal to emotions.

Afer all you are smarter than the rest of us?

Us? You're the only one here trying to support the foolishness in this article. Everyone else called this what it was and moved on. They're actually smarter than I am because they knew better than to argue with someone that has no idea what he's talking about.

It is possible to study science, do a lot of reading and research and come to different conclusions than you did.

That's true, but in your case you've never studied the subject or done any legitimate research and we already know your "resources" are bogus.

I don’t just drink industry cool aide like you apparently do.

Industry cool aid vs. ignorance Kool-Aid? I'll take the one based on knowledge and facts every time.

I admit that some of the information in the original posting is a little facetious.

A little? You're being far too kind to yourself.

Thought it might spark and interisting converstaion

All it really did was make clear that you and the author don't have any idea what you're talking about.

Didn’t expect it to develop into you needing to prove that you are smarter than everyone else.

If you post lies and nonsense I'm going to point it out. That doesn't make me smarter than everyone else, it only means that I can prove what you've posted is lies and nonsense.

You didn’t exactly refute my points.

You didn't make any points. You simply copied and pasted a bunch of gibberish from God knows where indicting a food ingredient without any proof. There's nothing here to refute.

Who financed the MIT study?

Does it really matter? Aspartame is probably the most tested and studied food ingredient in history. The people who created it and those who manufacture it feed it to their families. Do you think they're willfully poisoning the most important people in their lives to build the bottom line of the company they work for? Do you think the FDA is in the back pocket of industry and is just standing by silently while these merchants of death poison society? You know nothing. The real mystery is why you persist in reinforcing that fact on this forum

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