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In 1908, over a bowl of seaweed soup, Japanese scientist Kikunae Ikeda asked a question that would change the food industry forever: What gave dashi, a ubiquitous Japanese soup base, its meaty flavor? In Japanese cuisine, dashi, a fermented base made from boiled seaweed and dried fish, was widely used by chefs to add extra oomph to meals — pairing well with other savory, but meatless foods such as vegetables and soy. For some reason that was generally accepted but inexplicable, dashi made these meatless foods meaty — and Ikeda was determined to find out why. Ikeda was able to...

Diet sodas and other artificially sweetened products don't help with weight loss, according to a new study from Purdue University. According to Susan E. Swithers, a professor of psychological sciences and a behavioral neuro scientist, it is important to know the effects of having too much artificial sweetener in the diet. She added that consuming too much food containing "no-calorie sweeteners" have been known to be associated with increased risk of heart problems and weight gain.About 30 percent of all adults in the U.S. consume artificial sweeteners. Even though, diet sodas have been considered healthy food by many, studies show...

The FDA is considering a plan that would allow the dairy industry to add the sweetener aspartame to milk without having to label it. The plan is coming under fire from some farmers and some consumer groups. …

Two powerful dairy organizations, The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), are petitioning the Food and Drug Administration to allow aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to be added milk and other dairy products without a label. The FDA currently allows the dairy industry to use “nutritive sweeteners” including sugar and high fructose corn syrup in many of their products. Nutritive sweeteners are defined as sweeteners with calories. This petition officially seeks to amend the standard of identification for milk, cream, and 17 other dairy products like yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, sour cream, and others...

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

Maybe next they'll conclude that water makes you fat. Diet soda -- which has nearly no nutritional value -- dangerously bloats waistlines and might boost blood-sugar levels, according to new studies. People who drink diet soda experienced a 70 percent greater increase in waist circumference over a decade than non-users, a study by the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio found. "The more diet sodas people drank, the more their waists grew," researcher Sharon Fowler told The Post. "For people who drink two or more diet sodas a day, their waist increase was five times those who drank...

Just as you were starting to feel virtuous for having switched from sugary sodas to low- or no-calorie substitutes, a new study comes along suggesting that diet sodas might be bad for your head and your heart. The study, which followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers for nine or more years, found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack, than those who completely eschewed the diet drinks, according to researchers who presented their results today at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference in Los...

I'm curious to what Freepers think of Aspartame. Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used in diet products like diet coke. Many websites, albeit possibly kooky websites, say Aspartame produces side effects like anxiety, blurred vision, depression, etc. The medical establishment and Feds say its heavily tested and safe. Anyone with an opinion or experience?

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...