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Not according to the FDA or the ACSH or MIT, among others. On the other hand, überquack Mercola and the holistic nutters agree. Basically, the aspartame thing is just like the vaccine thing: scientists with evidence versus quacks who try to dress their bias up as information. Sure, aspartame tastes like dog shit, but (unless you have a certain rare genetic disorder), it isn't dangerous.

makers of the cancerous Aspartame

Not according to the FDA or ACSH. But at least The Holistic Healing Web Page is of that belief. In general, you should beware of medical advice that has its origins in fowarded emails.

Sure, and a kick in the balls isn't too nice either. I'm much more worried about that than aspertame and Parkinson's, and I'm much more worried about the absolutely assured onset of type 2 diabetes from sugar.

http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame/abuse/parkins on.html

The world's largest medical experiment is aspartame and MSG, and it's being conducted by food manufacturers and multinational conglomerates with the FDA's blessing.

And you and I are the guinea pigs.

Microsoft's proposal will take a 'holistic approach' to tackle the classification problem...

I'm guessing that this "holistic approach" will do for malware what it did for medicine.

It may not cause cancer. Then again it might, seeing as when aspartame motabolizes in your body it produces methanol and formaldehyde (highly toxic in humans and animals). Who cares if it causes cancer (even though it probably does)? Formaldehyde is likely to kill you one way or another.

Could be because of the sceptics of sucralose.
Nah, who am I kidding, just look at the wikipedia article for aspartame...

A Google search for splenda returns this as the second result.

Read the site, and it's info on other artificial sweeteners. I never thought the day would come, but now I see that those "all natural food" hippies have somethin goin for them.

Do you have any reason to doubt that there would be a significant amount of testing of chemicals in toys and toothpastes

Well, I found his concern valid.
There is debate wherever fluoride would be a risk to health. Fluoride IS toxic, hence regulation on how much you can put in a tube of toothpaste (overhere at least).

DTT was once considered harmless. People showered in the stuff! Or what about Asbestos? Smoking was once considered harmless and some still do. There are alot of examples like this, as things only get banned when there have been victims.

There has been proven that the levels of industrial toxins in people's bodies are troubling (through packaging of consumergoods etc). I don't have time to find a link to back that up now though.

I like your post, but I'm pretty sure Sucralose is chlorinated sucrose molecule. At least, that is what the company that produces it says. Here are some links:
http://www.holisticmed.com/splenda/ http://www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_danger s.htm# http://www.ific.org/publications/brochures/sucralo sebroch.cfm http://www.sucralose.org/facts.html

Please note I wasn't specifically looking for pros vs cons of the shit. I personally hate it, I can taste when it's in my food, and I have a sneaking suspicion it wrecked my digestive system. However, I don't know all there is to know about it so I really can't point fingers, but I can stop, and have stopped, eating it.

This conversation has long past, so most likely this won't be read, but...

Doing a google search for "Roundup is one of the most environmentally friendly" yields the following link, which disputes your claim that Roundup is very environmentally friendly. FWIW.

http://www.holisticmed.com/ge/roundup.html

Kevin

The argument is that companies used to have to pay to dispose of fluoride properly (pay $$$$), now they put it into the water for the govt (receive $). So what if they don't get paid a lot by the govt? A small income is better than a huge expense!

This is all well and good, everybody wins, unless you believe that fluoride is bad for you. That's where to start talking about tin foil hats if you're so inclined, but the idea that companies have a great financial incentive to flourinate the water supply is not controversial.

For more information, make sure your tin foil hat is on tight, then see here or here

The FDA did a small test on les than 100 rats and found "no-problems" and okayed the drug. That is, the FDA didn't do its job.

Cancer wasn't found in 1 rat, I'm not sure of the scientific details myself... but this page has some info. Here's another arcticle

Here's a quote from an expert:

My concern is that increases in such minute levels could readily enter the blood stream of individuals drinking milk from BST treated cows. As an individual ages, indolent tumor cells do appear in various organs (breast, ovary, prostate, etc..) which grow slowly with the result that clinical cancer is not manifested until old age, or, in many cases, after the individual would have died of other causes. Stimulation of these cells by elevated levels of IGF-1 would result in clinical cancer in a decade or two or even less. Furthermore, these levels of IGF-1 could stimulate the progression and aggressiveness of childhood leukemias to a point that chemotherapy could not be effective, much less curative.

The researcher went on to say that the FDA/Monsanto research was extremely slopping, or even fraudulent.

Monsanto has tried to push this drug on Canada, and I saw an interview with a guy from the Canadian equivalent of the FDA, and he said that he was pressured to okay the drug. Talk about integration with the government. Now, Canada, and most of the rest of the developed world refuse to touch rBGH, the main concern being IGF-1.

People who order diet cola aren't necessarily under any illusion that doing so is going to magically make them lose weight. (But wouldn't that be nice?) Some people order it because they have sugar problems that make regular soda a bad idea for them. Others want to drink soda, but don't want to take in around 150 calories per 12 ounce serving...

There are some folks (diabetics) who have issues with sugars. However, they really shouldn't be scarfing cheeseburgers either.

For those who are concerned about calories, well, you've got a priorities issue. The most common artificial sweeteners have been shown to have significant health risks. Meanwhile, the only natural non-caloric sweetener has been agressively kept out of this country by the FDA reportedly at the behest of Monsanto (maker of Nutra-Sweet).

Ah, I just did a little bit of research, and the offending ingredient is "Acesulfame K" which is not exactly Aspartame, but similar, and just as bad for you in similar ways. It has a brand name of "Sweet One".

Those looking for some good info on these and other artificial sweeteners should look here. It also states that Stevia is about the only sweetener that is safe for diabetics (I've tasted it, it's quite gross, but better than nothing.)

but some experts believe

Uhhh, would these be the "experts" at holisticmed.com?

How do you know they're experts?

I'll take the research of proven scientists at places like MIT over some crackpots running a website with who knows what credentials to make any of the claims that are made.

There is a large site dedicated to exposing the toxicity of aspartame, with hundreds of pages of documentation.

From the Neotame pages:

"Neotame has similar structure to aspartame -- except that, from it's structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. Given all of the suffering being caused by Monsanto's aspartame, the prudent course would be to start out with the assumption that it may cause toxic damage or cancer from long-term exposure and conduct many thorough, long-term, and independent human studies to see the effects."

Sugar has 16 calories per teaspoon, by the way. Not enough to warrant cancer and neurological damage.

There is a large site dedicated to exposing the toxicity of aspartame, with hundreds of pages of documentation.

From the Neotame pages:

"Neotame has similar structure to aspartame -- except that, from it's structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. Given all of the suffering being caused by Monsanto's aspartame, the prudent course would be to start out with the assumption that it may cause toxic damage or cancer from long-term exposure and conduct many thorough, long-term, and independent human studies to see the effects."

Sugar has 16 calories per teaspoon, by the way. Not enough to warrant cancer and neurological damage.

I can see this being a really big deal to the type of people who'll have conniptions over anything sciencey and scary-sounding... you know, the same ones who lobby against genetically-engineered foods with signs like "NO FRANKENFOODS!".

I normally don't bother feeding the trolls (even with genetically-modified foods), but here I'll make an exception.

Ever hear of Monsanto?

They're a corporate giant thats a big player in the GM field. Based on their track record, I wouldn't trust them to provide food for my dog or cat...never mind for my own consumption.

Here are a few lowlights:

Monsanto recently sued canadian canola farmer Percy Schmeiser for patent infringement. The reason? His neighbour had been sowing Monsanto GM canola seed and some of the seed blew onto his property.

The Washington Post recently published this article detailing how for decades Monsanto dumped PCBs into streams in a small Alabama town despite having studies from the '60s describing the damage that was being done.

Monsanto is the parent company of Nutrasweet, one of the nastiest substances approved for human consumption.

Monsanto is also involved with a GM seed technology known as terminator. Terminator involves producing seeds that grow sterile plants, requiring the farmer to aquire new seeds from the company every growing season. It shouldn't take much imagination to realise that if these plants cross-polinate with unmodified plants, the results could be catastrophic.

Is this a company you would trust and whose products you want to be putting in your mouth?

Maybe next time you see people waving signs that that say "NO FRANKENFOODS", you might ask why before pointing the finger and screaming "Conspiracy nut!"

With other technologies, there's an element of trust involved. Break the trust and you will get flak every time you try to introduce something new...good or bad. Have the individuals making these sorts of decisions shown themselves to be responsible, looking out for our best interests? Here's your answer: After approving Nutrasweet for use in carbonated beverages, the Commissioner of the FDA, Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr left his post and went to work for Nutrasweet's PR division.

I used to think for myself when I was a kid in school. I knew how to read at a really young age, I caught on to math exceptionaly fast for a kid my age and I actually skipped kindergarden and went to first grade, making me the youngest student in my class at the time of high school graduation.

Why am I saying this? Because when I was in the first and second grades, I was hyperactive during recess and in class. I used to draw a lot of crap all over my assignments. I had all kinds of ideas about supernatural things. In short, I was a kid who wanted to play rather than learn in class. Actually, that's because in schools here in the U.S., teachers go over the same thing about fifty times, and I caught everything the first time so I got bored.

Anyway, the school psychologist decided that there was something wrong with me. At the time (early 80's) I don't think they classified kids as having ADD but they called it something else. Actually, to this day, I have a report written by this psychologist, several pages in length, which describes my "problems" in fine detail. It even includes something I said to her in the hall about having a magic stick or sword made of earth, fire and lightning or something like that. You know what, I think any kid who doesn't come up with bullsh1t like that should be expelled from school.

The psychologist had my parents get me some pills that were supposed to calm me down and make me pay attention in class. God only knows what was in those pills. One thing of which I am absolutely certain is that those pills actually damaged me. (There are certain chemicals used in some foods (aspertame), and in water (flouride), that have been scientifically proven to cause brain damage.) Those pills made me concentrate because they made me stupid, so I had to actually listen to understand what was going on. For years (up to my junior year in high school), I got bad grades and had a hard time keeping up with the rest of the class. The school system here made me think in a box, and I have spent the last five years or so working hard to make myself able to think for myself like I could when I was 6 years old. This entire situation frustrates me a great deal.

On a side note, I recommend Paulo Freire's The Banking Concept of Education. Actually, I recommend the first sentence or two of that paper. It says it all.