> Aspartame and Kids Vitamins
> From gmill02 at EMORY.EDU (Gary W Miller)
> Organization BIOSCI International Newsgroups for Molecular Biology
> Date 22 May 1996 04:58:58 -0700
> Newsgroups bionet.neuroscience
>> Could someone please tell me where the wood alcohol comes from??????
> Aspartame is composed of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. Even if
> alcohol is used in its production, it would certainly be removed prior to
> use. I think the link between all these diseases and aspartame border on
> pseudoscience EXCEPT IN ONE SITUATION. I hate to give the zealots more
> ammunition, but the FDA has mandated that all products containing
> nutrasweet be so labeled. In addition the statement "warning
> phenylketonurics: contains phenylalanine" is supposed to be on the
> package. If there are products such as vitamins that do not contain this
> warning I would lobby very hard to ban them. When a person with
> phenylketonuria or PKU consumes aspartate, it can cause numerous problems
> since they lack the enzyme necessary to metabolize it.
Gary,
The methanol is a breakdown product of aspartame (L-aspartyl-L-
phenylalanine methyl ester) -- from the "methyl ester" part.
There are other breakdown products of aspartame such as beta-aspartame
and aspartylphenylalanine diketeropiperazine.
I don't know what links you are referring to, but even the
manufacturer admits that aspartame can cause adverse reactions in
some cases. The American Diabetes Associations admits that aspartame
can cause headaches and dizziness in some people. They are forced to
admit this because they would look foolish, otherwise. Eventually,
they will be forced to admit that medium- and long-term use of
aspartame can cause very serious health problems as documented on my
web page.
There are no quality medium- or long-term studies demonstrating the
safety of aspartame (over six months long, for example). As for the
relatively short studies avialable, in an *amazing* "coincidence,"
almost all of the independent studies of aspartame in humans show
that it can cause adverse effects while none of the industry studies
concluded that adverse effects were found due to aspartame. Some of
the industry studies should be used as classroom examples of bad
design, conduct, analysis, and presentation of research.
Anyone who can read the sample adverse reaction reports on my web
page and the long, difficult-to-read (admittedly), *draft* about the
science and history of aspartame, and *still* claim that aspartame is
"proven" safe for everyone but persons with PKU is really putting
their scientific reputation out on a limb. Aspartame amounts to a
dangerous scientific experiment on the general public -- an
experiment that is not going very well despite the efforts of PR
people and "scientific" "research" from the industry to prove
otherwise. And the experiment started on a large scale in 1987, so
there may be more yet to come over the next several decades.
> SO IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY PRODUCTS THAT CONTAIN NUTRASWEET THAT DOES NOT
> CONTAIN THE FDA WARNING PLEASE CONTACT ME WITH THE NAME OF THE PRODUCT
> AND THE MANUFACTURER.
They might want to contact the FDA as well.
Best Wishes,
- Mark
mgold at tiac.nethttp://www.tiac.net/users/mgold/health.html
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