New Mexico and Aspartame

[sarongsong]

January 20, 2006
"...If [the senate bill is] passed, no food containing any amount of the sweetener could be manufactured, sold or delivered in Mew Mexico, beginning July 1..."
Previous November 20, 2005 article

[paulie jay]

Interesting. I wasn't aware that the aspartame boogeyman was real.

[randb]

I remember hearing that aspartame was a possible carcinogen.. I'm not sure though....

[Sammy]

January 20, 2006
"...If [the senate bill is] passed, no food containing any amount of the sweetener could be manufactured, sold or delivered in Mew Mexico, beginning July 1..."
Previous November 20, 2005 article

This is outrageous. It's a classic case of legeislators with NO scientific background getting captured by vocal cranks. Aspartame has even more cranks/kooks associated with it than the moon landing. The reference to Rumsfeld is typical of the "logic" used by these people.

Aspartame has been discussed at length on the BAAB. I will not reiterate all the links/quotes, except to say that there is NO SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE OF ASPARTAME BEING ASSOCIATED WITH ANY ADVERSE HEALTH EFFECTS IN HUMANS WHO DO NOT HAVE THE METABOLIC DISORDER KNOWN AS PKU SYNDROME (folks who have it know it and avoid aspartame).

Aspartame is one opf the most thoroughly studied substances in history. The regulatory agencies of most major western nations have examined the relevant data multiple times and always approved aspartames's use as a food additive. The aspartame industry site at http://www.aspartame.org/aspartame_experts.html has links to reports from regulatory bodies, scientific organizations, associations for syndromes such as diabetes and alzheimers, and other experts. (Yes, it's an industry site, but there is no association between the industry and the bodies reporting their findings. And, to the best of my knowledge, there is no "cherry picking" which ignores findings which do show adverse effects.)

[sarongsong]

Issues with the cited article's Barcelona Study? Compare it with FDA report on Searle's submission for NutraSweet approval 1977, rejected by the FDA in 1980 and subsequently over-ruled by Rumsfeld-appointed FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes in 1981, despite

...No FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market...

Correction: "...20 JANUARY 1981
...Reagan's transition team, which includes Rumsfeld, nominates Dr Arthur Hull Hayes Jr to be the new FDA commissioner..."

[R.A.F.]

Personally, I prefer products made with Splenda...because it tastes better.

[Sammy]

Personally, I prefer products made with Splenda...because it tastes better.

Forgot to mention this in my previous post, but there is a growing crank community claiming that Splenda is also part of a vast conspiracy to poison the world. They haven't yet twigged to the fact that Rumsfeld is also part of the Splenda conspiracy...

[tofu]

Forgot to mention this in my previous post, but there is a growing crank community claiming that Splenda is also part of a vast conspiracy to poison the world.

Have you ever seen a commie use a packet of Splenda? (Dr. Strangelove reference)

[Grey]

Personally, I prefer products made with Splenda...because it tastes better.

I still don't think any of the alternatives can beat plain old sugar. Yum!

[JohnW]

I still don't think any of the alternatives can beat plain old sugar. Yum!

And it's even better after fermentation!

[Doodler]

And it's even better after fermentation!

Rummmmmmmm!!

[Vaelroth]

Personally, I prefer products made with Splenda...because it tastes better.

Unfortunately, Splenda has aspartame in it.

[Sammy]

Issues with the cited article's Barcelona Study? Compare it with FDA report on Searle's submission for NutraSweet approval 1977, rejected by the FDA in 1980 and subsequently over-ruled by Rumsfeld-appointed FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes in 1981, despite

We've been thru this ** before. The Advisory Panel changed it's position when new data, refuting one earlier study which raised concerns became available after it's initial report. The letter from the Panel's Chairman was posted on BABB during the previous discussion when you rauised the same issue. Only this time, you added in the (IMO) crank Rumsfeld issue. What does the name of the pserson appointing an FDA Commisioner have to do with a science-based decision?

If the original FDA decision was "cooked," why has EVERY regulatory agency which has reviewed aspartame found no adverse effects? Is there a global "fix?" Where is ANY data showing any connection between aspartame and ANY impact on human health?

The following organizations have issued opinions on the safety of aspartame:

Alzheimer’s Association
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Cancer Society
American Council on Science and Health
American Diabetes Association
American Dietetic Association
American Heart Association
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America
British Medical Journal (editorial)
Canadian Diabetes Association
Diabetes U.K.
Lupus Foundation of America
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mayo Clinic Multiple Sclerosis Society of CanadaMultiple Sclerosis Foundation
National Cancer Institute
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parkinson Foundation
The Nemours Foundation
U.K. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF)
U.S. Consumer Information Center
Brazilian Health Ministry
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)
Health Canada
French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA)
Scientific Committee on Food of the European Commission
U.K. Food Standards Agency

Did Rumsfeld get to them too?

[Monique]

We've been thru this ** before. The Advisory Panel changed it's position when new data, refuting one earlier study which raised concerns became available after it's initial report. The letter from the Panel's Chairman was posted on BABB during the previous discussion when you rauised the same issue. Only this time, you added in the (IMO) crank Rumsfeld issue. What does the name of the pserson appointing an FDA Commisioner have to do with a science-based decision?

If the original FDA decision was "cooked," why has EVERY regulatory agency which has reviewed aspartame found no adverse effects? Is there a global "fix?" Where is ANY data showing any connection between aspartame and ANY impact on human health?

The following organizations have issued opinions on the safety of aspartame:

Alzheimer’s Association
American Academy of Family Physicians
American Cancer Society
American Council on Science and Health
American Diabetes Association
American Dietetic Association
American Heart Association
Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America
British Medical Journal (editorial)
Canadian Diabetes Association
Diabetes U.K.
Lupus Foundation of America
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Mayo Clinic Multiple Sclerosis Society of CanadaMultiple Sclerosis Foundation
National Cancer Institute
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parkinson Foundation
The Nemours Foundation
U.K. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF)
U.S. Consumer Information Center
Brazilian Health Ministry
Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC)
Health Canada
French Food Safety Agency (AFSSA)
Scientific Committee on Food of the European Commission
U.K. Food Standards Agency

Did Rumsfeld get to them too?

Perhaps so... Perhaps thread belong in conspiracy theories not babbling

[JohnW]

This is going to put the woowoos in a very difficult position. Now aspartame is no longer a sinister plot by big business to foist evil chemicals on an unsuspecting populace. Now... the Gummint is trying to suppress it!

Any day now, we're going to start seeing "THEY don't want you to know the truth about the miracle natural substance, aspartame! It's the greatest health breakthrough since homeopathy! It cures rabies, scabies and colicky babies! For full details, send just $49.95 to..."

[tlbs101]

"...If [the senate bill is] passed, no food containing any amount of the sweetener could be manufactured, sold or delivered in New Mexico, beginning July 1..."

(state spelling typo; corrected)

Note that this is the legislative body that must also approve the funding and/or tax-breaks for Branson's new spaceport. God help us all.

I am trying to find out who the other co-sponsors are to these bills so I can complain, directly.

[mike alexander]

Specifically, the statute states, "A food shall be deemed to be adulterated, (1) if it contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious; (2) if it contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance which is unsafe, and (3) if it consists in whole or in part of…decomposed substance, or if it is otherwise unfit."

Wow. (3), if enforced, will put a REAL damper on wine and cheese parties.

For reference, a typical diet soda contains 130 mg aspartame. Complete deeseterification will release 14 mg methanol/can. That's not very much methanol. Ten times that, consumed over a day, is still not very much methanol. From what I can find, wines contain 100 to 200 mg/liter of methanol. A liter of diet soda would contain about 40 mg of methanol equivalent.

Curiously, brandies can contain up to 0.35% (3500 mg/liter) methanol.

From the Barcelona reference:



Two groups of rats were selected. The first group NC (Normal-Chronic, N=5) received a daily oral gavage of 0.68 mmol per kg of rat weight (200 mg per kg) of a water suspension (2.5 mL/kg) of non-radioactive aspartame (Sigma). This treatment was continued for I 0 days. On day I 1, the rats were administered a gavage of 4.5 Mbq per kg of rat weight of labelled aspartame in 68 µmol of cold aspartame per kg, in the same volume of the standard gavage. The second group NA (Normal-Acute, N=l2) was given a single dose of 4.5 Mbq per kg of rat weight of labelled aspartame in 68 µmol of cold aspartame per kg of rat weight. Prior to the administration of the last (or only) dose, blood was extracted from the tail vein and used for the measurement of biochemical parameters using a Spotchem dry strip (panel I and 2) analysis system (Menarini, Milano, Italy).



The radioactive tracer was piggybacked on a dotal (single gavage)dose of 200mg/kg/day. Scaling up to a 60 kg human, that would be a daily dose of 12,000mg, or 12 g. And given as a single bolus, which would probably result in a faster and higher maximum blood concentration. Even the proverbial 12 pack a day drinker would be ingesting about 1/10 this total, and spread out over a much longer time.

[beskeptical]

I can't believe the aspartame nonsense is still making the rounds.

For Pete's sake. People use it because they want to cut down on calories and still eat/drink sweets. If you don't have a calorie issue, don't eat/drink the stuff. If you have a calorie issue, the risk is minuscule compared to the health effects of obesity.

The diet sodas I drink massive quantities of would be a few thousand extra calories a day if I drank sugared sodas. And chances are the phosphoric acid leaching the calcium out of my bones is much more hazardous than the aspartame. I prefer soda to water. Why should the New Mexico legislature care? That's rather more frightening than the aspartame if you ask me.

Your link on Donald Rumsfeld appointing the head of the FDA links to some unrelated junk on naming URLs, Sarong.

[Sammy]

In addition to the obesity issues BeSkep noted, there are also legions of diabetics (increasing as the population ages) who MUST avoid highly sugared products. I'm a Type II diabetic (typically late onset, non-insulin dependant) and control my glucose levels with diet and oral meds.

Artificial sweetners allow diabetics of all types to safely consume a much greater variety of foodstuffs than would be the case otherwise by preventing glucose "spikes" and helping reduce total calorie intake.

[sarongsong]

...Your link on Donald Rumsfeld appointing the head of the FDA links to some unrelated junk on naming URLs, Sarong.

Sorry, try these:
"...HISTORY OF BUSINESS
G. D. Searle & Co. ...Effective June 1, 1977, Donald H. Rumsfeld assumed duties as President and Chief Executive Officer..."
"...20 JANUARY 1981
Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president of the US. Reagan's transition team, which includes Rumsfeld, nominates Dr Arthur Hull Hayes Jr to be the new FDA commissioner..."

[beskeptical]

Sorry, try these:
"...HISTORY OF BUSINESS
G. D. Searle & Co. ...Effective June 1, 1977, Donald H. Rumsfeld assumed duties as President and Chief Executive Officer..."
"...20 JANUARY 1981
Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president of the US. Reagan's transition team, which includes Rumsfeld, nominates Dr Arthur Hull Hayes Jr to be the new FDA commissioner..."

Sorry Sarong but I don't find those sites very credible.

According to the FDA, Nutrasweet is a Monsanto product, not a Searle product though perhaps the patent has changed hands. Anyone can write anything they want to the FDA about a product and it will be posted on their site. The letters on aspartame are not based on anything more than someone claiming they got this or that from the stuff. If you drink a diet soda and die 5 minutes later it doesn't mean the soda killed you.

Anyway, I don't see any big conspiracy here to hide the bad news. Aspartame has been on the market long enough to know by now if we're all going to drop dead from it.

One thing not often considered when people start buying all this company is hiding the information stuff is that not all research is funded by corporations, by government, by the control groups. If people get a disease, there are often donations to disease foundations of which some is earmarked for research. The Heart Association, the Diabetes Association, the March of Dimes, and so on all fund research that is independent of drug companies and the government. And there is research in other countries as well.

When you read stuff like in the links you provided, go find legitimate research to confirm the claims. Just because someone believes something doesn't mean that is evidence for it.

[sarongsong]

...go find legitimate research to confirm the claims. Just because someone believes something doesn't mean that is evidence for it.

Sorry, thought the Barcelona Study met even Sammy's criteria for scientific legitimacy. Yes, Monsanto later bought Searle's interest in aspartame/Nutrasweet. You are correct, Taks, reflected in Message #5's correction.

[beskeptical]

Sorry, thought the Barcelona Study met even Sammy's criteria for scientific legitimacy. Yes, Monsanto later bought Searle's interest in aspartame/Nutrasweet. You are correct, Taks, reflected in Message #5's correction.

You mean in all those pages and pages of totally unsubstantiated claims I was supposed to find this?

13 MAY 1998
Independent scientists from the University of Barcelona publish a landmark study clearly showing that aspartame is transformed into formaldehyde in the bodies of living specimens (in this case rats), and that this formaldehyde spreads throughout the specimens' vital organs, including the liver, kidneys, eyes and brain. The results fly in the face of manufacturers' claims that aspartame does not break down into formaldehyde in the body, and bolster the claims of aspartame critics that many of the symptoms associated with aspartame toxicity are caused by the poisonous and cumulative effects of formaldehyde.

And that isn't an original article. It is a claim that doesn't even list the citation where one may look at the study and see if one draws the same conclusion as the summary here. I had to search for the original article on the net.

I couldn't find the original article so I have to assume this copy of it is correct. All it says is very large quantities "gavaged" into rats (which means they pumped it in via a tube), resulted in formaldehyde as one of the metabolites (meaning the chemical your body breaks something down into before excreting it).

Since the quantities would be expected to be minimal you have to take this line of inquiry further. You have to then look and see if NutraSweet consumption causes harm. And after that, you have to weigh risk vs benefit.

I'd rather have aspartame than sugar in my sodas given the risks and benefits currently known.

And on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the hazards I am most worried about, the big aspartame scare is about as high as the big mercury in dental fillings and vaccines scare, less than 1.

If you're interested in corporate conspiracies, there are plenty of substantiated ones like tobacco and vehicle safety concerns that have been squelched over the years. There are increasing problems with drug companies exaggerating their product's effectiveness and conveniently not mentioning the less favorable research results. Drug companies hire experts to present drug company research as if the expert actually carried out the research.

With all the substantiated threats to our safety out there, why bother with the fake threats?

These web sites, in my opinion and no offense to you meant, are chock full of people claiming to know, without any research, legitimate evidence, or investigation of alternative causes, that they can tell [fill in the blank] caused their [fill in the blank]. It simply isn't evidence to believe.

And in addition to the time wasted pursuing potential causes of diseases for which there is no evidence, these folks are missing the chance to look for the causes for which there is evidence.

[Taks]

20 JANUARY 1981
Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president of the US. Reagan's transition team, which includes Rumsfeld, nominates Dr Arthur Hull Hayes Jr to be the new FDA commissioner..."

uh, first of all, you need to reread that last statement. rumsfeld did not "appoint" the head of the FDA. reagan's transition team nominated dr. hayes, which means reagan appointed the guy. to the best of my knowledge, rumsfeld CANNOT appoint anyone to such a post now or then as he is not elected.

taks

[LurchGS]

it's just a conspiracy by C&H (conspiracies and hindrances) to keep sugar as the only means of sweetening things

[The Supreme Canuck]

What about honey?

[Van Rijn]

What about honey?

There are some slight differences in detail, but it is still glucose and fructose. There is little advantage over table sugar.

[beskeptical]

There are some slight differences in detail, but it is still glucose and fructose. There is little advantage over table sugar.

I second that. It's a myth that sucrose is bad and glucose and fructose are good. All three are broken down into glucose before being absorbed into the blood stream.

[The Supreme Canuck]

There are some slight differences in detail, but it is still glucose and fructose. There is little advantage over table sugar.

I know. I was just being facetious.

[paulie jay]

What about honey?

Weeeeellll, honey has a distinct flavour - I can't use it as a sweetener. I find it too overwhelming.

A few spoons of sugar a day for your coffee won't do you any harm providing you have one set of stairs to walk up! I think sugar has just the right taste for coffee - artificial sweetener always turns it into "mutant coffee" for me.

As for soda (or as we call them, "soft drinks". We don't have "hard drinks" though...), well that's a different league as far as sugar is concerned. Sugar-free every time for me, no risk!