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Aspartame has been Renamed and is Now Being Marketed as a Natural Sweetener
Artificial sweeteners especially aspartame has gotten a bad rap over the years, most likely due to studies showing they cause cancer. But not to worry Ajinomoto the company that makes Aspartame has changed the name to AminoSweet. It has the same toxic ingredients but a nice new sounding name. And if you or your child happens to be allergic to Aspartame, well don’t take it personally it’s just business.
Despite the evidence gained over the years showing that aspartame is a dangerous toxin, it has remained on the global market . In continues to gain approval for use in new types of food despite evidence showing that it causes neurological brain damage, cancerous tumors, and endocrine disruption, among other things.
Most consumers are oblivious to the fact that Aspartame was invented as a drug but upon discovery of its’ sweet taste was magically transformed from a drug to a food additive. HFA wants to warn our readers to beware of a wolf dressed up in sheep’s clothing or in this case Aspartame dressed up as Aminosweet.
Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.
Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.
G.D. Searle & Company first patented aspartame in 1970. An internal memo released in the same year urged company executives to work on getting the FDA into the “habit of saying yes” and of encouraging a “subconscious spirit of participation” in getting the chemical approved.
G.D. Searle & Company submitted its first petition to the FDA in 1973 and fought for years to gain FDA approval, submitting its own safety studies that many believed were inadequate and deceptive. Despite numerous objections, including one from its own scientists, the company was able to convince the FDA to approve aspartame for commercial use in a few products in 1974, igniting a blaze of controversy.
In 1976, then FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt wrote a letter to Sen. Ted Kennedy expressing concern over the “questionable integrity of the basic safety data submitted for aspartame safety”. FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill believed that a grand jury should investigate G.D. Searle & Company for lying about the safety of aspartame in its reports and for concealing evidence proving the chemical is unsafe for consumption.
The details of aspartame’s history are lengthy, but the point remains that the carcinogen was illegitimately approved as a food additive through heavy-handed prodding by a powerful corporation with its own interests in mind. Practically all drugs and food additives are approved by the FDA not because science shows they are safe but because companies essentially lobby the FDA with monetary payoffs and complete the agency’s multi-million dollar approval process.
Changing aspartame’s name to something that is “appealing and memorable”, in Ajinomoto’s own words, may hoodwink some but hopefully most will reject this clever marketing tactic as nothing more than a desperate attempt to preserve the company’s multi-billion dollar cash cow. Do not be deceived.
Update: As many comments are being posted by readers who are allergic to Aspartame we ask that you please forward this article to as many people as you can.
Sources:
Ajinomoto brands aspartame ‘AminoSweet’
Aspartame History Highlights
FDA’s approval of aspartame under scrutiny
An Overdue Ban On A Dangerous Sweetener
http://www.naturalnews.com/028151_aspartame_sweeteners.html
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I find it amusing that Google Ads has chosen to post ads for Diet Coke on this article…
my sister ate more artificial sweetners than anyone i know. she would open at least 7 packets to put in a drink. she would eat a whole pack of gum in about 15 minutes. she always drink diet drinks. She started having neurological problems,Progressive ataxia, and palletal tremmors. she was sick for 5 years and passed away. i could not convince her this was harmfull. no suprise the doctors dont know what caused it.
I’m so glad a friend shared this. I avoid all artificial sweeteners because they cause me to have severe asthma attacks…I can’t buy gum without checking the label. I’ve been lucky enough to get to a hospital early enough in the past when accidentally ingesting aspartame or sucralose, but have had some pretty close calls where I almost died.
I get migraines aspartame is one of my triggers by changing the name it may cause confusion and undo suffering.
I used to share a flat with someone who worked for Searles, and he told me that Aspartame had been shown in Searles’ trials to be dangerous for anyone with kidney disease. This is hearsay, obviously, so choose to believe it or not – up to you. It’s hearsay I’ve taken notice of ever since.
Thank goodness for this article. I’m allergic to aspartame: I get severe migraines with halos, my left side goes numb, my speech gets slurred, my sight gets blurred, and I completely lose my sense of balance. At first I thought I was having a stroke, but I was 17 the first time; I’m 25 now. Once the stuff worked itself out of my system, I was fine. But it was scary enough that I stay away from all artificial sweeteners. It’s good to know that the name has been changed, just in case.
All junk food is toxic! Why worry about this if you’re eating the kind of junk they put it in?
I also have a disease that is attributed to the use of aspartame. Syndrome X, and Fibromyalgia. I had a gastroscopy done 2 years ago the Doctor told me flat out; “Stop eating or drinking anything with aspertame or any other artificial sweetner.” He said that it’s like I was poisoned, my because my entire digestive system was in a constant state of contraction. I have had to stop eating many different things due to new allergies as well and spent the last two years on DMARDS (Disease modifying Anti-Rheumatic Drugs) because Dr.s suspected Rheumatoid Arthritis or Lupus as well. Since staying away from all chewing gum, diet pop and processed foods laced with aspertame, I have been able to get my life back. Slowly, but surely I am loosing the weight, and I am com\ming off those terrible drugs.
It is poison! There is more Multiple Sclerosis now because of it. Read the FDA. It is NOT SAFE!!!!!!
LMFAO @ beadiemom!
You were drinking HOW much of that a day? And you never thought to yourself ‘oh this is maybe not such a good idea drinking this amount of brown watery crap…’?
NO I’LL GO GET TESTED FOR LUPUS INSTEAD!!
Frickin’ idiot
p.s it’s never lupus.
I don’t care what they say it only takes one mouthful of something with aspartame to give me a migraine and any more and I throw up I have been that way since they first came ot crystal light. Now i have to learn a new name I get tired of reading to make sure things don’t contain aspartame.
I would get headaches and stomach ackes and feel a kind of nervous, “not being myself” when eating a few chewing gums i a raw.
Now I know why!
@ CarlH: You’d be surprised at the wide variety of foods they put this stuff in, and at the # of products that used to be ok and all of a sudden changed their ingredients without warning. Read labels. Understand what they say.
I appreciate being made aware of this content, but WHAT’S WITH THE TERRIBLE GRAMMAR in this article?!
Thank you for publicizing what so many of us have known for a long time. And letting us know what they’re calling it now so we can continue to avoid the poison.
An upside is that the change in name won’t make the warnings on the labels go away…
so all of those who do suffer awful medical symptoms can just look for the
Warning phenylketonurics! Once you see that, you know it contains Aspartame or Aminosweet or whatever they wish to call it.
Unfortunately this will probably never go away. But those of you with allergic reactions, etc can at least do everything you can and press your friends and family to get the word out.
good luck!
Wow, this article would be so scary if it were true.
It is NOT only in Diet foods today, it is in everything.
Look at the meds, esp for children, look at the vitamins, exp for children, look at the lunchables and children’s drinks, both are in there.
A big name it goes under, trying to make it sound like a preservative or vitamin, is Acesulfame K or Acesulfame Potassium.
It is in just about anything made for kids.
It is in so many foods you have to read labels.
And while you are at it scan for Sucralose (splenda) also.
That is also in the children’s products and ALL foods. Why?
It is super addictive, so don’t be surprised to find it in your fav foods.
Read!
I am happy that these products are available. 1) I am diabetic and sugar will kill me faster then aspartame. 2) Being overweight because you dont consume lighter choice products is just as bad for you in other ways.
It gives me a headache too. This makes me angry. ….. I just want food. Why is it getting harder and harder to buy food.. real food without people messing with it.
My favorite food quote that works here too is:
“Eat food, not to much, mostly plants”–Michael Pollan
This chemical isn’t food.
I was going to curves and trying to loose some weight so i was eating diet this and diet that and the more I worked out and the more diet products I injested the stiffer and stiffer my joints and extrimidies became to the point where I was no longer able to attend Curves and do my exercise routine. I went to see my Dr. and She ran some tests and found out that my problem was that my Fermaldohide levels had shot through the roof and Aspartame in diet products is what was determined to be the root cause of this. I had been doing to my body what the coroner will do when I die.I immediately stopped eating anything with Aspartame in it and in a couple of weeks was tested again and my fermaldohide levels were back to normal. I now have it in all my medical charts to not give me anything with aspartame in it!I am a diabetic so I am extra careful to not buy things until I make sure it has Sucrolose in it as this does not cause me the same problems as did Aspartame!but more then anything I try to eat natural sugars instead of any artificial sweetners!
ya know I’m really tired of chemicals i have to read labels of everything i eat or drink so as to not accidentally ingest aspartame now i have to be paranoid of everything having it in it this is not cool what happened to good old sugar that’s a natural sweetener.
In the 1980s I drove a taxi cab. One night a gentleman got in my cab and we talked,he was in town to visit his mother. People talk to cabbies a lot and say a lot of stuff that they might not otherwise confide to in a stranger. I experienced that phenomenon for years. Somehow he began to tell me his story about aspartame. He said that he did the very early experiments/research on aspartame and its effects on living things. He had also testified before Congress on such. This is what he said: “Aspartame doesn’t affect the body in a bad way except for one area, the central nervous system”;(pretty much how he worded it). “Rats do not get brain tumors in a high percentage normally, but if you put aspartame in their water in low doses it increased the incidence of brain tumors in those rats 30%”. That’s what I remember about what he said about the negative effects of aspartame; there may have been more and probably was but I can’t quote it now; the preceding quotes are pretty accurate.
He then went on to tell me about the company, (he mentioned the name, I think I remember it was Searle, Rumsfeld was the CEO) and the effort of the company to move aspartame over from a drug classification to a food. This was very important to the company because aspartame would become a, his words, “cash cow, example: it costs a penny a pound to produce and is sold for a dollar per pound”. This effort by Searle reached into the highest levels of the Federal Government,culminating, get this….in the appointment of a Commissioner of the FDA expressly for the purpose of pushing their application through for aspartame! When that was done, he said, the Commissioner was gone! This scientist told me about testifying before Congress of the facts that he knew to be true scientifically. He told me that there were things that he could not tell me. I did not question him further on that, but it seemed that it was for a very serious reason. I have only been able to imagine all these years what that was all about.
So that’s what I know. I have been telling people this story ever since, mostly for the purpose of convincing them to put down their can of Diet Coke! Some respond, very few! The thinking is: I’m going to die anyway and if it doesn’t kill me today it can’t be that bad…kind of crazy huh? I have other stories but they don’t pertain to health, at least biological health. This I consider was right from the horse’s mouth and I have never doubted for one second its veracity. I think that he told me this for a reason, for me to tell others because he cared. I have, and now maybe this will help others to “put down their can of Diet Coke”!
I fear for this world where so many people can fall for such a hoax. Instead of running with the panicked crowd, posting and spreading such nonsense on there facebook, do a lttle research. If you believe this anti-aspartame conspiracy then i have some magical land in the desert to sell you.
Aspartame is toxic to people with the genetic disorder, phenylketonuria. My daughter was born with this condition and I watch labels and look for the aspartame warning required by the FDA for foods containing phenylalanine (like you see on Diet Coke, for example). Will the FDA require foods and beverages containing this newly named chemical to carry the same warning? This could be VERY dangerous for people with PKU as their livers do not make the enzyme to break down and convert phenylalanine and the result is a build-up in the brain, causing irreparable brain damage!
Michelle: you are already selling a magical land of made of baloney sandwiches by inferring that the science of the bad effects to humans by aspartame is a hoax. I fear for this world with people like you running around lying for your own enrichment.
I just published a true story that came from a man who had no reason whatsoever to lie to me, the cabbie taking him to his mother’s apartment in the late evening in the mid 80s, when even you would probably admit there was no anti aspartame conspiracy. What was his motive to lie to me? Was he trying to impress the cabbie?
What are your credentials to claim that you know so much about the efficacy of aspartame? That any word against it is a hoax wrapped in a clever decades old conspiracy! Oh my gosh.. these conspiracy theorists! That is a legitimate question because you are indicting many peoples knowledge and intelligence just with a few unsubstantiated, chaotic inferences. Is Rumsfeld your uncle? Do you own stock in the new owners of this poison? Are you related to someone in the FDA? Do you work for the government? It’s something! You definitely have some personal vested interest here. Come on,out with it!! Where’s the money? And it’s ‘their Facebook’ not ‘there Facebook’
Michelle, I fear for the world that someone might listen to you and continue justifying a bad behavior…the ingestion of aspertame and other artificial sweetners.
FYI, currently there is a huge number of real sugars / sweetners on the market which when purchased raw or barely processed are ingested into the blood stream at as little as 30% the rate of processed white sugar.
Artificial sweetners are not an option if one wants to maintain good health.
Solutions! Here is a Consumers Guide to Alternative Sweeteners http://vitalitymagazine.com/food-features/life-after-sugar/ written by Julie Daniluk in Vitality Magazine. I prefer news that offers positive solutions/actions people can take, as noted in the TEDxTO Talk Redefining Apathy – Dave Meslin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuHNVYW4tW0 Thanks!
Why are people not screaming at the top of the mountains?!?! Is it the fluoride in their diet!!??!! I have already called 10 different senators and house reps!!!! I am so f’king pissed right bow!!!!!
Many people don’t know that when aspartame heats it turns into formaldehyde. My friend’s husband drank several diet Snapples which had overheated in the back seat of the car. He died a year later after his health steadily declined. His death was aspartame poisoning. It’s hard to believe that the FDA has our best interest in mind in promoting this toxin and threatening to remove herbal medicines from public access.
People , People , People , Just because it is on the fda food label does not mean it is safe,do your own research , ANY and I do mean ANY, artificial ingredient is harmful to the human body,be it minute or max. The FDA is one of the most corrupt government organizations ever built ,there are many others also. I love this country , fought for it , had relatives whom died for it. somewhere along in the 50,s government started to access to much control. I am not some conspiracy theorist , or Vegan ,or whacko health nut. I have over 400 hours in nutrition research,most MD’S have 15 to 30 . Always connect the dots on the money trail and you will find the real truth to all most all of life’s Major and Minor Foibles.
I have PKU (phenylketonuria). This stuff is poison to me. I have to watch out really carefully on all labels to check if it’s in foods. I’ve learnt the code numbers for different artificial sweeteners to know which ones are safe (non-aspartame) and which ones aren’t (aspartame). The very annoying thing is that aspartame sweeteners are extremely common and the non-aspartame ones aren’t as much. But when they change the names of things like this it’s also dangerous for people like me! To those of you who believe this is a hoax, I am living proof it is not. Do your research!
Any product with the word “sweet” in the title suggests artificial sweetner to me. Created in a laboratory. Harmful to the body and in the process of being banned globally. Sugar, honey and even syrup are the only acceptable sweetners for me.
Ash,
If you are diabetic you should know that you do not need “sweeteners” at all! I have a diabetic wife that cannot have sugar but also gains more weight and is very much less energetic when she consumes aspartame. It is very clear to me that living a great life is far more important than having something sweet to eat or drink. A lesson that has helped me also.