Death By Supermarket (8 page)

“Three new studies have shown that the methanol component is metabolically converted into formaldehyde and formic acid, both powerful toxins, even in very small doses. Formic acid is the toxin that causes the intensely painful bite of the fire ant and blindness when methanol is ingested in sufficient quantities. [Think about alcoholics who ingest methanol to get drunk.] Formaldehyde is known to be a powerful cancer-causing agent, even in very small doses. In one of these studies it was shown that aspartame’s formaldehyde accumulates near the DNA of cells, severely damaging this critical cell component. This can lead to neurodegenerative diseases and cancer.

“Because formaldehyde is tightly bound to the DNA and accumulates, drinking even one aspartame-sweetened drink a day can eventually lead to one of these diseases—especially in a cancer-prone person. Another new study found that aspartame dramatically increased leukemias and lymphomas in experimental animals in doses equal to that seen with human consumption of aspartame products. The highest intake of aspartame is in children and pregnant women, which would greatly increase the risk of these two highly malignant diseases in the children.

“There is also evidence that one of the other breakdown products, called diketopiperazine, is also carcinogenic and may account for the 4,700 percent increase in brain tumors seen in the original safety studies of aspartame. Combined with the formaldehyde, this would also explain the dramatic increase in breast, pancreatic, prostate, thyroid, liver, lung, uterine, and ovarian tumors seen in aspartame-exposed test animals.”
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Considering that these factors are in addition to the excitotoxin
effects outlined in the previous chapter, one would think that they would be enough to stop people from ingesting aspartame—or feeding it to children. But again, we have FDA approval, which still packs tremendous clout for many Americans.

The saga of aspartame began in December 1965, when a chemist at G. D. Searle discovered a substance that is two hundred times sweeter than sugar with no calories. Naturally, Searle was eager to get aspartame approved by the FDA. The goal was to get aspartame classified as an inert substance. The reason is that any compound that affects physiological systems is classified as a drug by the FDA, which means that it’s subject to more demanding regulatory procedures than a food additive. But if a compound is shown to be inert, it’s exempted from the ongoing safety monitoring imposed on drugs (such as it is). Factory-food manufacturers are not obligated to monitor adverse reactions associated with the additive, submit reports of adverse reactions to the FDA, or required to carry out additional research to confirm the additive’s safety.

In November 1970 the popular artificial sweetener cyclamate was linked to cancer and yanked from the market. Saccharin was subsequently put under scrutiny, throwing the market wide open for the introduction of aspartame.

From that time on, numerous experts, including neuroscientist John Olney, informed the FDA of studies demonstrating the deleterious effects of ingesting aspartame. The drama that ensued over the next two decades involved independent researchers such as Olney, one dogged consumer interest attorney, and Searle’s own researchers, as well as their legal and PR firms, an FDA task force, various FDA commissioners, Democratic and Republican senators, U.S. attorneys, grand juries, the then-president of Searle, Donald Rumsfeld, and the newly inaugurated POTUS Ronald Reagan in an incredibly convoluted story involving sloppy science of epic proportions, intrigue, self-interest, ambition, greed, and shenanigans, all too unwieldy for this book to cover in detail. The following is just a brief rundown.

There were efforts made by those concerned to halt FDA approval of
aspartame, but it was granted FDA approval for limited use on July 26, 1974. It was approved specifically as a free-flowing sugar substitute, as tablets for sweetening hot beverages, and for use in cereal, gum, and dry bases (coating on products such as pills). And in 1983, the incredibly lucrative aspartame was FDA-approved for use in carbonated beverages and carbonated-beverage syrup bases. In 1985, Searle sold out to the chemical company Monsanto, which has a long and checkered history in the field of deadly chemicals. (Among its many affiliations was Monsanto’s 1967 joint venture with I. G. Farbenfabriken, the manufacturer of a lethal nerve gas used in Hitler’s Final Solution.)
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After acquiring aspartame, Monsanto created the nutritious-sounding subsidiary the NutraSweet Company.

On June 27, 1996, the FDA removed all restrictions and authorized aspartame use in all products—even heated and baked goods, although studies had demonstrated that aspartame breaks down into free methanol in temperatures above 86 degrees Fahrenheit (like, say, when you cook no-cal Jell-O Pudding or leave a case of Diet Dr Pepper in your car).

Since the aspartame patent expired in the early 1990s, this fake sugar is now sold under the brand names Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure, as well as generically, but the brand is essentially owned by NutraSweet. As with MSG, even those who want to avoid aspartame may be ingesting it in products like toothpaste, laxatives, wine coolers, vitamins, and prescription drugs.

By 1994, the Department of Health and Human Services had documented ninety-two adverse medical symptoms attributed to aspartame use, including anxiety attacks, arthritis, asthma, brain cancer, chronic fatigue, depression, insomnia, memory loss, migraines, numbness of extremities, seizures, tachycardia, tinnitus, vertigo, vision loss, and weight gain.
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In addition, aspartame use is thought to worsen or mimic the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, arthritis, attention deficit disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, diabetes, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, lupus, Lyme disease, lymphoma, multiple chemical sensitivities, multiple sclerosis, panic disorders, and Parkinson’s disease.
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Since the introduction of aspartame in the mid-1970s, the incidence of brain tumors has risen exponentially.
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Evidence indicates that one particular type of brain tumor, primary lymphoma of the brain, may be associated with aspartame use. According to Dr. Blaylock, “It is a particularly nasty tumor with a high mortality rate.”
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The medical establishment and the aspartame industry argue that the precipitous rise in the incidence of brain tumors does not correspond to the introduction and rise in use of aspartame, but rather it is due to better diagnostic techniques. Not true, Dr. Blaylock told me.” The original studies by the G. D. Searle Company found a 47 percent increase in brain tumors in rats exposed to the highest dose of aspartame. My personal investigation, using the SEER brain tumor registry, found an increase in primary brain tumors, unexplained by better diagnosis or an aging population. Dr. John Olney, using the SEER tumor registry, also found an increase in malignant brain tumors in those consuming aspartame-containing diet products.”
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(The National Cancer Institute’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results [SEER] program is considered the state-of-the-art brain tumor data base.)

Regarding the rise in brain tumors, Dr. Blaylock said, “As a neurosurgeon I see the devastating effects a brain tumor has, not only on its victim, but on the victim’s family as well. To think that there is even a reasonable doubt that aspartame can induce brain tumors in the American population is frightening. And to think that the FDA has lulled them into a false sense of security is a monumental crime.”
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Since the mid-1980s I have personally known several people who have been diagnosed with brain tumors. I wonder how many people you have known who have met the same fate?

So why do we use aspartame? Simply put, we want to be thin. Turn the TV on anytime, night or day, and you’ll see beautiful, thin women with glossy lips drinking diet sodas. But really how many beautiful girls really do you see drinking diet sodas? None of the beautiful, thin women I know would so much as use diet sodas to remove the lime deposits on their shower doors. That’s because diet sodas do not make you thin or beautiful.

Way back in 1983 Richard Wurtman, an MIT neuroscientist, researched the weight-loss effects of aspartame and concluded that using aspartame may actually result in cravings for foods high in calories and carbohydrates.
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The reason is that although aspartame is calorie free, it triggers the release of insulin, which stows away sugar. If food is not forthcoming, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar attacks) and severe hunger follow.
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In 1986, after tracking 80,000 women for six years, the American Cancer Society documented that the women who used artificial sweeteners gained more weight than those who avoided them.
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One of the biggest quandaries in the obesity issue today is that many people are obese on normal amounts of food. Aspartate has been established as an excitotoxin that causes neurons to fire out of control until death. Numerous studies on excitotoxins in mice (closest to humans in glutamate and aspartate sensitivity) have concluded that the hypothalamic damage caused by MSG and aspartate resulted in the test subjects and their offspring being shorter than normal in stature and obese on normal amounts of food.
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Now that’s depressing. But if packing on more pounds doesn’t get you down, the use of aspartame just might. Excessive levels of the amino acid phenylalanine in your brain cause serotonin to dip. And if you recall from our discussion of neurotransmitters, serotonin is the one that gets you high on life. Without enough serotonin in your brain, it’s depression
plus
carb craving.
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And it’s not just cravings that cause fat. Aspartame metabolizes into formaldehyde, which degrades cellular structures, including collagen, which means if you drink diet drinks or otherwise use aspartame you’ll eventually have a lot more cellulite.

Brain tumors, Lou Gehrig’s disease, severe mental retardation, seizures, multiple sclerosis, obesity on normal amounts of food—to date, studies continue to confirm that aspartame is a dangerous, neurotoxic substance that should never have been released into our food chain and should be illegal to give to pregnant women and children.
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How in the world does a substance like aspartame even get FDA approval?

MY GRANDMA, STELLA, SET
an admirable example and was a major influence on my lifelong attitudes about nutrition, but growing up I didn’t always take her seriously. One of the reasons she didn’t get the credit she deserved for being so ahead of her time in her views about nutrition might have had something to do with her somewhat apocryphal presentation. Like her word-to-the-wise story about a friend of hers who murdered her husband by feeding him nothing but hot dogs. We used to roll our eyes back whenever we heard that one.

About the time Grandma was telling us about the hot dog murder, forensic science was just beginning to develop. Today we have DNA testing, advanced computerization, and laser-light-scattering technology to help solve murders. You would have to be extremely dense to try to murder someone using arsenic or cyanide. But police agencies and the FBI aren’t concerned if you feed your family carcinogenic, neurologically damaging, toxic food products, as long as the ingredients are approved by the FDA, the agency that is billed as “the Nation’s Foremost Consumer Protection Agency.” Today, millions of Americans are unwittingly killing their families by supermarket—with FDA approval.

Factory foods are manufactured or raised with toxic substances that have either received FDA approval or these substances have slipped through the cracks. There are many reasons for the lack of strict monitoring. First, policing the food industry takes money. In 1996, Michael Friedman, M.D.,
deputy commissioner of the FDA, testified, “Given the current constraints on government resources, it is unlikely the FDA will ever have sufficient resources to inspect, sample, and analyze more than a small percentage of all food products, domestic as well as imported.” Friedman went on to say, “The current system generally relies on detecting and correcting problems after they occur rather than preventing them in the first place.”
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Then there’s the virtually meaningless FDA status Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS)—the one granted to MSG way back in 1959. When first launched by Congress in 1958, GRAS status was granted to additives that already existed in the food supply based on unmonitored, inadequate, hit-or-miss surveys and nonexistent follow-up. After the initial structuring of the GRAS list, for a manufacturer to obtain a GRAS status for an unapproved substance, a formal petition was required by the FDA that provided evidence supporting the safety of the substance.

In 1997, the FDA decided that GRAS food ingredients would no longer be required by law to go through the same “review” process described above. Now factory-food manufacturers must only notify the FDA that such and such additive is GRAS and provide some evidence that the FDA can then file in a drawer. This eliminated pesky paper shuffling for the FDA and allowed the agency to “gain increased awareness of ingredients in the nation’s food supply and the cumulative dietary exposure to GRAS substances.”
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Although drug companies are required to report adverse reactions to the FDA, food companies are not required to report adverse reactions to GRAS additives to the FDA. So we don’t really know which GRAS additives are problematic. But let’s say that some GRAS substances are safe, some are moderately safe, some are safe in small amounts, and some are toxic, especially when accumulated in your body with prolonged use. But we are not just eating one little thing that is GRAS every day. We’re bombarding our bodies with GRAS substances over the prolonged period of a lifetime.

The FDA has fallen into a truly sorry state of disorganization, ineptness, and corruption that ultimately affects many other decisions rendered by the FDA regarding food products, diet products, and drugs. In recent years, our nation has been rocked by the scandalous realization that the FDA might be too lackadaisical about drug approvals, many of which are now conducted in impoverished countries on indigents and malnourished infants, which has led to the unleashing of dangerous drugs onto the market that generate billions of dollars of profits for drug companies. For example, the FDA allowed the painkillers Vioxx, Celebrex, Bextra, and Aleve on the market although these drugs increase the risk for heart attack and stroke. In 1999, the
New England Journal of Medicine
reported that arthritis sufferers dying each year from the side effects of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs numbered up to 16,500—the same number as were dying from AIDS. In addition, more than 100,000 people were hospitalized every year due to gastrointestinal problems associated with these drugs.
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Of the 25 million Americans who took Vioxx between 1999 and 2004, up to 4,600 of these—or their family members—sued the maker, Merck, claiming Vioxx caused strokes and heart attacks.