Warning -Aspartame now in J20 Apple and Mango

[Nansrus]

I have a couple of family members who have an allergic reaction to aspartame. It is real, as when unknowingly given some when dining out the reaction has been immediate. So I always search for drinks for them without aspartame for when they come round. J20 has always been a firm favourite and imagine my horror when I went to serve some the other day and just checking casually found it had aspartame in! I e mailed the company and the response
" I can confirm that we have added Aspartame to only the J2O Apple and Mango flavour.

As we are sure you will appreciate, we carry out extensive consumer research before putting any products in to the market place and we have found this product to be popular with our consumers. It is, however, extremely difficult to formulate a product to suit every palate. "

Why it was fine with sugar,why add aspartame as well you don't need both!

Leave the b*** drink alone.

Nansrus, would they not have to put on 'contains a source of phenylalanine' if it did contain aspartame? Good luck.

In the UK, foods that contain aspartame are legally required by the country's Food Standards Agency to list the chemical among the product's ingredients and carry the warning "Contains a source of phenylalanine" ? this is usually at the foot of the list of ingredients.

From en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame

I fucking hate sweeteners, they taste vile. I also avoid sugar as it can send my mood soaring and crashing.
May I recommend Whole Earth fizzy drinks? They are sweetened with agave and the cola in particular is lush. No I dont work for the company! Also Pret does nice drinks too. Yoga Bunny Detox being my fave.

What are some safe calpol alternatives?

Wonderful, one more to add to my list of Things I Cant Have. Anything containing aspartame (sorry tmi) sends me running for the loo. Sweeteners and ibs are really not a good combination.

Aspartame is total SHXX it gives me allergic eczema reactions (they put in things that pretend to be healthy like sugar free herbal sweets). It's a problem 'cos you either have the 9 tspoons of sugar in each can of COXX or the disgusting sweeteners!

Not a decision I make any more; I buy (or make when I've the time) pure fruit juice and dilute with filtered water depending on the D.C's tastes or ours.

I have just been in Boots and tried to look at ingredients but they don't have them on the box, you have to buy the b**y stuff to find out.
Which reminds me took one of my grandsons out in the summer bought him a lolly and he went all funny. Yes it had aspartame in, how do you know until you have bought the thing! I am trying to remember which one it was as it looked a healthy one!
I have got to the stage I don't trust anyone and am always asking questions.

Just had another thought if we didn't have PKU sufferers and the problems they have with phenylaline would the companies bother to put that on their packaging if they didn't have to. I know they have to put it contains aspartame, or one of the e numbers, as they also have other aspartame compounds. But with so many e numbers, unless you have a fantastic memory how many can you remember them?
It is in really small writing on the J20, which I questioned and the response was there will be a ruling out in 2014 where the writing will have to be bigger.
My response was why not do it now!

No the companies would not put anything on their boxes if they didn't have to.

What amazes me is the power of advertising ; sooo many people TRUST the T.V. adverts why I wonder???

I always think if they're spending milions on the adverts they sure as hell aren't spending on their products e.g. the L'oreal products that cost a fortune and are as full of SLS (sodium laureth sulfate used to clean garage floors; I kid you not) as any cheapo stuff you can buy.

It does say on the bottom of the carboard wrapper of the apple and mango contains sweeteners in big writing. I looked in tesco on christmas eve.

Strange it didn't on my one, unless my eyes are getting worse!

ppeatfruit, you say about SLS ,did you know the some of Ecover's ( the so called green company) has SLS in its products. Not on the packaging but through research on- line. They are claiming it is ok.

It's on the underneath of the box. you have to turn it upside down to see it.

And drop all the bottles out!!

Nansrus I suppose it's better in kitchen cleaners than shampoo!! I didn't know though; that's a nerve considering how much it costs Even worse considering it's not on the product.

My over 6 sugar free calpol is sweetened with sorbitol, maltitol and saccharin - there's no aspartame in there. It is quite an old bottle though, because I give the DCs it at a rate of two teaspoons a month or so, unless your DC have PKU or another acute reaction there are better things to worry about. (if acute reactions were a problem then a double dose of the infant formulation would be a solution).

Yes that seems to be the problem, every bottle you pick up says something different depending how old or new it is?
Dilysprice. I cannot blindly trust anyone to be honest as I was prescribed thalidomide when pregnant with my eldest many moons ago (that will tell you how old I am!) I fortunately did not take it.
As you hardly give you children any Calpol you quite rightly point out not a problem, but others are not as fortunate as you.
Saccharin is another dodgy one ,just because it has been round for a long time doesn't mean it is ok.
These companies rely on Joe public not to question their ingredients until something goes wrong. On a different tangent but similar,the making breast implant company, for example.

Nansrus It seems sadly that blind greed is what (mostly) business is about everywhere doesn't it?

Yes ppeatfruit ,and it doesn't matter which government is in, they do not want to rock the boat where big business is concerned. Or upset the shareholders!

I have just read an article about Michael J Fox, who sadly has had Parkinson's disease since he was about 30. He apparently was and is addicted to the diet pepsi he was promoting which contains aspartame. They think it is a major contribution to his illness.
Another interesting report says how Aspartame was invented by Monsanto specifically as ant killer!

Yes I soo agree about the govts. funny how you hear the green pronouncements BEFORE they get into power and they all cowtow to big business once in(I'm so angry about Cameron's attitude to the banks now notice how THAT has changed!!) and the environment doesn't seem to matter any more.

I didn't know that about aspartame and Micheal J. Fox; incredible that it's allowed in ANYTHING. I wonder who at Monsanto tasted it and said 'OOh goody it's sweet lets market it as a sweetener"

Fair enough if you dont like the taste of sweetners, but when there is health scares in the newspapers of certain food stuffs it is all about perspective.

Regards the aspartame cancer scare in rats, the quantities given to the rats are far, far in excess of what a normal person would ever ingest, even over a lifetime. They call them LD50 studies, it's a scientific way of establishing how potent (or not) certain chemical compounds are.

In response to the Michael J fox and Parkinson's link. How many people over the years have drunken and continued to drink Diet based drinks. If there was a real causal link between Aspartame and Parkinson's, surely we would have seen an explosion in the cases of Parkinson's from what is normally seen in a given population. It's human nature to try and find a reason for an illness and we have problems accepting 'it's just happened to us' but it's bad science to publicly suggest as a lot of celebrities do that they have a particular illness due to x,y,z or they cured this by using bat droppings or whatever quackery they are inclined to use without having any proven scientific rationale to back it up

As for not giving your children Calpol, hey sure i'll let their temperature reach 41oC when they have a fever and witness them having a febrile seizure. It's what they give kids in hospital to bring down a fever FGS, I know it happened to my DS.

Ah, the wonderful voice of bad science.

The plural of anecdotes is not data.

There are plenty of other ways to bring down a temperature, but they have not been proven effective by any drug company, so they can't possibly work.

bakingaddict
Have you ever been on a site that has all different health problems caused by aspartame? Normal people with no free publicy to gain and whose problems have been solved by just not eating or drinking these products. No quakery involved.
Ever wondered why people in their 80's and 90's go on forever. They were bought up on food that contained no chemicals. Granted they didn't have the variety we have today but I would rather have that than having to check every label everytime I buy something.

No....because I prefer to get information that has been properly peer reviewed, undergone scientific scrutiny and published in respected journals pertinent to the science in question not websites where anybody can say whatever the hell they like. That's how real scientists do science!

A lot of people live till their 80's and 90's probably due to a multifactorial combination of good genes, diet and lifestyle choices. We still dont know all the components of senescence...that's the study of ageing but nothing goes on forever, not even the universe itself. Crusaders and conspiracy theorists like yourself and Civilon will never listen to rational science so i'll bow out now

Just because something has been tested 'scientifically' doesn't mean its safe though does it baking addict?

There are loads of 'tested' drugs that have been withdrawn from the market. I much prefer to take herbals that have been used reliably for 1000s of years than get the side effects that you get from big pharma's offerrings.

You 're forgetting the enormous drug companies' interests and their influence over the G.P.s in your 'scientifically tested' drugs.

Obviously there are numerous cases of drugs that have later been withdrawn, Vioxx quite recently...i've been a medical scientist for 10 years

i'm not some advocate for big pharma companies and I think that the public should have the choice regarding what medicines/compounds they want to use and any safety issues addressed through the proper channels. The point I was trying to make is that there should always be perspective taken when making that choice and that sometimes things get hijacked by people from both sides of the fence.

I'm not anti-traditional remedies or pro-pharma drugs, I think that as long as they have all been properly tested and licensed then they can both exist in modern medicine but for me lots of traditional medicines haven't had any rigourous testing and can be sold without the person having any medical background so cant offer informed advice to the consumer. If I go and purchase that herbal remedy can the person behind the counter or wherever reliably tell me the contra-indications if i'm taking other herbal remedies/drugs/medicines drugs? i.e the point i'm making is a lot of it is unregulated and operates outside of MHRA and I dont want to take that chance with my health or that of my family

There was an arsenic scare in chinese herbal medicines not so long ago and if you think of how people can nowadays manage once debilitating illnesses such as depression, HIV, Crohns disease to name a few as well as the chronic diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure/cholestrol, agina. As new drugs come onto the market the survival rates for cancer increase, depending on whether NICE approves them but that's a whole different arguement. You cant tell me that increased cancer survival rates are down to herbal remedies alone and for those reasons i'll always hedge my bets with 'scientifically tested' drugs