I need help with writing to ASDA to tell them that I don't think that their 'good for you'

[UCM]

chocolate mousses are particularly good for you. I tasted one recently after buying them (stupidly didn't read the label) and immediately knew there was sweetener in it. Straight away, looked at the label and there it was 'aspartame'.

I don't know if this does anything bad to you. I did grow up with a diabetic Mother who could only have diabetic chocolate with 'sorbitol' in it and when aspartame was introduced, her specialist told her to avoid it as 'it will end in tears', this was nearly 30 years ago.

So before I go all hot tempered and write an essay, can anyone tell me why it's bad. I WAS REALLY surprised to find it in a 'good for you' food.

Elizabethmayli, thank you so much for those words.

UCM - Copy and paste it into word and print it from there and it will have a white background.

TBH - I would print Elizabeths version to spread the word to your friends. It is much more concise and probably a little bit less scientificy and probably easier to understand for most of hte general public - yet all the info is captured.

I was looking for a synopsis like that but if you google aspartame and toxic there are hundreds of hits and it is difficult to find what you want worded how you want it...

UCM - if you are using Elizabeths synopsis in your letter - please acknowledge that you know that it is authorised for use in food. Hopefully it will stop them throwing that argument back at you as a defense

Ok I have sent my complaint. It didn't include Elizabeths bit in it which I have put into word now. But I have asked for a proper email address rather than customer services to send to.

My email went along the lines of; I bought the stuff and it tasted like a bit of cat shit and I realised it was poisonous, so what are you going to do about it as I could go on & on about the reasons why this shit isn't good for you but I wont.

Love you lots

UCM xxx

We shall see what the reply will be.

And once my email was sent, they finished it with a phote of some dippy looking woman smiling............Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

Right I will not be angry anymore, I will go and cause more mayhem on Mumsnet

Thank you so much all of you and believe me I will print Asda's reply.

UCM, not to be a snob, but it was from Asda. They put all sorts of rubbish in their own-brand stuff, that other supermarkets have long since stopped doing.

I rarely buy own-brand Asda stuff since I picked up a tin of Asda chopped tomatoes and found that it had about 5 ingredients in it. Other brands had just 'tomatoes', some added citric acid, but that's all.

You are right Pc, I just wasn't watching. I will in future.

Maybe I shall just continue shopping at Waitrose as they seem to be reasonable.

UCM - as far as spreading the word is concerned - it is worth campaigning to local 'family venues'.

Our local family pub has recently stopped serving fruit shoots. They now offer Capri-Sun instead. DP overheard them telling a customer that "the sugar free drinks are full of harmful additives so we don't sell them anymore" - or something along those lines. This is the way to change the thinking of the manufacturers....as places stop stocking them they will have to rethink their ingrediants.

But Candles, it's important to put the pressure on big chains like ASDA because with the way things are, a lot of people don't have any choice about where they shop - ASDA or Tesco are teh only sellers in their area.

So why not apply customer pressure on them to stop selling crap excuses for food?

Expat - totally agree.

I was just pondering UCMs musings to spread the word to her friends.
Small establishments are one step up from this and can potentially be cracked with one or 2 well constructed arguments from concerned parents/customers.

Agree hte bigger chains are also critical - UCM has already acknowledged that in the fact that she has initiated this by her complaint.

Some wise MNer once said that her maxim when shopping was to pick up an item and think "Has someone fucked around with this?" No = into the trolley
Yes = back on the shelf
Pretty good guide, I think!

its worth noting that aspartame is also known as E951

Slightlymadspider - what does this mean???

"It is bad as it is metabolised to toxic entities.
It is bad as it is tumourigenic in rats."

O hate sweetners and it pisses me off that my 6-year-old tells me ''I can have this mummy as it's sugar-free'' when I keep telling him I'd rather he had sugar in moderation than this fake crap.

Off-topic slightly - I notice fruit shoots have started selling pure fruit juice in their range now .

YurtGirl - my coments were about the aspartame (not the chocolate mousse as a whole)

Elizabeths post of 23:03 explains it quite well. If there is anyhting you need clarification on please shout.

In a nutshell
Aspartame is absorbed from food and then it is broken into 3 building blocks. All 3 of them are shown to be toxic (i.e. not good for you). Mostly - but certainly not exclusively on the brain and nervous system.

There have also been studies which show that when fed to rats aspartame can cause the formation of tumours.

Oh I see - I think!

I will never be a scientist!

I think their good for you range is better suposidly because of the lower levels of sugar, salt and sonething else but it can stillhave crap in it.

I try to avoid aspartamine and it has been linked to gulf war syndrome too.

There is a woman in jail in america for murdering her husband. she says it was aspartame poisoning because her dh drank loads of diet drinks stored in warm place. You should never drink diet drinks if they have been left out in the sun like at bbq. That was the problem in the gulf. (army doesn't have massive fridges to keep drinks in apparantly)

Elizabethmayli: sorry but that really does sound a bit tinfoil-hats-keep-out-the-aliens. Aspartame tastes like catshit and is probably best avoided - diabetics and other people who can't have sugar are probably better off with sorbitol which doesn't appear to do worse than give you the shi*ts... but maybe get it in proportion a bit? Stuff which has been passed as safe for food is unlikely to do most people much harm, most food additives are just stuff that goes in overpriced food that doesn't taste very nice.

Oh, and I don't shop at asda if I can help it because they are owned by slave-labour unionbusting Walmart. But that's probably another issue altogether.

When the temperature exceeds 30C, the wood alcohol in aspartame converts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid.
Sorry if I sound like a nutter but knowing this stuff is part of my job. (as a chemist, not as a scare mongering lunatic)

sweeteners = good
sugar = bad.

IS INSANE.

I think it is totally wrong to give children ANYTHING with sweeteners in it. If you are worried about their weight (which would be YOUR FAULT AS PARENT btw) stop feeding them crap and make sure they spend all day running around.

HATE HATE HATE that I can't find anywhere that does normal calpol, the one without the sweeteners in. ARGH.

sorry. rant over.

i cant find one with just sugars in it either., Do you know if they have stopped making it?

But then how could aspartame be passed as a safe food additive? Body temp is over 30C, so surely the degradation must begin as soon as the food hits the stomach, before it's digested?

Expat, I wasn't saying she shouldn't do anything about it. Just that some companies have made these changes (reverting to less complex ingredients), but Asda has not. Of course only consumer pressure will make them do it.