Aspartame has been given a 'posh' new name, but don't be fooled, this stuff is toxic.

[solo]

I don't know how many other parents ban this stuff from their Dc's diet.
I don't let it pass my Dc's lips if I can help it.
The link makes some interesting reading.

TOXIC

frangipan - here is the link I mentioned:

www.infowars.com/aspartame-sweet-misery-a-poisoned-world/

Sorry, here's it made a link:

www.infowars.com/aspartame-sweet-misery-a-poisoned-world/

jojo234 "Researchers at the European Ramazzini Foundation (ERF) in Bologna, Italy, published a study in 2005. The scientists carried out tests of over 4,000 rats that regularly consumed high doses of aspartame and were allowed to live until they died naturally. Scientists from ERF concluded from their study that aspartame causes cancer and that current uses and consumption of the sweetener should be reevaluated"

jojo, this study, according to the Wiki article (which can, of course be edited by anyone. But the references is cites cannot and can be freely checked by whomever cares to do so) this study was discredited on the grounds that its own data did not support the researchers conclusions.

I'd place more faith in a Wiki article that is referenced than in the website of the "founder of the Aspartame detox program".

The study that jojo234 mentioned was pretty thoroughly discredited at the time:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1797853/

And the availble evidence suggests that Aspartame is not significantly carcinogenic or has any effect on human neurology.

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828671?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppController.PPMC ArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=5

DBennett + MsHighwater - you are correct that the European Food Safety Authority [EFSA] discredited the findings. Political Pressures / Big Business dictated this:

EFSA?s Review of Ramazzini?s Second Aspartame Study Shows Sellout :

"In 2005 the prestigious Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the European Foundation for Oncology and Environmental Sciences published the results of their 3 year aspartame study on 1,800 rats, known as the Ramazzini Study. It was the most scrupulous and costly investigation of the chemical sweetener ever performed. Dr. Morando Soffritti led this groundbreaking research that revealed aspartame causes lymphomas and leukemia and is a ?multipotential carcinogen.?

Now the European Food Safety Authority [EFSA] was on the spot. Would they cover their eyes and keep this poison on the market, destroying the health and lives of millions? Of course! EFSA?s Dr. Herman Koeter, admitted that commercial pressure controlled them with these words in the article ?EU?s Food Agency Battles Attempts to Hijack Science?:

?Science and politics make poor bedfellows. Just ask Herman Koeter, deputy executive director at the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) which has felt the push and pull of national politics ever since the agency began operating four years ago. ?Along the way he also described the various political pressures EFSA faces as it strives to maintain a firm line between its independent scientific research and the mire of EU politics?.?Hot decisions that had political repercussions included ? A REVIEW OF A CONTROVERSIAL ASPARTAME STUDY.""

Dr. Ken Stoller, an American paediatrician declared: ?EFSA?s position on aspartame is a testament to the power of corporations to influence, compromise and corrupt the safety nets that have been put into place to protect the public.?

I don't think the website you quote is that reliable.

It seems to quote mine Dr Koeter who was explaing that the EFSA has political stake holders in regards to a number of issues.

www.itssd.org/Issues/EFSA-politicization.pdf

But it is not anywhere close to an admission of guilt as the link you provided seems to think.

Even if this was the case, and I find no reason to think it is, the other study I linked to was independent of government and industry and took into account more recent research.
It is is even more firm in it's findings supporting the safe use of aspartame.

Right, so evidence will be cited when it agrees with your position but any evidence that disputes it is dismissed as being influenced by "Political Pressures/ Big Business"? Of course.

And you'll suspect "Big Business" of partiality but are prepared to be convinced that a small business e.g. the aforementioned "Creator of the Aspartame detox program" (Get a Hair Analysis for only $187, includes shipping!) is only acting for the good of all (I presume).

I will continue to drink Diet Coke in moderation while waiting for credible evidence that I should do otherwise. I don't let my dd (5) drink much of it but that's nothing to do with aspartame. I just prefer her to drink milk, water or juice.

Go ahead, drink your diet coke...enjoy!

Have a read at this while you're sipping:

Text from Link

"Attorney James Turner, author of ?The Chemical Feast: The Nader Report on Food Protection at the FDA, was the consumer attorney who with neuroscientist Dr. John Olney, legally fought the approval of aspartame from 1973 until 1985. He has reviewed with disappointment the European Food Safety Authority panel?s original and amended conclusions on the second Ramazzini Study.

Mr. Turner states:

?It is impossible to say that Aspartame is not a carcinogen. This conclusion of the 1980 FDA Public Board of Inquiry remains true today.. FDAs own scientist Dr. Adrian Gross, who worked on the FDA investigative team that revealed dozens of legal volition in the Aspartame?s studies conducted by Searle Drug Company, acknowledged that aspartame violated the Delaney Amendment because of this.

?The approval of aspartame was the most contested in FDA history. The sweetener was not approved on scientific grounds but through strong political and financial pressure and through the political chicanery of Donald Rumsfeld who ran the company making aspartame. The European Food Safety Authority argues that the high incidence of cancerous tumors that occurred in the Ramazzini studies are caused by something other than aspartame. However there were high incidences of cancerous tumors in studies provided to support aspartames FDA approval.

?There was also a significant increase in human cancerous tumors like those in animals in the first year of aspartame?s use in diet sodas. The record is to damming for any informed individual to risk their own health by consuming aspartame. Aspartame should never have been approved and actions to ban it started soon after approval as victims suffered from seizures, MS, blindness, cancer and death. The FDA listed 92 reactions attributed to this poison."

I drink 6 cans (at least) of Diet Coke EVERY day I love the stuff bu I'm scared about aspartame ...

Havent read the whole thread but thanks to OP for starting it. I am very anti aspartame and dss drink mainly water & milk with occasional fresh fruit juice/smoothies. I buy full sugar Ribena (pretty sure no artificial sweeteners in it & often on special offer) which they have occasionally too.

I was at a family party last week and the only non-alcohol drinks on offer were diet pepsi/lemonade and fruit shoot all containing asparatame. Forced myself to drink a pepsi max and it really was horrible, later on I had really bad stomache ache and felt ill I am sure it was related to the drink. A friend drinking the lemonade was also ill yet the people drinking wine were fine.

The sad thing was lots of the children (U8s) were drinking multiple cans of pepsi max

jojo234

You're still not addressing the most recent and best data.

Large scale human epidemiological studies don't infer any excess risk.

Harking back to rodent studies from the 80s and 90s seems a step backward to me.

What DBennett said.

Dbennet:"jojo234
You're still not addressing the most recent and best data. Large scale human epidemiological studies don't infer any excess risk. Harking back to rodent studies from the 80s and 90s seems a step backward to me"

My post on Friday started :In 2005 the prestigious Cesare Maltoni Cancer Research Center at the European Foundation for Oncology and Environmental Sciences published the results of their 3 year aspartame study on 1,800 rats, known as the Ramazzini Study...

2005 is not the 80's or 90's !

What data are you referring to that you would like me to address? And, why do you think it is the best data?

The centre to which you refer has been using rat models for enviromental toxity since the 70s.

You cited a report from 2005.
The earliest publication of the data you cite was 2006.

I searched pubmed using 2005 as a cut off.
I followed a citation and found the widespread discreditiong of data that seemed to match that which you linked to.

I then presumed you were left with older studies, which is what I was referring to in my post.

I'm sorry if I have misunderstood the data trail.

As for date for you, I already linked to one of the many review article:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17828671?ordinalpos=1&itool=PPMCLayout.PPMCAppControl ler.PPMC ArticlePage.PPMCPubmedRA&linkpos=5

But if you want the originol studies:

No increase in human cancers of the gastrointestinal tract:
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19661082

No increase in any cancers across linked studies in Europe
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17043096

No evidence of link to brain and blood cancers
cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/15/9/1654.abstract?ijkey=e89f217de3dc72d3fbda4ac5f5034 09d5eea684f&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

All human studies.
All large scale.
All well conducted and published in the appropiate peer reviewed journals.

Why do you think this data is trumpted by a discredited rat study which has not been replicated?

DBennett, the Ramazzini Foundation study's are not old, discredited studies, as you are making out.

The Ramazzini Foundation in Bologne published a second report in June 2007 showing that aspartame causes cancer in rats.

Reuters article "On the basis of the present findings, we believe that a review of the current regulations governing the use of aspartame cannot be delayed," Soffritti's team wrote in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, which is published by the U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

Article on the Centre for Science in the Public Interest website FDA Should Reconsider Aspartame Cancer Risk, Say Experts :

?Because aspartame is so widely consumed, it is urgent that the FDA evaluate whether aspartame still poses a ?reasonable certainty of no harm,? the standard used for gauging the safety of food additives,? said CSPI (Centre for Science in the Public Interest) executive director Michael F. Jacobson. ?But consumers, particularly parents, shouldn?t wait for the FDA to act. People shouldn?t panic, but they should stop buying beverages and foods containing aspartame.?

"Among those who today called on FDA Commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach to review the new aspartame study are former Occupational Safety and Health Administration officials John Froines (now at UCLA) and Peter F. Infante (now at George Washington University); James Huff, current Associate Director for Chemical Carcinogenesis at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS); and Kamal M. Abdo, a toxicologist formerly at the National Toxicology Program of the NIEHS.

As a result of the new study, for the first time CSPI downgraded aspartame on its online Chemical Cuisine directory from a ?use caution? rating to ?everyone should avoid.? CSPI also urges everyone to avoid the artificial sweeteners acesulfame potassium and saccharin. "

The link you posted is the same data.
Packaged in a different and less relevent journal.
A typical tactic in getting less impressive but media friendly research coverage.

It does not change the consensus of the experts that the data was flawed.

Or detract from the fact that it flies in the face of the bulk of the literature, which includes larger better studies, from higher up the evidence pyramid that are on humans not a rat model.

Something that you have seen fit to ignore at my request three times now.

agree withDBennett

DBennet "The link you posted is the same data.
Packaged in a different and less relevent journal.
A typical tactic in getting less impressive but media friendly research coverage."

This was the second report from the Ramazzini Foundation. This report was published in 2007 and the first was published in 2005. It is not the same data as you say.

In the Ramazzini Foundation's second study Life-Span Exposure to Low Doses of Aspartame Beginning during Prenatal Life Increases Cancer Effects in Rats, the conclusion was:

"The results of this carcinogenicity bioassay confirm and reinforce the first experimental demonstration of APM?s (Aspartame's) multipotential carcinogenicity at a dose level close to the acceptable daily intake for humans. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that when life-span exposure to APM begins during fetal life, its carcinogenic effects are increased."

It was published on the National Center for Biotechnology Information so not sure why you state "A typical tactic in getting less impressive but media friendly research coverage."

DBennet : "It does not change the consensus of the experts that the data was flawed.

Or detract from the fact that it flies in the face of the bulk of the literature, which includes larger better studies, from higher up the evidence pyramid that are on humans not a rat model."

Not sure why you keep discrediting studies on rats. In the conclusion of the Ramazzini Foundation first report: "The results of carcinogenicity bioassays in rodents are consistent predictors of human cancer risks (Huff 1999; Rall 1995; Tomatis et al. 1989)."

12 U.S. environmental health experts found the second study to be so important that they wrote to the FDA in June 2007:

They agreed that "chronic animal feeding studies are accepted widely as valid predictors of likely carcinogenic risks for humans: importantly, all acknowledged human carcinogens when tested adequately in animals are also carcinogenic, and many known human carcinogens were first discovered in animals."

Regarding dosing they wrote:
"To put the doses used in the study in context, consider that the Acceptable Daily Intake of aspartame in the United States is 50 mg/kg. The 20 mg/kg dose is equivalent to a 50-pound child?s drinking about 2½ cans of soda per day and a 150-pound adult?s drinking about 7½ cans of soda per day...The lower dose is something that about 5 percent of American teenagers actually consume.Obviously, few people drink the larger amounts of aspartame-sweetened soda, but one must presume that lower levels of consumption would lead to increased, but proportionately lower, cancer risks."

The letter from the 12 U.S. environmental health experts concludes: "Considering how widely aspartame in consumed by young children, as well as adults, in the United States and abroad, it is essential that this review be done as expeditiously as possible. If that review confirms that aspartame caused cancer in the laboratory animals, the FDA must invoke the ?Delaney amendment? and revoke its approval for the artificial sweetener."

I'm "down on rats" as you put it becuase we have lots of human data.
Unless you're concerned solely as a pet owner, human risk is what we are interested in.

Time and time again, the best human studies indicate no increased risk of cancer.

Animal models, both in general and in this instance, have value.
I don't think anyone is denying that.

But we have limited plausability concerning potential harm of aspartame.

We have, at worst contradicting animal data, at best no evidence of risk in animal models (depending on how you rate controversial data from a single centre which appears to ahve little support within the expert communit and has never been replicated anywhere else).

We have numerous well conducted observational data on human.

What evidence do you want feel is missing in this picture?

Or do you think there is a problem with the human data (at the 4th time of asking)?

Dbennett: "Or do you think there is a problem with the human data (at the 4th time of asking)?"
"No increase in any cancers across linked studies in Europe
Artificial sweeteners and cancer risk in a network of case-control studies
No evidence of link to brain and blood cancers
Consumption of Aspartame-Containing Beverages and Incidence of Hematopoietic and Brain Malignancies"

Morando Soffritti says the following regarding the above two studies (my emphasis):

"The two aforementioned epidemiologic studies (Gallus et al. 2006; Lim et al. 2006) published after our first mega-experiment (Belpoggi et al. 2006; Soffritti et al. 2005, 2006) merit general comment. Both studies consider the eating habits of a large population of males and females 50?70 years of age in the 1990s. Given the time frame of these surveys and the commercialization of aspartame in the 1980s, the subjects? potential use of the sweetener could not have exceeded 10?15 years. It is difficult to believe that this limited adult period of exposure to APM could confirm or exclude a potential carcinogenic risk. The design of these studies underlines the importance of conducting an epidemiologic study in which exposure to APM is monitored beginning in fetal life, particularly given the use of products containing APM by children and women of child-bearing age."

Perfectly reasonable point.

There are many limits to epidemiological research.
Time-scale is just one of them.
Confounders, as have been mentioned as part of our other conversation, is another.

And I agree, it would be great to have better data on every enviromental exposure.

But we have to put our resources where they will do the most good.

So I repeat myself:

Little reason to think aspartame could increase the risk of cancer in reasonale consumption.

At worst, mixed data from animal models.
At best, no evidence of increased risk of cancer.

The best human data available indicates no increased risk of cancer.

What level of evidence would convince you?

I don't believe it's 'mixed data from animal models', as I agree with the Ramazzini Foundation and the other experts that :

"chronic animal feeding studies are accepted widely as valid predictors of likely carcinogenic risks for humans: importantly, all acknowledged human carcinogens when tested adequately in animals are also carcinogenic, and many known human carcinogens were first discovered in animals."

So I don't think that just because this experiment was conducted on rats, that you can discount it.

I'm convinced that Aspartame can be very damaging to human beings and believe that it has been given approval because of big business interests, against evidence both anecdotal and scientific, and very possibly because the powers that be, want us to be too ill and too dumb-down through chemicals in our foods, to know exactly what's going on.

Shocking, but true.

So, of the animal model data, you have decided to only believe in studies conducted by the one centre.
The only centre who had data supporting an increased risk of cancer related to aspartame.
The findings that have been discredited by the relevent professionals and that no-one can replicate.

I'm not discounting it because it's based on rats, I'm giving it low weight because most rat studies support a conclusion of no increased risk.
This is what I mean by mixed data.

And I feel compelled to point to:

Lack of plausable mechanism.
Lack of support from human studies.

And I don't feel that anti-corperate conspiracy theories is evidence to trump these issues.

"because the powers that be, want us to be too ill and too dumb-down through chemicals in our foods, to know exactly what's going on."

You see, jojo234, that's why I'm not convinced by your argument. When you start on about "the powers that be" wanting a docile and quiescent populace I just know you have to be talking c**p.

Open your eyes and your mind MsHighwater. Do some research, not via the corporate / controlled media. Wake up people!