the dangers of aspartame

I was eating a "light" yogurt, when I started reading the ingredients. For those of you who know Delmi, I remembered her lecture about sweeteners when I noticed aspartame on the list. I started doing some research, this is some info from the first website I found. I thought I would share because I know we are all trying to eat a little healthier, but sometimes we eat things that are actually worse for us. Will continue to do more research though, one article is not enough... Summary, be careful buying and eating things that are "low-calorie" or "light" or "diet" because they may contain harmful chemicals that are making up for the sugar or fat that was removed from the original product.

Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA. Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death.

Aspartame is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The book "Prescription for Nutritional Healing," by James and Phyllis Balch, lists aspartame under the category of "chemical poison."

One common complaint of persons suffering from the effect of aspartame is memory loss.

Excessive levels of phenylalanine in the brain can cause the levels of seratonin in the brain to decrease, leading to emotional disorders such as depression.

John Cook began drinking six to eight diet drinks every day. His symptoms started out as memory loss and frequent headaches. He began to crave more aspartame-sweetened drinks. His condition deteriorated so much that he experienced wide mood swings and violent rages. Even though he did not suffer from PKU, a blood test revealed a phenylalanine level of 80 mg/dl. He also showed abnormal brain function and brain damage. After he kicked his aspartame habit, his symptoms improved dramatically.


http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/11/06/aspartame-most-dangerous-substance-added-to-food.aspx

One of the comments read: While you do present accurate symptoms of aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol poisoning, we believe that you fail to acknowledge that it would be nearly impossible to achieve toxic levels of these metabolites by way of aspartame consumption alone. Scare tactics such as this are inherently dangerous as they may breed distrust of the government and health agencies by the public.


Taking the previous comment into consideration, our research will continue...