Aspertame]non-rls

[Guest guest]

In a message dated 5/19/99 9:38:16 AM Eastern Daylight Time,

mainard@... writes:

<< <<

> >ASPARTAME (Nutra Sweet, Equal, Spoonful) >>

I know that you are fairly new to the group, Coco......and we truly

appreciate any and all information that you think would be helpful in any

way. You could not know that we did this Aspartame thing last year.......we

went around and around with it. I feel compelled to tell the most

impressionable in the group not to panic because of this notice.

Dr Levin, who was a pharmacist and pathologist, told us that this was

absolutely not correct. This is just something that seems to be going around

to all of the alternative medicine web sites. There is no scientific

evidence to back up these claims.

I also have this article from Time Magazine:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

---------------------------------------------

Aspartame Hoax, Continued

February 04, 1999

I’d like to say congratulations to Time Magazine for setting the record

straight on the artificial sweetener aspartame. As you may know, there has

been a deluge of inaccurate information being sent over the Internet about

this sweetener.

Well, in a full-page story, Time debunks the e-mail attack on aspartame by

using good old investigative journalism. The e-mail barrage against aspartame

makes various negative claims and the Time writer checked each one out. What

she discovered was they were indeed unsubstantiated or downright bogus.

For example, writer German looked at one claim that aspartame leads

to " methanol toxicity, " and her conclusion was, " Not even close. " She notes

that there’s four times as much methanol in a glass of tomato juice than

there is in a can of aspartame-sweetened soda and " our bodies have no trouble

handling such a tiny amount. "

There’s a good point to be made here. Many of us are naturally confused about

conflicting claims over a drug, sweetener or food supplement. We’ve never

been taught to think objectively and logically about these kind of things.

Aspartame is safe, period. There is one warning about the sweetener and that

is that people with the rare genetic disorder phenylketonuria shouldn’t use

the sweetener because they can’t metabolize one of its ingredients.

Ironically, the e-mail attacking aspartame fails to mention this single risk

factor.

If you get e-mail that either debunks or promotes various drugs or food

supplements, don’t take them seriously. Go to reputable sources, like

HealthCentral.com, or other highly regarded Internet health sites, and

research the substance.