It looks like sugar, tastes like sugar, feels like sugar and yet it's not. It doesn't rot your teeth, has not been proven to cause cancer and the advertisements say it’s as natural as a glass of milk and a banana. So how can you doubt it. The food industry wouldn't sell you something that would harm you would they?

Nutra Sweet is not natural, it is a chemical additive that many diabetics and healthy minded people use to get away from the effects of sugar. Many people even think they will lose weight if they drink diet soda containing nutra sweet. Now that is good marketing. People by the millions are switching to it for their sweetener, due to its highly addictive nature and a $100 million advertising budget by the makers of NutraSweet, G.D. Searle. It was birthed into the marketplace in 1984 and today it is found in 9,000 products including: baked goods, all diet soft drinks, diet foods, pudding, cereals and children's aspirin and vitamins. It is found on every restaurant table, and in every grocery store aisle. Aspartame is now a part of Americana.

Nutra-Sweet is the trade name for aspartame. It is composed of two amino acids and Methyl alcohol, or Methanol. Methanol? Does this mean that my car can run off Diet Pepsi? After entering the body, the components of aspartame are rapidly released into the bloodstream. Methanol, a deadly metabolic poison, is the first to be released. It can cause serious tissue damage, including blindness, and even death. Methanol is toxic to the body because the body lacks the enzymes to detoxify it. Therefore it has to be converted to Formaldehyde (used to embalm corpses), then formic acid (used to strip urethane coatings and used as an ant poison), and ultimately to carbon dioxide before it can be eliminated. It takes up to 6 months to rid the body of Methanol and is seen by the Environmental Protection Agency as a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion.

Another ingredient is Phenylalanine. This natural amino acid is known to be toxic to the brain in large unbalanced doses. Dr. Wurtman, a professor of neuroendrocrinology at MIT, has raised some serious questions about the sweeteners safety. He says that a typical adult that drinks four or five aspartame sweetened drinks a day, for a period of time, is chancing the introduction of enough phenylalanine into the brain to affect the brain’s neurotransmitters. This interference with the brain’s normal functioning leads to moodswings, irritability, anxiety, insomnia, migraine headaches and depression. There are even reports that Nutra Sweet causes MS - multiple sclerosis.

While in some people that have a genetic deficiency known as PKU (1 in 15,000) it can cause siezures. Phenylalanine and aspartic acid, the other amino acid and third ingredient, are natural, but are ten times stronger in aspartame than in real food. Dr. HJ Roberts, MD, says that "there are profound differences in the degree of absorption and the rate of digestion depending on whether these amino acids are derived from food or from aspartame". These amino acids, when consumed in food are buffered and balanced by other amino acids. But when they are consumed in aspartame, especially through soft drinks, the body is suddenly deluged with large amounts of these amino acids, which cross into the the brain unbuffered and cause significant disturbances of the brain’s neurotransmitters and the body's endrocrine functions.

Dr. Roberts has published (1990) his findings of more than 500 cases of aspartame induced illnesses in his book "Aspartame Is It Safe?" In his preface, he states "aspartame is potentially dangerous and may produce a wide variety of physical and mental symptoms, most of which now go unrecognized or are misinterpreted as a serious illness. These misdiagnosed cases are often treated with a host of drugs, often adding harmful side effects to the body. Dr. Roberts has catalogued these case studies to show a wide variety of symptoms from a common cause - Nutra Sweet.

One case that stands out is that of Tammy, a 16 year old girl was referred to Dr. Roberts for convulsions that failed to respond to conventional treatment. He diagnosed her as severe reactive hypoglycemia, and placed her on a hypoglycemic diet. Her blood sugar level was normal, but her mother mentioned that she had eaten her mid—afternoon snack, aspartame sweetened pudding, two hours before her last seizure. Dr. Roberts tested his aspartame theory by serving Tammy another portion of pudding in his office. Two hours later, she again showed signs of a seizure. The same pattern developed: muscle contractions, facial grimacing, and severe confusion. By abstaining from aspartame, Tammy has since been free from seizures.

From his research, Dr. Roberts has found that the interval between the introduction and use of aspartame and the beginning of complaints and symptoms varies.The initial time lapse before the development of symptoms is usually several weeks to months. However, many who improved after avoiding aspartame products suffered severe recurrences within hours or days after resuming NutraSweet. A 19 year old woman was seizure free after avoiding Nutra-Sweet for 11 months. When she took a piece of sugar free gum at a baseball game, multiple gran seizures recurred within minutes.

Severe depression was common in his case studies as was nervous tension and anxiety attacks. These symptoms often became severe enough to cause extreme irritability, headaches, sweating, rapid heart action, dizziness, fatigue, and thoughts of suicide. In all cases the symptoms went away after avoiding Nutra-Sweet products.

In 2008 it is reported by the National Institute of Mental Health that over 40 million Americans suffer from Anxiety Disorders. The treatment includes anti-depressants and now the United States is seeing a rapid rise in the prescription and use of anti-depressant drugs. With 125 million Americans eating the drug aspartame that causes depression, to prescribe an anti-depressant can only be seen as a classic case of misdiagnosed symptoms on a massive scale.

How did such a drug find it’s way into our food chain? In short, money and politics. In the early eighties there were two studies done on aspartame at MIT. Their recommendations to the FDA were not to approve its use. The drug’s manufacturer, Searle, had their own studies done. The FDA was under strong pressure $$$ from food industry lobbies and political pressure from the Reagan administration to permit the new sugar substitute to be quickly introduced into the marketplace. The Reagan appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, went against the public board of inquiry and gave it approval in 1983. Soon after, Hayes left the FDA to be a paid consultant with Searle's public relations firm Burson-Marsteller.

The man that steered the approval of aspartame was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld was CEO of G.D. Searle & Co. from 1977 to 1985. Searle hired Rumsfeld to handle the aspartame approval difficulties which were viewed as a legal problem rather than a scientific problem.

A former G.D. Searle salesperson, Patty Wood-Allott, revealed that Rumsfeld told his sales force that, if necessary, "he would call in all his markers and that no matter what, he would see to it that aspartame would be approved that year." (mgold, Gordon, US Senate Record)

The FDA had refused to approve aspartame for 16 years because it triggered brain tumors. But with Rumsfeld's political clout aspartame was approved.

How does this poison stay in America's diet. If not eating Nutra sweet removes all these illnesses why don't people just stop eating it? Well the makers of Nutra Sweet want you to keep eating this nasty drug and the FDA is happy to continue their license to sell the poison so then it boils down to a marketing game. They are able to keep Nutra Sweet in the diet by changing the name. To avoid Nutra Sweet you must avoid eating: aspartame, aspartic acid, or phenylalanine in the ingredient list. The brand names are Equal, Tropicana Slim, NutraSweet, Pure D’Light, Spoonful, Benevia, and Canderel.

"With aspartame (NutraSweet) humans are involved in a large scale experiment. We are testing aspartame on 125 million people in the US alone. We will have to wait and see how many it harms", says Dr. Wurtman.

The good news is that you don’t have to drink it or eat it. If you must use a sweetener, a truly natural and healthful alternative is the juice from the Brazilian shrub, Stevia Rebaudiana, or "sweet leaf". Stevia is 30 times sweeter than sucrose and has been the preferred sweetener in South America for centuries. It has now (2004) been in use in Japan for over 40 years. Japanese safety studies state that Stevia has no harmful effects. On the contrary, it has been found to be health promoting and is used in South America to treat Hypoglycemia and Diabetes. The wisdom of nature is wiser than the wisest of men, especially if they are driven by greed.

Further Research:

Aspartame - History of fraud and deception - David Icke Medical Archives

Tales of the Nutrasweet Scandal