An update from New Zealand, the foremost settings for the most serious challenges of continued government regulatory approval of the most common artificial sweetener, the neurotoxic additive found in 6000 US food products, 2000 medications, even in children's vitamins and cold medicine, metabolized as methanol,formaldehyde, and proven brain tumor causal agent, DIKETOPIPERAZINE; 1981 approval forced by Donald Rumsfeld

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Aspartame Research Needed, Not Coca-Cola's Soft Sell

The Soil & Health Association is calling for open and independent research into how widespread the effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame are on the health and well-being of New Zealanders, following last week's admission by the Ministry of Health that there were links to adverse effects.

Soil & Health spokesperson Steffan Browning attended the Parliamentary Health Select Committee where Ministry of Health team leader and senior advisor for nutrition, Elizabeth Aitken, stated that there was clearly an association between aspartame and health symptoms, however considered that it should be investigated at the level of individuals with their medical practitioners.

"This is a woefully inadequate situation that leaves individuals to determine the cause of their distressing symptoms by chance. Many medical practitioners are poorly informed about the symptoms of aspartame poisoning, with the strong possibility that some severe cases are misdiagnosed as multiple sclerosis (MS) or that aspartame was even the cause of MS," said Mr Browning.

Professor Woodrow Monte, PhD RD, retired from Arizona State University, presented at the Select Committee in support of Wellingtonian Abby Cormack who experienced a dramatic reversal of distressing health symptoms by removing aspartame-containing diet Coke and Wrigley's gum from her diet.

"Ms Cormack's experience of bouncing between practitioners who did not identify the cause of her distress, and Dr Monte's presentation potentially connecting aspartame with MS, neural tube birth defect and breast cancer, shows the need for urgent Ministry of Health intervention."

"At the select committee, New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA) toxicologist John Reeves also acknowledged an apparent association between aspartame and adverse health symptoms, yet NZFSA fudge the need for concern due to their not accepting a direct link."

"NZFSA also mischievously implied that the formaldehyde produced in the body by aspartame consumption was excreted ahead of causing damage. Soil & Health finds the evidence of Dr Monte more compelling."

"Robust and independent research needs to happen in New Zealand on the effects of aspartame on public health. Overseas research that NZFSA and subsequently the Ministry of Health rely on has a strong industry base. This is an industry that enjoys huge cost benefit from using artificial sweeteners, which are much cheaper than sugar."

"With increasing pressure against the unnatural and dangerous sweetener, the Coca-Cola Company is meanwhile using direct mail marketing and magazine advertising in a 'make every drop matter' campaign that includes New Zealand Food Safety Authority's support for the controversial sweetener. Diet and sugar-free products often contain the neurotoxin aspartame."

"Every drop does matter, and the sooner any drop containing aspartame is removed from New Zealand schools and diets, the better," said Mr Browning.

"Following agreement with the government, Coca-Cola no longer sells sugar sweetened fizzy drinks at primary schools, but unfortunately the government has continued to allow Coca-Cola to still sell the more dangerous aspartame-containing drinks."

"Aspartame consumption has been linked to many health symptoms, including those expressed as ADHD, anxiety, depression, irritability, confusion, memory loss, insomnia, dizziness, migraines, cramps, abdominal pain, numbness or tingling of extremities, rashes, chronic fatigue, and personality changes. These same symptoms are increasingly expressed among our young people, and removal of aspartame may assist with a marked improvement in quality of life for some, their families and teachers."

"With significant diseases such as multiple sclerosis and cancer also implicated, precaution is best exercised by removal of aspartame products, with parallel studies being undertaken to determine the severity of aspartame's effects on our community's health, starting with robust medical research including neurological specialists and their patients dietary habits, coupled with a survey of doctors experiences and understanding."

"While some doctors warn their patients away from artificial sweeteners, this is not recorded nationally and many doctors are not aware of the risks."

"Should sugar be undesirable, Soil & Health recommends natural alternatives such as stevia, rather than the neurotoxic, carcinogenic, synthetic sweeteners such as aspartame."
"Soil & Health has a motto of Healthy Soil, Healthy Food, Healthy People, and promotes a diet free from synthetic additives."

NOTE: Aspartame (951, Equal, Nutrasweet) is an artificial sweetener found in over 6000 products including diet drinks, sugar-free products, dietary supplements, sports drinks and medications.

Authors Website: https://www.facebook.com/groups/592985284186083/

Authors Bio:

Early in the 2016 Primary campaign, I started a Facebook group: Bernie Sanders: Advice and Strategies to Help Him Win! As the primary season advanced, we shifted the focus to advancing Bernie's legislation in the Senate, particularly the most critical one, to protect Oak Flat, sacred to the San Carlos Apaches, in the Tonto National Forest, from John McCain's efforts to privatize this national forest and turn it over to Rio Tinto Mining, an Australian mining company whose record by comparison makes Monsanto look like altar boys, to be developed as North America's largest copper mine. This is monstrous and despicable, and yet only Bernie's Save Oak Flat Act (S2242) stands in the way of this diabolical plan.

We added "2020" to the title.


I am an art gallery owner in Santa Fe since 1980 selling Native American painting and NM landscapes, specializing in modern Native Ledger Art.


I have always been intensely involved in politics, going back to the mid's 1970's, being a volunteer lobbyist in the US Senate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, then a "snowball-in-hell" campaign for US Senate in NM in the late 70's, and for the past 20 years have worked extensively to pressure the FDA to rescind its approval for aspartame, the neurotoxic artificial sweetener metabolized as formaldehyde. This may be becoming a reality to an extent in California, which, under Proposition 65, is considering requiring a mandatory Carcinogen label on all aspartame products, although all bureaucracies seem to stall under any kind of corporate pressure.


Bills to ban aspartame were in the State Senates of New Mexico and Hawaii, but were shut down by corporate lobbyists (particularly Monsanto lobbyists in Hawaii and Coca Cola lobbyists in New Mexico).


For several years, I was the editor of New Mexico Sun News, and my letters to the editor and op/eds in 2016 have appeared in NM, California, Wisconsin, New York, Maryland, the Christian Science Monitor, USA Today, and many international papers, on the subject of consumer protection. Our best issue was 10 days before Obama won in 2008, when we published a special early edition of the paper declaring that Obama Wins! This was the top story on CNN for many hours, way back then....


My highest accomplishments thus far are

1. a plan to create a UN Secretary General's Pandemic Board of Inquiry, a plan that is in the works and might be achieved even before the 75th UN General Assembly in September 2020.


2. Now history until the needs becomes clear to the powers who run the United Nations: a UN Resolution to create a new Undersecretary General for Nutrition and Consumer Protection, strongly supported ten years ago by India and 53 cosponsoring nations, but shut down by the US Mission to the UN in 2008. To read it, google UNITED NATIONS UNDERSECRETARY GENERAL FOR NUTRITION, please.


These are not easy battles, any of them, and they require a great deal of political and journalistic focus. OpEdNews is the perfect place for those who have a lot to say, so much that they exceed the limiting capacities of their local and regional newspapers. Trying to go beyond the regional papers seems to require some kind of "inside" credentials, as if you had to be in a club of corporate-accepted writers, and if not, you are "from somewhere else," a sad state of corporate induced xenophobia that should have no place in America in 2020!

This should be a goal for every author with something current to say: breaking through yet another glass ceiling, and get your say said in editorial pages all over America. Certainly, this was a tool that was essentially ignored in 2016, and cannot be ignored in the big elections of 2020.


In my capacity as Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev