The big health news from this past week is the petitioning of the FDA by two very powerful dairy organizations, The International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), to allow aspartame and other artificial sweeteners to be added to milk and other dairy products without a label.
Aspartame, also known by the brand name Nutrasweet, is made up of three components: 50% phenylalanine (a chemical that affects human brain activity by transmitting impulses), 40% aspartic acid and 10% methanol (poisonous wood alcohol).
Based on the FDA’s track record in handling the aspartame issue, things are not looking good to stop approval of this outrageous measure.
For one, back in 1996 when aspartame was first approved for use in thousands of food products, the FDA used 15 “pivotal” studies as the basis for its decision.
One of these pivotal studies involved oral dosage of aspartame to infant Rhesus monkeys for 52 weeks. The research was conducted by the University of Wisconsin Medical Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
The monkeys were divided into three groups. A low dose group which received 1.0 g of aspartame/kg of body weight per day, a medium dose group receiving 3.0g/kg per day and a high dose group receiving 4-6 g/kg per day.
The high dose group ended up ingesting about the same amount as the medium dose group as the high dose monkeys would not consume intended levels of aspartame possibly because it was too sweet at that amount. There was no control group.
The monkeys in this study were served their aspartame in an orally consumed milk based formula.
Starting about 7 months (218 days) into the experiment, ALL the medium and high dose monkeys began having brain seizures.
“All animals in the medium and high dosage groups exhibited seizure activity. Seizures were observed for the first time following 218 days of treatment… The seizures were of the grand mal type… One monkey, m38, of the high dose group, died after 300 days of treatment. The cause of death was not determined…”
Grand mal seizures also known as tonic clonic seizures are horrific – a very dangerous seizure which affects the entire brain.
The low dose monkeys might have started to have seizures as well, but the death of one of the researchers, H. A. Waisman, caused a lack of staffing for the study. As a result, the low dose monkeys were withdrawn from the group at 200 days which is before the seizures in the medium and high dose group began occurring.
As soon as the aspartame was withdrawn from the monkey’s diets, the seizures stopped.
How the FDA could call a study “pivotal” for approving aspartame’s use in thousands of products where every single monkey suffered from grand mal seizures and one died while consuming milk based formula containing this artificial sweetener is incomprehensible.
According to Robert Cohen of Oradell, New Jersey, who rediscovered this study which was reported in 1972, the dairy formula/aspartame milk which the monkeys ingested would have been a key reason for the brain seizures.
Cohen, who holds a degree in brain chemistry, suggests that the ingestion of dairy has the effect of elevating the pH of the stomach. He contends that drinking a single 12 oz. glass of milk would have the effect of buffering the pH of the human stomach from 2 to 6.
When the stomach pH is 6, Cohen explains that the simple proteins that comprise aspartame would pass through undigested and hence move into the blood intact.
Testing of the monkeys in this study showed that there was in fact phenylalanine (which comprises 50% of aspartame) in their blood which proves that it is absorbed. Phenylalanine affects human brain activity by transmitting impulses and the brain seizures started occurring after this compound was detected in the monkey’s blood.
With aspartame, aka Nutrasweet, already used but still included on the label of many dairy products, it’s not a big leap for the FDA to take it to unlabeled status based on the petition from Big Dairy.
This is especially probable given the FDA’s backward interpretation of the Rhesus monkey study which it called “pivotal” in proving human safety and yet all the monkeys suffered from grand mal seizures while ingesting aspartame laced dairy formula.
Sarah, The Healthy Home Economist
Sources: Aspartame in Milk Without a Label? Big Dairy Petitions FDA for Approval
FDA Pivotal Safety Study: Aspartame Caused Brain Seizures
Abigail Ard Aars Here’s my understanding .. the sugar that is currently added to the flavored milk is not labeled and they want to allow aspartame under the same guise which would mean aspartame in the dairy beverages without a label. Here’s the wording: ” the dairy giants claim a new label is not required because sugar is added to milk without labeling it, and “the modified food is not inferior in performance” and “‘reduced calorie’ (labels) are not attractive to children” so marketing as such is of no benefit or detriment.”
It amazes me that more and more information seems to be being taken away from people. It should be illegal not to declare 100% of all ingredients in ANY food or cosmetic product. If people are allowed to not declare ingredients then to me that is like making a communist/controlling environment where information is witheld. In India, people can sell a product without declaring the ingredients and it’s always a very suspicious thing to me – what are they trying to hide?? I don’t know how people can just blindly pick up a product and buy it without knowing the ingredients. Thank God for little/local dairy farms. I can’t wait to start my own little dairy farm one day and supply people with real milk!
Submit your comments to the FDA concerning this petition through May 21, 2013 here: http://www.regulations.gov/#%21submitComment;D=FDA-2009-P-0147-0012
Official wording of the petition: IDFA and NMPF state that the proposed amendments would promote more healthful eating practices and reduce childhood obesity by providing for lower-calorie flavored milk products. They state that lower-calorie flavored milk would particularly benefit school children who, according to IDFA and NMPF, are more inclined to drink flavored milk than unflavored milk at school.
Sarah, that wording is very clear: they want to provide lower-calorie flavored milk products, ie. flavored milk products sweetened with aspartame instead of white sugar or corn syrup. So can you explain why you head the article with a photo of gallons of plain milk which the petition does not affect in any way? Was this an oversight or are you deliberately trying to mislead?
It is about fooling the customer, but people are jumping to conclusions about their hiding aspartame. We need to educate, not scare. “As required by the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) food labeling regulations, all food products that include non-nutritive sweeteners as an ingredient must be clearly labeled and include the name of the sweetener on the package’s ingredient statement.
The FDA petition would not change any existing requirements that aspartame, sucralose or any other non-nutritive sweetener be included in the list of ingredients if it is present.”
Abigail, we all know scare headlines get more links and clicks. Give Sarah a break; she has to make a living too. How many people would share a story headlined “FDA considers proposal to make artificially-flavored dairy-based junk food look more like sugary dairy-based junk food”? Me neither.
Yes, and there are others like me who have very negative reactions to artificial sweeteners. Can you believe this? We can’t get healthy raw milk legalized but they want to put more toxic additives to milk without labels. Grrrrr.
In the end, it’s all about fooling the consumer and no regard for the consumer’s health.
This may sound a little odd, but it’s true. Last week when I spent the night at a motel, they had a free breakfast in the morning. Biscuits and gravy…(ICK) bread, yogurt, oranges, two types of cereal, milk and instant oatmeal. While I do eat packaged food OCASSIONALLY, I try to avoid it. I figured the “best”, most “healthy” foods here would be the fresh oranges, the yogurt, and a piece of ww bread. That is what I had for breakfast. About an hour later my stomach started churning, so I headed in to the bathroom. Lo’ and behold the color of my poo was flourescent GREEN! I simply couldn’t figure out what I had eaten for that to happen. Then I remembered way back in the 80’s when artificial sweeteners were relatively new, I was a day care provider. One child would get flourescent green poo after eating artificial sweetener. (Like drinking sugar free Kool-Aid, for example.) Anything that would make flourescent green poo could NOT be good for a person. I told my SO of my findings, (the only thing he ate that was the same as what I had was the yogurt.) and wouldn’t you know it? He ended up with f. green poo later that day!
It must/it has to do something to your liver, because it’s the same color as bilirhubin (sp?) a baby has when their liver function is not up to par.
Does this include organic milk as well?
That’s why I buy organic whole milk!