Much of the problem with our food supply can be traced to the media.

  Back during 1985 Jane Brody did an honest article on aspartame... as
follows:

********************************* The "before"... "Science Times"

SWEETENER WORRIES SOME SCIENTISTS
by Jane E. Brody -
Science Times Feb 5 1985

As sales of aspartame, the nation's newest artificial sweetener, expand
rapidly among millions of users, scientific concern is also growing among
some researchers about its safety.

The researchers are alarmed by recent reports that a small percentage of
users, including at least two young children, may have suffered severe
adverse reactions to aspartame.  Especially worrisome are reactions
involving the brain, including seizures, incapacitating headaches,
dizziness, behavioral changes and depression.

Although there is at present no evidence, there is concern, too, over the
possibility that in some consumers, aspartame may cause subtle disruptions
in the balance of brain chemicals that influence mood, alertness and hunger
for certain nutrients.  Animal studies have raised the issue but its
investigation is only just beginning.

Two scientists, Dr. C. Keith Conners of Children's Hospital in Washington
and Dr. Richard Wurtman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
believe that the Food and Drug Administration misled the pubic on
aspartame's safety by understating the concern voiced in a recent official
scientific analysis of consumer complaints.

"If you read the CDC report," Dr. Wurtman said in an interview, referring to
the national Centers for Disease Control, "it doesn't sound nearly so
complacent as the F.D.A. Talk Paper that interpreted the findings for the
public."

According to the C.D.C. its detailed investigation of 200 consumer
complaints, out of more than 600 received, suggests the need for a
systematic study of adverse effects, especially neurological and behavioral
effects which accounted for 67 percent of the complaints received.

"The number of instances of persons challenging themselves several times
with aspartame-containing products and reporting symptoms with each
rechallenge suggests that some individuals may be sensitive," the report
states.  "The only way to clearly determine this is through focused clinical
studies."  Citing the "subtlety and potential seriousness of some of the
manifestations" reported by consumers, the disease control centers said the
studies should concentrate on such symptoms as "headaches, mood alterations
and behavior changes."

The manufacturers of aspartame, G.D.Searle & Company, said a proposal for a
clinical study has been submitted to the F.D.A., but there are as yet no
plans to actively monitor the effects of aspartame in the general
population.

Searle says the C.D.C. findings are not surprising, given the fact that more
than 100 million people now use aspartame.  Dr Gerald E. Gaull, vice
president for nutrition and medical affairs for aspartame at Searle, said it
is possible that "a few people may be allergic or sensitive to it."  He
added that "for those few people, the issue is not one of safety but rather
of food selection."

Both the drug agency and Searle say aspartame is the most extensively
studied food additive in history and that the studies clearly establish its
safety.  Dr. Gaull noted, "It's not just the F.D.A. that has viewed the
tests as adequate, but also the World Health Organization and comparable
regulatory agencies in Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan and about 37 other
countries."

Dr. Sanford Miller, head of the F.D.A.'s Bureau of Foods, said: "I don't
know of any substance in recent years that's been looked at with the
intensity of aspartame.  No one had yet come up with the slightest evidence
to show we were wrong in approving it."

However, some researchers and consumer organizations assert that the studies
have not been careful or far-reaching enough to establish the safety of
aspartame, which is now entering the food supply at an unprecedented rate
following its approval in 1983 for use in soft drinks.

For example, Dr. Walle Nauta, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology
psychologist who heads a public board of inquiry that was asked by the
F.D.A. in 1980 to review safety concerns about aspartame, has said that had
the panel known how widely aspartame would be used, it would have issued
stronger recommendations.  He told Common Cause, a public affairs
organization that completed a nine-month investigation of aspartame last
year, that use of aspartame in soft drinks "never figured in our decision
making."
                       ***********************
Dr. Nauta's panel was also limited in its assessment to interpreting the
results of safety tests.  Whether the tests were properly conducted in the
first place was not considered, he said.
                       ***********************

FOUND IN A WIDE VARIETY OF FOODS

Aspartame, marketed as NutraSweet (when used as a food additive) and Equal
(the table-top version), is now found in such foods as soft drinks, gum,
breakfast cereals, mixes for hot chocolate and cold drinks and pudding
mixes.  Although in most products it is combined with either sugar or
saccharin, a trend is already evident toward the use of aspartame as the
sole sweetener in processed foods.  Coca-Cola and Pepsi-cola, for-example,
announced they would be using it alone in diet soft drinks, and Ralston-
Purina has just introduced a new cereal, Sunflakes, sweetened only with
aspartame.  Several food processors have filed proposals to use the
sweetener in yogurt, ice cream and flavored drinks.

Since it was approved for use in this country in 1981, worldwide sales of
aspartame have grown from $74 million in 1982 to $800 million last year.  It
has been an enormous financial boost for a company that a decade ago was
embroiled in costly controversy over the quality of its safety tests on
several major drugs and aspartame.

Aspartame was originally approved for marketing in 1974, but the approval
was quickly stayed when a scientist, Dr John Olney of Washington University,
and an attorney, James S. Turner, objected on the basis of Dr. Olney's
findings in animals that aspartame might cause cancerous brain tumors.  Dr.
Olney remains a strong critic of aspartame approval.  Mr. Turner, a consumer
advocate with the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, said the
studies needed to clarify this risk had not yet been property done.  The
institute recently petitioned the United States Court of Appeals for the
District of Columbia to halt further marketing of aspartame products pending
the outcome of a requested public hearing on aspartame's safety.

Nor were a number of key studies that had been called into question as
scientifically lacking in design and execution ever redone, according to
Common Cause and Mr. Turner.  Nonetheless, in 1981, Arthur Hull Hayes, then
Commissioner of Food and Drugs, approved aspartame for use in dry foods and
as a table-top sweetener.  Two years later Mark Novich, as acting
commissioner, approved aspartame for use in soft drinks.  soon after Dr.
Hayes left the agency and took a job as senior medical consultant for
Burson-Marsteller, a public relations agency that represents Searle.  The
company says Dr. Hayes, who is also dean of New York Medical College, has
never consulted on anything having to do with aspartame or any other product
he ruled on at the drug agency.

MANY FACTORS IN POPULARITY

Among the reasons aspartame is so popular are that it provides the
sweetening power of sugar at one-tenth the caloric cost; unlike products
made with saccharin, it does not carry a warning about cancer risk and it
tastes very much like sugar but, unlike saccharin, has no unpleasant
aftertaste.

The drug agency has set an allowable daily intake of 50 milligrams of body
weight, and the agency predicted that actual average use would run around
eight to ten milligrams.  According to Dr. Gaull of Searle, levels of use
found in a national survey last spring showed that the average was then
already twice that - 19 milligrams - and the maximum level consumed by
"aspartame abusers" was 28 milligrams.  A United States attorney
representing the F.D.A. said in court last month that average consumption is
now 30 milligrams and that many consumers are above the 50 milligrams
maximum suggested.

According to Dr. Wurtman, some consumers can easily reach consumption levels
that have been linked in animal studies to adverse effects on brain
chemicals.  Ironically, he added, those using the sweetener to control
calories may be defeating their purpose, since his studies show high levels
of aspartame may trigger a craving for carbohydrates by depleting the brain
of a chemical that registers carbohydrate satiety.

Dr. Conners is worried about aspartame's effects on certain highly sensitive
individuals.  He has studied two young children who suffer extreme agitation
following doses of aspartame equivalent to the amount found in a six-once
serve of Kool-Aid sweetened with NutraSweet.  One of the children becomes so
agitated he has to be restrained,  Dr.Conners said.  The other, who is
sensitive to sugar, becomes even more aggressive when given aspartame, he
said.

Aspartame is the product of two amino acids (the chemical building blocks of
protein), aspartic acid and phenylalanine, which are found in rather large
amounts in ordinary protein-rich foods.  When digested and metabolized,
aspartame breaks down into its component amino acids and methyl alcohol.

Scientific concern has focused on phenylalanine, since some people are
unable to process it properly, causing a buildup in the body that can damage
the developing brain.  A phenylalanine buildup, should it occur in response
to aspartame, could endanger an unborn child whose mother has high levels of
phenylalanine in her blood in pregnancy, some scientists say.  Dr. William
Partridge of the University of California at Los Angles, for one, is worried
about possible detrimental effects on I.Q. in the children of phenylalanine-
tolerant women who consume large amounts of aspartame in pregnancy.

Phenylalanine is also the precursor to tyrosine, neurotransmitter in the
brain.  A recent study in rats by researchers in Dr. Wurtman's laboratory
showed that aspartame can cause large buildups of phenylalanine and tyrosine
in the brain.  However, Dr. Wurtman has noted that rats process
phenylalanine differently from people.  He added that a federally financed
study of the behavioral effects of aspartame in animals and people was now
under way in his laboratory.

********************************* The "After" (New York Times)
(the "new improved Jane Brody version now working for big business)
--- posted at: http://www.nutrasweet.com/html/article5.htm

PERSONAL HEALTH; Mighty Cyberengines Spew Health Myths
By JANE E. BRODY

May 30, 2000, Tuesday
Health & Fitness , 1126 words

When my sons were in the first grade, a rumor circulated through New York
City elementary schools that cockroaches often contaminated canned tuna.
Though the boys liked other fish, including sardines, they refused to eat
canned tuna in any form and still avoid it more than 20 years later. Like
alligators living in the sewer, many urban myths assume a life of their own
despite a total lack of supporting evidence. The alligator myth is more a
source of amusement than a problem for anyone, since very few of us venture
into sewers. But when myths involve health issues, they can result in
needless anxiety, avoidance behavior and inconvenience.

In years past, these unsubstantiated rumors about health hazards lurking in
our midst spread relatively slowly from person to person by word of mouth,
unless some radio or television program happened to give them national
airing. Now there is a new rapid-fire means of transmitting misinformation
nationwide, even worldwide, via e-mail and the Internet. And since these
communications appear in writing, rumors about health hazards floating
around cyberspace seem to acquire an undeserved validity that makes them
more likely to be believed than any oral warning. Of course, not everyone is
equally gullible. Still, some people react with fear, even panic, when a
cybermyth about health appears on their computer screens.

Several of these "urban health myths" are exposed for what little they are
worth in the May issue of Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource, a newsletter
published by the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. I have added one of my own,
on aluminum, that predates cyberspace but refuses to die.

MYTH: Cooking in aluminum pots causes Alzheimer's disease. The sick brain
cells of people with Alzheimer's disease have been found to contain high
amounts of aluminum. This prompted people to point a guilty finger at
aluminum pots and pans as a source of this element that they believe damage
brain cells, resulting in senility. Countless people tossed out all their
aluminum cookware, replacing it with stainless steel and enameled cast iron.
But what those who panicked failed to realize is that sick cells tend to
accumulate toxic metals because they are unable to eliminate them. Despite
numerous investigations, there is no scientifically reliable evidence that
aluminum is the cause, rather than the result, of a diseased brain.

MYTH: Antiperspirants cause breast cancer. A persistent Internet myth is
that since antiperspirants block sweat glands, those in the underarm are
unable to eliminate toxic substances, sending them instead into nearby lymph
nodes, where they cause genetic mutations that result in cancer. First,
sweat glands do not eliminate toxins and are not connected to the lymph
system. Rather, toxins are processed through the liver and kidneys. Second,
breast cancer does not arise in lymph nodes. It may spread to underarm
nodes, but it starts within the breast tissue, usually in milk ducts. Third,
there is no evidence linking breast cancer to not sweating. Fourth, no
ingredient in antiperspirants is known to cause cancer. Finally, among
countless studies of risk factors associated with breast cancer, not one has
pointed to antiperspirants as a remotely possible cause.

MYTH: Costa Rican bananas carry flesh-eating bacteria. Whenever a
frightening, mysterious illness gains widespread attention, myths tend to
abound as to its source. Hence the myth that touching the skin of bananas
grown in Costa Rica can expose a person to the bacteria that cause
necrotizing fasciitis, a potentially deadly disease caused by bacteria that
attack the flesh in science-fiction fashion. Necrotizing fasciitis is caused
by various bacteria, including Group A streptococcus that is found on
people's skin and in their throats. It is transmitted from through saliva or
mucus or through sores on the skin to another person who broken skin. The
bacteria cannot infect intact skin. Nor are they carried on bananas.

MYTH: Aspartame causes . . . you-name-it. According to the Mayo Clinic, one
woman is the source of the belief that the artificial sweetener aspartame
causes everything from obesity to manic depression to multiple sclerosis.
The woman maintains that the Food and Drug Administration, in cahoots with
commercial interests, has suppressed evidence of aspartame's risks and that
all the studies indicating its safety are tainted because they have been
financed by the company that produces it.

One study published in 1997 linked aspartame to a rise in brain tumors. But
the increase in these tumors, which began in the 1970's, predates the
introduction of aspartame into the food supply. There are many factors that
might account for the rise in brain tumors, but none, including the use of
cellular phones, has been established with any degree of scientific
certainty. When aspartame was first introduced, there was a suspected link
to seizures and depression that also has not been substantiated by further
research. And the claimed link to multiple sclerosis has been disputed by
the Multiple Sclerosis Foundation.

In an indirect way, however, aspartame and every other sugar substitute
might be partly to blame for the rise in obesity. While the sweeteners
themselves contribute few or no calories to the diet, they do help to
perpetuate the desire for very sweet foods. Since 1975, the per capita
consumption of sugar and other caloric sweeteners has sharply increased, by
more than 28 pounds a year. That certainly is no help to

America's expanding waistline. There are any number of other urban health
tales now circulating on the Internet that have been refuted by reliable
sources with no ax to grind, including the government agency most directly
concerned with the public's health, the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention. Among the prevailing myths are that kidneys and other organs are
being stolen from live victims without their knowledge (the National Kidney
Foundation says no way!) and that a deadly spider dubbed Arachnius gluteus
lives under the seats of public toilets awaiting a sumptuous derrière to
bite. A report attributing the deaths of three women to such a bite was
supposedly published in The Journal of the United Medical Association.
However, as noted by the Mayo newsletter, there is no such spider and there
is no such journal.

The moral of this story is don't be so quick to believe everything you read
on the Net or hear on a broadcast. Check the source and evidence before you
panic. 

*********************

   Commentary.  Which version of Jane Brody would you consider honest enough
to trust YOUR health to?   Before... or now?