Aspartame is the technical term for the various brand names of non-sugar sweeteners known as NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. When James Shatter, a chemist at G.D. Searle Company was testing new anti-ulcer drugs, he discovered quite by accident this sweetener agent, aspartame. This was in 1965, but it was not until 1981 when aspartame was finally an approved additive for dry foods and in 1983 for beverages.

Why was there such a delay? Politics are very much alive in the business world as well as in governmental agencies. Actually in 1974, aspartame initially was given the green light for use in dry foods as a sweetener, but this was blocked by a neuroscientist and a consumer attorney who filed legal objections to aspartame's use in foods for human consumption. Dr. John W. Olney and Atty. James Turner had serious concerns regarding the safety of aspartame for human consumption. Since its final approval as a food additive, over 75 percent of food additives; bad side-effects as reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have been credited to aspartame. That is, aspartame accounts for over three-fourths of all reported FDA food additive adverse reactions.

So what are these reported bad side-effects? A February, 1994, report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources listed some rather serious health problems, including seizures and death. But a long list of 90 differently documents adverse reactions include the following serious symptoms: headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.

According to researchers and physicians studying the adverse effects of aspartame, the following chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by ingesting aspartame: brain tumors, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, Parkinson disease, Alzheimer, dementia, mental retardation, lymphoma, birth defects, fibromyalgia, and diabetes mellitus.

Aspartame consists of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. On the surface, the first two ingredients do not appear that bad since both are amino acids. The problem comes in their isolation and excess. When added to food, the excess free excitatory amino acids such as aspartic acid and glutamic acid are causing serious chronic neurological disorders and a myriad of other acute symptoms.

Neuroscientists observed that aspartate or glutamate, both neurotransmitters, in excess kills certain nerve cells by allowing the influx of too much calcium into the cells. Thus excessive aspartate and glutamate have been referred to as "exotoxins" since they "excite" the neural cells to death. The greatest risk is to infants, children, pregnant women, the elderly, and individuals with certain chronic health problems.

Phenylalanine is an amino acid normally found in the brain. Persons with a genetic disorder, phenylketonuria, cannot metabolize phenylalanine. This leads to dangerously high levels of phenylalanine in the brain with sometimes lethal results. It has been shown that ingesting aspartame, especially along with carbohydrates, can lead to excessively elevated phenylalanine levels in he brain even in persons who do not have phenylketonuria. These high levels of phenylalanine in the brain can decrease the serotonin levels which in turn leads to emotional disorders such as depression. It has been shown in human testing that phenylalanine levels in blood were increased significantly in human subjects who chronically used aspartame. What's more, even a single use of aspartame raised the blood phenylalanine level.

The third ingredient of aspartame is methanol, or wood alcohol, which is a known deadly poison. Some people will remember methanol as the poison which has caused "skid row" alcoholics to end up blind or dead. As a young college student in the 1950s, I learned of the hazards of this poison, for one of my schoolmates was totally blind. While in the Navy, a fellow corpsman spiked their punch with wood alcohol. Although he was lucky enough to live to tell the story, he awoke from that experience 100% blind.

The absorption of methanol into the body is sped up considerably when free methanol is ingested. And here is something that everyone who lives in the desert needs to know: Free methanol is created from aspartame when it is heated to above 86°F (30 centigrade). This occurs when an aspartame-containing product is improperly stored or when it is heated (such as part of a "food" product like Jello). Thus it becomes clear that no food which you plan to cook should contain aspartame. Methanol is considered a cumulative poison due to the low rate of excretion from the body once it is absorbed.

The problem is that methanol breaks down into formic acid and formaldehyde in the body, and formaldehyde is a deadly neurotoxin. Due to the lack of a couple of key enzymes, humans are many more times sensitive to the toxic effects of methanol than animals.

A summary of serious flaws in aspartame's FDA approval process include:

1. FDA used guidelines recommended by G.D. Searle to develop industry-wide FDA standards for Good Laboratory Practices, even thought he FDA found numerous experimental errors - including "clerical errors, mixed-up animals, animals not getting drugs they were supposed to get, pathological specimens lost because of improper handling" plus other inaccuracies. (NOTE: Sloppy enough to reveal both test and control animals had 16 times more brain tumors than would be expected in experiments of that length).

2. Laboratory tests were faked and dangers were concealed.

3. Tumors were removed from animals and animals that had died were "restored to life" in laboratory records.

4. False and misleading statements were made to the FDA.

5. The two U.S. Attorneys given the task of bringing fraud charges against the aspartame manufacturer took positions with the manufacturer's law firm, letting the statute of limitations run out.

6. A Public Board of Inquiry was conducted in 1980, where three scientists reviewed the objections of Olney and Turner to the approval of aspartame. They also voted unanimously against aspartame's approval.

7. The FDA Commissioner, Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes, Jr., then created a five-person Scientific Commission to review the PBOI recommendations.

8. After it became clear that this Commission would uphold the PBOI's decision by a vote of 3 to 2, Dr. Hayes added a 6th person for a tie vote.

9. With a deadlocked vote of 3 to 3, the FDA Commissioner himself was allowed to break it. Dr. Hayes approved aspartame for dry goods in 1981.

10. Dr. Jacqueline Verrett, the Senior Scientist in an FDA Bureau of Foods review team, created in August 1977 to review the Bressler Report (that detailed G.D. Searle's abuses during the pre-approval testing) said, "It was pretty obvious that … the bureau officials were working up to a whitewash."