If you believe the marketing hype, a certain calorie-free
ingredient added to soft drinks can help you lose weight. But the truth about
this chemical additive is less reassuring.
Researchers have raised serious doubts about what it really does
to help you lose weight (sneak preview: nothing). And investigations into its
effects on the body suggest it may make you vulnerable to Alzheimer’s and other
neurological disasters. Keep reading for the deadly truth about. . .
Continued below…
Breast Cancer Survivor was told: “You’ll be dead in a year” (Pssst!! That was 12 years ago!) Doctors didn’t give Wiltrude much hope when they diagnosed her with cancer in the year 2000. Wiltrude, a German psychologist, never thought cancer would happen to her. But it did. And it came as a big shock. One doctor told her, “You’ll be dead in a year.” Late stage breast cancer is virtually incurable using conventional treatments. Even M.D.s admit it. They talk about “buying you more time.” (Don’t count on it. The evidence shows you’re better off doing nothing than chemo.) When Wiltrude told her doctor she was going to try alternative treatments, he said, “You are committing suicide with what you’re doing.” But she was determined to find a way to beat her cancer. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, this European woman came across a book by my good friend Bill Henderson, one of the smartest and wisest people I know when it comes to cancer treatment. She tried Bill’s top, number one recommendation — a gentle treatment you can do at home for just $5.15 a day. What’s more, the cost goes down to $3.50 after six weeks because you just need a maintenance dose. And it even tastes good. Not only has Wiltrude passed the five-year cancer survival mark, she’s survived for 12 years. We just interviewed her recently for this publication. The radiologist who tests her every year told her, “You’re the only one with this kind of result.” You can find out more about Bill’s proven cancer treatment plan if you click here. When I ask him about some of the treatments that top alternative doctors use, Bill sort of shrugs and says, “They’re fine, but why bother? My treatment works, you can do it yourself, and it costs practically nothing.” He’s coached thousands of cancer patients with all different types and stages of cancer. Most of the people who follow the detailed, specific plan in this Special Report get over their cancer and live for years. “Almost any kind of cancer is reversible,” says Bill. “I never give up on anyone.” |
Aspartame is the ingredient’s technical name. But it has long been sold
under the brand names Nutrasweet and Equal. It’s the sweetener in most diet
soft drinks and in many other products that Americans down in large quantities.
Most people think it’s been carefully tested and is “government approved.” So
surely it must be okay, right? Well, no. . .
About those weight-loss claims.
. .
Aside from possibly giving you cancer or dementia, aspartame
doesn’t even achieve its main purpose of helping people lose weight. Research
analyzing how artificial sweeteners affect your weight have produced troubling
results.
For instance, a ten-year study in Texas showed that people who
drank two or more aspartame-sweetened soft drinks a day end up, on average, adding five times as many inches
to their waistlines as people who never drink diet soda.i
And a lab test of the effects of aspartame on blood sugar shows that consuming
this chemical increases blood sugar levels and can make you more vulnerable to
diabetes.ii
So while the ads for diet soft drinks trumpet the fact that these
drinks contain zero calories they neglect to add that the weight-loss benefits
of these beverages are actually less than zero.
Crooked regulators and lying
politicians
The story behind aspartame reveals serious weaknesses and outright
corruption in the way food regulators judge the safety of the chemicals added
to our food.
When aspartame was first submitted to the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) for approval, the agency assigned an outside public board of
inquiry the task of deciding if the additive was safe for human consumption.
The doctors on that board unanimously recommended against approval. Later, an
internal FDA panel came to the same conclusion.
Aspartame was approved anyway in one of the most obvious political
fixes ever seen. A new president came into office, and a new man was appointed
to head the FDA. Who chose the new chairman? Apparently the White House delegated the choice to
the CEO of G.D. Searle, the drug company that owns the patent on aspartame. This
drug company CEO was a powerful player on the president’s transition team.
Once in office – what a surprise -- one of the new appointee’s
first acts as FDA chairman was to grant approval to aspartame.
In theory, the FDA determines a food ingredient’s safety by way of
tests on lab animals. This process is riddled with doubtful science – but the
main flaw is obvious: Animals don’t always react to additives the way humans
do. And aspartame’s critics argue that while the mice used to test aspartame
possess physiological defenses that protect them from aspartame’s breakdown
products, the humans who sip on diet soda flavored with aspartame lack those
protections.
Chemically, aspartame is a combination of aspartic acid and
phenylalanine. The phenylalanine in the compound contains what is called a
methyl group. This chemical group is what your tongue perceives as sweetness.
When you consume a soft drink sweetened with aspartame, the methyl
group breaks off fairly quickly because it is only weakly bonded to the rest of
the molecule.
Now, according to food chemists who work for the food
manufacturers, the methanol you absorb is just as benign as the methanol you
consume in fruits and vegetables. But what they don’t acknowledge is that the
methanol in fruits and vegetables is linked to pectin, a substance that is
extracted and often used in jellies and jams as a gelling agent. Pectin is
natural and harmless – it’s the white stuff that lines the inside of grapefruit
or orange peels.
When linked to pectin, methanol passes through the digestive tract
harmlessly and is eliminated. But your body can't easily discard the unbound
methanol in an aspartame-flavored soft drink.
Problem is, unlike the lab animals that researchers use to test
the safety of food additives, we humans do not have a detoxification pathway
that converts methanol into innocuous formic acid.
Aspartame is metabolized into a
carcinogen
According to Woodrow C. Monte, who has researched the human
reaction to aspartameiii, both human and animal cells possess a
substance called dehydrogenase that changes methanol into formaldehyde, a cause
of cancer.
But while animal cells have access to enzymes that turn
formaldehyde into benign formic acid, human cells lack these enzymes.
Monte argues that the resulting formaldehyde can cause serious
damage to the human body. Methanol can cross the blood-brain barrier, be
converted into formaldehyde there and degrade the myelin that is essential for
neuron functions. That kind of destruction can lead to multiple sclerosis,
Alzheimer’s and other brain problems.
Avoiding this sweetener is the only sensible thing to do.
Best regards,
Lee Euler
Publisher