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From: mwg@petrus.UUCP (Mark Garrett)
Newsgroups: net.med,net.kids
Subject: Re: More Perils of NutraSweet (with reference to another article)
Message-ID: <408@petrus.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 19-Jul-85 10:36:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: petrus.408
Posted: Fri Jul 19 10:36:46 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 10:50:41 EDT
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++
> While I agree that it is advisable to avoid feeding babies with any
> artificial sweetener, it should be remembered that the increase in
> blood levels of phenylalanine and aspartic acid after administration
> of a typical soft-drink quantity of aspartame is exceedingly small,
> and certainly swamped by the same levels seen after a typical protein-
> containing meal (milk formula or strained beef, perhaps?)
> /Steve Dyer

I just read the Atlantic Monthly article on aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal)
last night.  (August 1985 issue, pp 14-20.)  This is an excellent, complete
description of medical conclusions regarding sugar, saccharin, aspartame,
and cyclamates. The author seems very defensive of sugar, but I suspect it
is because she wants to expose all the myths of sugar-evil propagated by
various parties (diet food producers, sugar substitute makers and dentists).

To answer the question of sugar/disease relationship, the article says no
reproducable results have shown a correlation between sugar and any disease
except dental carries.  She backs her statement up thusly:

	Links between sugar and acne, diabetes, heart disease,
	cancer, and general decrepitude have never been substan-
	titated.  The authority who is quoted most often in support
	of such claims is John Yudkin, a doctor and a professor
	emeritus of nutrition at London University.  In his book
	'Sweet and Dangerous', which was published in 1972, Yudkin
	talks about sugar as if it were the universal usurper of
	humankind's vital sap -- a poison.  Yudkin's best-known
	research is a series of "intervention" studies -- involving
	patients on low-sugar diets -- that purport ot show a
	correlation between heart disease and sugar consumption.
	But strenuous efforts by many researchers to duplicate
	Yudkin's results failed, and most scientists have dismissed
	his work on heart diesase.

She goes on about Yudkin's funding from pharmaceutical and dairy industries.
Further:
	At a meeting of the International Dairy Federation in
	1973 he boasted that his research on sugar would soon
	"free butterfat from guilt."

On the subject of aspartame being composed of two amino acids which occur
naturally as constituants of protein, a Seymour Kaufman of the National
Institutes of Mental Health is quoted:

	"There's a bad misconception that aspartame is the same thing as
	protein," he says.  "The trouble is that the taking of aspartame
	is not at all to be equated with the eating of protein.  Phenyl-
	ketonuria is believed to be the result of an imbalance of amino
	acids, and this can be mimicked when we take aspartame.  it cannot
	be mimicked by eating meat."
	...
	Searle estimated that the average consumer would ingest no more
	that ten milligrams a day per kilogram of body weight.  But in
	hearings on the sweetener held by Congress earlier this year an
	attorney or the FDA said that consumption is hovering at around
	30 mg per kilogram -- the maximum that the FDA considers safe.
	"The fact that television commercials encourage people to eat
	aspartame straight really drops the bottom out of the issue,"
	Holtzman says. [Neil Holtzman is the chairman of the Committee
	on Genetics of the American Academy of Pediatrics.]

Reading this article really made me want to send a copy to everyone I know
who drinks NutraSweet.
-Mark