Obama Pushing Aspartame on School Children !

Michelle Obama's obesity obsession has gotten her to pressure the Department of Agriculture to release nutrition standards for ''competitive'' foods and has outlawed snacks considered unhealthy by the nanny-state federal government. ''Regular soda is out,'' she says, ''though the school may serve diet versions.''  The FLOTUS has spoken! That's right -- the government is recommending school children drink soft drinks laden with the deadly neurotoxin   ....aspartame.  As usual, the right hand of government has no idea what the left is doing....or maybe it does.

Discovered by chemist James M. Schlatter in 1965 by pure accident, aspartame and its intrigue-laced approval tells many a tale about corporate America, the contingent blessings brought by the cyclamate and saccharin bans, and the arbiters of government power. For 20 years the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) gave aspartame products the thumbs down mainly for the following safety issues and reasons: flawed data - high cholesterol levels - body fluid loss.  But pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle - the makers of NutraSweet and Equal brands - did not back down and knew all it took was flexing political muscle. Eventually, it was Donald Rumsfeld, a powerful political figure in the Bush administration, that proved instrumental in the FDA approval of aspartame in 1981.

With the green light from the FDA, and a growing diet-obsessed nation, the slick maneuverings of the multi-billion artificial sweetener industry and with government agencies that failed to walk their talk of consumer safety you saw aspartame enter the mainstream food chain in every area. Its use in over 6,000 products and by 250 million people has made the public its unwitting guinea pig in a grand experiment 40 years in the making. So with the USDA pulling traditional potato chips and candy out of schools and allowing them to be replaced with aspartame laden products the First Lady is harming children's health not helping it.

Despite the dismissive stand of aspartame producers that it is safe for human consumption, various studies over the years have shown that aspartame is actually linked to headaches, migraines, dizziness, fatigue, anxiety, and even tumors. The FDA reported 92 symptoms attributed to aspartame and is getting a bad reputation as a dangerous ''excitotoxin.'' An excitotoxin means it has the ability to ''excite'' the cells of the body into overproducing a particular chemical, thus burning them out prematurely. When aspartame is digested, the body breaks it down into phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol. Methanol then breaks down to toxic formaldehyde and travels through your blood vessels, like a Trojan Horse, into sensitive areas like your brain and eyes to do damage.

Stocking up on diet foods is the best way to gain weight. The latest research by Quig Yang, a faculty member at the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology on aspartame has revealed that it actually increases the risk of putting on weight, no keeping it off. Being 200 times sweeter than sugar, aspartame appears to be the perfect answer to diet since it contains few calories. Unfortunately, phenylalanine and aspartic acid (major components of aspartame) trigger the release of insulin and leptins. The latter are hormones that stimulate storage of body fat. A shocking outcome from a study, spanning 22 years, found a clear association between aspartame consumption and leukemia relating to diet soda intake in both sexes.

Moreover, large doses of phenylalanine lowers serotonin levels and lead to food cravings. Since both real and artificial sweeteners stimulate the taste buds, they affect the same taste and pleasure pathways in the brain. Fake sweeteners however merely activate but do not satiate the pleasure-related region of the brain, proving to be inferior in preventing sugar and food cravings. This is over and above the fact that aspartame is also highly addictive! The phenylalanine and methanol components increase the dopamine levels in the brain and cause a certain high.This further creates an addiction that is only made worse by the release of methyl alcohol which is considered a narcotic.

The Way I See It....chemical dependency begins to form when aspartame is consumed regularly and it is hard to break. Most people know at least one person who can't seem to kick their diet drinks. Keeping this in mind, it''s time we reconsider the ''health benefits'' aspartame is supposed to give. From yogurts to cereals , from chewing gum to sweet-filled baked goods and now even Bereroca (a high-potency B fizzy-tablet) - this damn sweetener is everywhere.

The above mentioned popular products are just a few of many containing aspartame. Despite the rising reports of its toxicity, a re-investigation by the FDA as well as by key regulatory bodies worldwide doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon. You can only protect yourselves by making a conscious choice to check the label of every product you buy at the market.