Once Upon a Time In America: An Aspartame Primer

By Scott on August 20, 2009

In 1965 a previously unknown chemical compound was haphazardly discovered in a pharmaceutical company’s laboratory. A subsequent discovery was made that the chemical, while not living up to the purpose for which it was intended, had an unintended effectiveness as a food-sweetening additive.

Meanwhile, in the consumer marketplace, a diet revolution was taking place. In this revolt, any food substance deemed to have some responsibility for undesired weight gains was targeted for elimination. Due to its high calorie content, common processed sugar was made a primary target in the effort to help people lose weight, as a growing media blitz claimed that carrying a few too many pounds posed an unacceptable health risk.

In the effort to make food and drinks sweet without the use of sugar, artificial sweeteners began to appear on the market. Now called Aspartame, the maker of the chemical compound in question applied to the Food and Drug Administration for approval to begin producing it as a sweetener in food products and soft drinks.

Due to its artificially produced chemical origin, tests were necessary to determine whether the substance was safe for human consumption. Its producer claimed it was safe, and if it truly was, that would go a long way toward explaining why they had recommended it for approval to be marketed in the first place.

Legitimate research by skilled and specialized medical scientists cast grave doubt on the company’s claims of the safety of Aspartame. The product was proven to be composed of dangerous toxins that should clearly never be added to any consumer food product or made available for public consumption by any means whatever.

Based on this legitimate research, the FDA (a federal watchdog agency entrusted with the important task of protecting American citizens from harmful products and the charlatans who would peddle them) ruled that since the health risks of using Aspartame were greater than any advantages it presented, approval for its production and sale was to be denied. And so they turned it down.

End of story, right?

Wrong.

If the story had ended there, the system could now be honestly said to have functioned as the original framers of that system intended: a company sought federal approval for a new product, it was proven to be hazardous, and so its developers were sent back to the drawing board. The story as it reads thus far is a happy one, and one in which everything is as it should be. But it is only part of the story. Unfortunately, times were changing.

“Political Science”

In 1980 a new kind of government took power in America. A hallmark of this new kind of government was that it sought to polarize and politicize almost every single aspect of government, so that the hard work of actual governing was given a back seat to the politically-charged frenzy of selling the public one bill of goods or another. Business and money was crowned King.

The economics of private business took precedence over everything, and government regulation of any kind was considered an intolerable evil. Money was deemed sacred, economic growth was hailed as crucial to the preservation of the State, the unobstructed acquisition of wealth was valued as the most noble of all pursuits, and hucksters in businesses of all kinds began to rapidly proliferate and amass power in the US business/political system. Government of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation had taken root and blossomed almost overnight, and anyone who advocated a well-reasoned, cautious approach to issues involving public health or environmental preservation was dismissed as a crackpot, an enemy of business, and a mindless class warrior. Democracy was being left in the dust as unchecked Capitalism ran amok.

Even something as unrelated to politics as science became politicized. If any corporate economic interests were slowed down or halted by governmentally instituted public health standards, those economic interests simply consulted their own politically influenced, bought-and-paid-for scientific community, which, of course, always supported their pre-decided conclusions. That new scientific method incorporated a novel concept: since their desired correct answer was the starting point, questions were no longer relevant and science was merely spin. By unleashing that approach along with teams of Big Money lawyers, lobbyists and elected officials, there weren’t many tall legal hurdles corporations couldn’t leap in a single bound.

In the midst of this governmental paradigm shift, the case of Aspartame was reconsidered by the FDA (after it had undergone a strategic politically motivated staff restructuring) and their previous disapproval of it was overturned. It began to be mass produced and included in hundreds of products carrying the distinction “Sugar Free.”

Medical Doctors vs Spin Doctors

The next chapter of the Aspartame story is where it takes its notorious dark turn down a dead-end street, as the scientific data stops being based on experimental scientific evidence. Due to its being made easily available, this is where the record begins to consist of increasingly grim documented medical dilemmas experienced by real people. Political scientific spin becomes medical spin.

By merely taking a quick glance into the historical records (which can be found on this site and its provided links in great amount) that detail the development and eventual mass production of Aspartame, it seems that one could hardly fail to notice the prime motivation of its advocates: mountains of money. For its opponents, the motivation is to help people make a consumer choice based on freely flowing information that is not nuanced to advance the purposes of corporate or political interests. No one is getting rich by being an opponent of Aspartame.

Ask yourself: if mere pennies were at stake rather than billions of dollars, would anyone advocate the use of a product that was clearly proven to be composed of toxic chemicals? Why would a federal agency whose appointed task is to disallow the sale of harmful foods and medicines do exactly the opposite? Between opposing sides of a health issue, whose scientific conclusions are more reliable: those who stand to make or lose billions of dollars based on the outcome, or those who have no financial stake either way? In any given dispute, why is it that political influence is nearly always brought to bear against the side that doesn’t have money to burn?

We are all free to live where we want, vote for who we want and eat what we want. And regardless of how you answer these questions, you are completely free to choose to use products containing Aspartame (if you choose not to, look for Phenylalanine in product ingredients; oddly enough, companies are not required to list Aspartame on labels).

As it stands, if you should exercise your freedom of choice by making the wrong one, be warned:

This is one free choice that could cost you dearly.

This article © Copyright DORway.com. For reprints, please inqure with the webmaster.  Scott is a freelance writer who has written extensively on socio-political, ecological and public health issues. He is currently directing his efforts toward raising public awareness of the dangers inherent in using the chemically engineered food sweetener aspartame. Visit Scott's Web site

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