I am so HAPPY to have read your post about NutraSweet. I have cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic disease (lethal) which severely affects my lungs and my ability to digest foods. Finally, like many CF patients, I developed diabetes. However, I was never told not to eat NutraSweet, so in my angst and depression of being told I had something ELSE wrong with me I loaded up on the products with NutraSweet–Cokes, ice cream, yogurt, etc. I had always loved sweet things and thought the NutraSweet alternative would satisfy my craving for sugar. I became more depressed and had all the leg cramps. I couldn’t seem to remember anything. I considered killing myself by flying to Greece, burning my passport and dying of exposure and lack of CF medicine on the steps of the Parthenon.
(Yeah, I was going crazy.) I probably would have died had I not had a chance encounter with a long-time, insulin-dependent diabetic on a flight from Chicago to the East Coast, where my brother was to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy. She told me she could not have NutraSweet because her body thought it was sugar and screwed her blood sugars up. I was so mad that no doctor had warned me about this. Perhaps had I never taken NutraSweet I would have been able to stay in graduate school. In any case, I had to quit graduate school because I was too ill and could not write my papers (since I couldn’t seem to remember anything) and was hospitalized with pneumonia shortly after arriving in Dallas/Fort Worth. I can’t even imagine what might have happened to me if I had kept imbibing NutraSweet.
I did some research in a local library on NutraSweet, and, although I could not find many articles because the library was not huge, I did find enough disturbing things about NutraSweet that I decided that it should have never been put on the market or AT LEAST there should be more warnings on NutraSweet products. For example, warnings to diabetics, dieters, and parents. I had no idea that each person’s body weight could sustain only so much NutraSweet before it saturated the body and became toxic. Little kids are in particular danger because of their low body weights.
P.S. I work on trying to eliminate environmental tobacco smoke from public accommodations through the Americans with Disabilities Act. Just like NutraSweet CEO’s and the politicians/bureaucrats they paid off, tobacco companies insist that environmental tobacco smoke is not harmful.