Thank you for your enlightening information regarding Aspartame. I would like to share my personal experience with you.
When the product hit the market in the early 1980’s, I was a teenager. Because I was always watching my weight, I drank lots of diet soft drinks. At the time, as you will recall, Aspartame was added to soft drinks without any other type of sugar additive available. Since NutraSweet was touted as safe, I, along with everyone else, continued to drink diet soft drinks.
Approximately two months after the switch over, I started to have mild seizures. At the time, I was not sure what was happening and continued to drink diet soft drinks unknowingly. As the seizures continued, I went to a physician to find out why this was happening to me. They tested me and concluded that I must have had a mild form of epilepsy; although nothing conclusive ever showed up to indicate epilepsy. I was prescribed an anti-seizure medicine, Dilantin, at the age of 18. After being on the drug for perhaps six months, my father had heard a TV news report (back in the 80’s) that some people were having a reaction to the sweetener. At that time, I went off of anything containing NutraSweet, as well as my Dilantin, and within six months was completely normal again.
I am now 32 years old and will not touch NutraSweet in any form. My children are not allowed to drink diet soft drinks or have anything that contains NutraSweet. I feel that Aspartame is a dangerous food additive and should be taken off the market. What makes me angrier still is that no choice was ever given to the consumers regarding what type of sweetener they wanted.
Saccharin had been on the market for years and I had had no problems at all with it. The lab mice that were injected with the Saccharin were injected with doses so large no human could ever consume the quantity given to these animals. I’m angry because I was not given a choice. I would have rather continued to been able to purchase products containing Saccharin, instead of going through what I want through with the NutraSweet products.
Please continue your good work! Hopefully, through your work, we will be able to see NutraSweet come off of the market! Thanks again.