’)Why Chewing Any Gum May Kill You!
By: Ampleforth
I awkwardly fumbled throughout the various packages of gum like a relapsed junky searching his terminally ill grandmother’s medicine cabinet. I began to notice the counter lady shooting me stares of bewilderment, probably assuming I was another obsessive lunatic. What sparked this abnormal behavior was a thought from the past that glided into my consciousness when I saw the word aspartame printed onto an attractive package of Trident gum. I had this vague recollection of someone informing me that aspartame could pose a health risk for the general public. I must have stored this memory deep into the abyss of my cerebral cortex long ago because I had given it no reflection until this moment.
Now, for some unknown reason I was searching every damn package of gum to find just one without the artificial sweetener. Out of the twenty or so I inspected not a single brand was aspartame free. With a cheerless look of defeat pressed onto my face I handed the lady a pack of 35 cent Juicy Fruit. Later that night I decided it was time to do a little independent investigating into what exactly this artificial sweetener was. What I discovered shocked me!
The story goes that in 1965 a chemist by the name James M. Schlatter, discovered the sweetener by mistake while trying to produce an anti-ulcer drug. At the time Mr. Schlatter was employed by the pharmaceutical company G.D Searle who received the patent to produce aspartame. Searle believed they could generate large revenues from Schlatter’s mistake and began the process of getting FDA approval for human consumption.
Sometime around 1969 Dr. Harry Waisman was approached by Searle to study the effects of the sweetener on monkeys. Waisman agreed and began his research on seven infant primates which were fed the chemical via milk. Out of the seven, one died and five others experienced grand mal seizures. To make matters worse for the company, two years later Dr. John Olney, a professor of neuropathology and psychiatry at Washington University concluded that aspartame caused brain tumors in rats. Even with these disturbing discoveries Searle continued to push ahead and submitted for FDA approval, ignoring these two findings.
Eventually after long investigations from private and governmental inquiries accusing Searle of misrepresenting and falsifying facts, they got aspartame approved. Hiring Washington insider Donald Rumsfeld as their CEO also helped the company bull doze through any barriers. Despite the approval many advocates stood firm, launching lawsuits and disseminating helpful information. For example during the 1980’s an Arizona State University food scientist named Dr. Woodrow Monte created a stir by concluding that Aspartame could produce severe eye damage. Mr. Monte eventually came under fire after placing put options that would have made him money if G.D Searle stock fell. In spite of all this quantitative and qualitative data that is available, humans within this country still consume aspartame like mindless fools.
It seems that each day our food is becoming increasingly filled with deadly chemicals while we sit by and do nothing. Don’t depend on a government that is consumed by a multi-trillion dollar debt to save you from such dangers as aspartame. Economically speaking you’re probably better off dead to them if you croak sometime shortly after retirement. If you want to live a long and prosperous life it is your personal responsibility to put in the research hours. After saying this it should be no surprise to all my readers that a major player in the sweetener market has successfully changed the name of aspartame to AminoSweet in order to swindle consumers. Unfortunately we can’t always save the world but there’s always time to save yourself.