oh sh@t i love the stuff.. please write "he was a nice man at heart" on my head stone..

I haven't heard until now Geez that sucks ! very scary

I've heard about it for years and most of the media ignored it. aspartame is dangerous! Way back before it was approved in 1981, it had already been proved to cause brain tumors in lab animals, and not at super high dosages, either. of al the food complaints that the FDA gets, 70% are from aspartame alone! And what's even scarier is how it changes and it's byproducts, including formaldehyde which accumulates in the DNA of cells. And to make things worse, they put this soda in aluminum! Talk about toxic soup! Something else real scary is that it can impair the vision of pilots to where they can't see their instruments. Several pilots have had their licenses pulled because they had aspartame impaired vision, convulsions or confusion. Some of these have been reported since the late 80s. In 1988 the Aspartame COnsumer Safety Network installed a private hot line to receiver inquiries from pilots who were in jeopardy of losing their licenses. They have gotten hundreds of calls, including one pilot who had had 2 cups of Nutrasweetened cocoa and couldn't see his instruments and nearly crashed into another plane. And this just touches the surface. I won't touch the stuff.

is it ironic that a diet pepsi max ( my fav :) ad appeared beside this question? you know they make a diet coke with splenda abbey

you mean that aspertame poisoning is rumored to be misdiagnosed as MS? Yup, read all about it. Trying to find a great site for you. ************ Ok, now you have to sift through the 'tin foil hat' stuff, but there is some good info in here. http://www.aspartame.com/ http://www.aspartame.ca/page_a13.html

Have any of you ever read the actual scientific studies to see how these conclusions were reached? The media have made a lot of horror stories out of this, and it boils down to this: early studies were done with lab rats, which were forced to ingest amounts of aspartame which, if it were to be consumed by a human, would be literally impossible to purposely ingest. That alone makes the data completely idiotic to attempt to generalize as applicable to human consumption and biology. The FDA is required to report ANY side effect ANY ONE ever claims to have experienced. Without clinical standardized settings regulating environment, consumption, and biological and neurological differences in the individuals consuming the aspartame - there are too many variables to effectively generalize a list of FDA side effects to everyone in the population. Keep that in consideration whenever you hear side effects reported for food or for medicine - the same mandatory reporting applies regardless.

Would you rather be scared or stop drinking them?