You don’t have to look very hard to find an article about how the dairy industry has petitioned the FDA to allow them to add aspartame to flavored milks. Why would they want to do this? How would it benefit them? What are the possible results? Are there side effects? Let’s explore all of these questions and more.
Photo Credit to Myopic Joe on Flickr
Why Artificially Sweeten Milk?
With all of the attention on childhood obesity, parents are trying to find lower calorie options for their children. There are a growing number of people who just do not like the taste of milk. It is not sweet enough. When I was in school, you only had two choices for a beverage at lunch — whole milk or water. When the oldest of my children were in elementary school, they had the choice of whole milk, 2% milk, chocolate milk, or water. Chocolate milk has added sugar. The dairy industry is petitioning the FDA to allow them to add aspartame to flavored milk so that the children will have a low calorie option at lunch and, at some places, breakfast.
Who Benefits from Sweetened Milk?
This is actually the simplest question to answer. The dairy industry has seen their monopoly on the public school system erode. Children now in school can choose sodas during their lunch. Most of the time, when a child chooses soda at school, they choose diet. By adding a lower calorie option, the dairy industry can regain market share that they had lost. This seems to be a purely profit-based decision.
What are the Possible Results and Side Effects?
Aspartame is not calorie free or necessarily lower in calories than sugar. Aspartame is 200 times sweeter than sugar, so you use much less to achieve the same level of sweetness. This is where the reduced calories come into place. Aspartame has 3 ingredients: 2 are amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, and the last is methanol. Methanol is a wood based alcohol, which by itself in small quantities is toxic. The amount of methanol in a single serving of aspartame, while still toxic, is small enough that the body can deal with the poison. The liver breaks the methanol down into formaldehyde and formic acid. Formaldehyde is embalming fluid and is a neurotoxin that has been linked to some forms of cancer and birth defects. Formic acid is what fire ants inject into victims when they bite. Formic acid is also the compound that causes blindness in methanol poisoning.
Over 90% of the independently funded studies have found serious side effects.
Common neurological side effects reported from aspartame use include headaches, migraines, mood alteration, dizziness, visual disturbance, seizures, memory loss, fatigue, tinnitus, depression, anxiety, slurred speech, numbness or pain in the limbs, tremors, severe hyperactivity and restless legs.
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/355002-side-effects-of-aspartame-in-diet-soda/#ixzz2PjILGgS8
The Most Disturbing Part
To me, the most troubling part about this whole deal is that the dairy industry was trying to get approval to have aspartame added to flavored milk and not have it listed on the ingredients list. This has been widely reported in several places including The Washington Time, The Huffington Post, and even NPR. In response to all of the attention aspartame.net posted this on April 5th, 2013; Aspartame and Flavored Milk
There has been widespread misreporting about a petition by the dairy industry to allow the use of low calorie, non-nutritive sweeteners in flavored milk as a way of reducing sugar and calorie content. To correct media reports the National Milk Producers Federation has issued a statement making it clear that If the petition is approved, the added sweeteners would be included in the ingredient list, consistent with existing FDA food labeling requirements.
Here is my problem: Why would they use the word existing in this statement? Does that mean that this organization is trying to have their product exempted from these requirements?
There is much more to learn here, and we have not heard the end of this. Take the time and educate yourself. As a result of writing this article, I have greatly cut down my consumption of diet sodas and will wean myself off completely. What do you take away from this information?
This is such an important topic! It boggles my mind why we feel the need to add yet MORE sweetener to drinks when we are trying to develop healthy eating habits in kids. Milk is naturally sweet….unless you’ve had your tastebuds completely skewed by all the other sweetened foods out there.
Thanks, it was an honor for this to be my first post here. I can tell you this changed my habits. Since writing this I have stopped all sodas. I am really looking forward to serving this community.
Why can’t these companies think more about the health of the people they are marketing to? Our children don’t need that nasty stuff!
When I was in business school, I had one instructor that drilled the following into our brains: “Corporations have no morals, they are neither good nor bad. A company’s culture is determined by the members of the Board of Directors and the Board of Directors are determined by the stockholders. As long as we have stockholders that do not pay attention to the world around them and demand profit above all else, corporations will do bad things just to make a larger profit.”
I know it is sad, but it is true.
It is so scary how we can’t trust labels at all. Fortunately we don’t drink any flavored milks or sodas, but I can just imagine how this is the first step to putting aspartame into all sorts of things without it being labeled.
It is scary. I have just recently found out that in certain items high fructose corn syrup can be listed as sugar. As long as corporations control enough people in government there will be no change that we would appreciate.
Due to dietary needs in my household I have not had cows milk in years. Since I have been drinking soy milk cow’s milk is a treat. Why oh why are we sweetening it? Ice cold milk is delicious and no need for additives.