What's really in these super popular drink?

The Nutrition of Diet Soda It seems all it takes to sell a product today is a few simple words. Diet, low calorie, low fat, low sugar etc.

Many people don't know about the nutrition of diet soda. They think diet soda is "good for you" because it doesn't contain any calories, fat or sugar. The problem is that diet soda doesn't contain any nutrition at all. Most of the ingredients in diet sodas are synthetic chemicals. Some diet soda chemicals are believed to cause cancer. Here are five ingredients found in the nutrition of diet soda.

1. Aspartame - Aspartame is an artificial sweetener found in most diet sodas. Aspartame is suspected to cause cancer and it has also been linked to Alzheimer's disease. Some have the PKU gene and they cannot process phenylalanine (an amino acid found in Aspartame). If people with the PKU gene consume phenylalanine, they will suffer neurological damage and possibly death. Phenylalanine is an essential amino acid found in many dairy products. In its natural form, phenylalanine combines with other amino acids. In isolation, phenylalanine could have adverse health effects.

2. Phosphoric Acid - Phosphoric acid is an ingredient in diet soda (and in many regular sodas) which produces a tangy flavor. Phosphoric acid can deplete the body of the calcium it needs to promote strong bones and healthy teeth. Chronic consumption of the phosphoric acid found in diet soda can be particularly detrimental for people under 30, because their bones have not reached maturity. Excess amounts of phosphoric acid have also been linked to kidney disease and the formation of kidney stones.  

3. Caffeine - Caffeine is not bad, as far as nutrition goes. The problem with the caffeine found in diet soda is that it is artificial, whereas in coffee and tea, the caffeine is naturally occurring. Synthetic caffeine is metabolized differently in your body than it would be if it were combined with the nutrients of coffee or tea, creating a synergistic effect. Additionally, many people consume diet soda to satisfy their thirst; this is actually counterproductive. Caffeine is a diuretic and it can dehydrate you when consumed in large quantities. Many people who consume diet soda drink it continuously throughout the day. One 12 ounce can of diet soda can contain anywhere from 50 to 80mg of caffeine.

4. Acesulfame Potassium - Acesulfame potassium is another artificial sweetener used instead of aspartame. Individuals who consume acesulfame potassium often believe they're being healthier because they're not consuming phenylalanine (the amino acid found in aspartame). The reality is that the long term health effects of artificial sweeteners are unknown. Studies have shown that acesulfame potassium can cause tumors and brain damage even when not consumed excessively. Acesulfame potassium can also cause hypoglycemia.

5. Potassium Benzoate - The nutrition of diet soda contains the ingredient potassium benzoate. Potassium benzoate is a preservative added to diet soda to protect the flavor while it sits on the shelves. Potassium benzoate can form the known carcinogen benzene when combined with vitamin C and sodium. Many diet sodas are fortified with vitamin C and almost all contain sodium.

The general consensus is that the nutrition in diet soda is not any better (and is probably worse) than the nutrition found in regular soda.

When I was young, an old trick was to use Coke to clean the battery terminals on our cars. Works like a champ. You can also use it to clean hard water stains in toilet bowls. Can't help but wonder what it does to our internal body.

Aspartame is not the only thing in diet cola that can kill you     

Turns out, it's not just the fake sweetener in Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke that might cause cancer; it's also the coloring agent. The liner in the cans these beverages come in aren't so healthy, either.

Modern-day commercial colas (both diet and regular) get their characteristic dark hue from something manufacturers call caramel color. Recently the Center for Science in the Public Interest formally petitioned the FDA to ban the chemicals that fall under that ambiguous label, on the grounds that they've been shown to be carcinogenic.

Wait - the FDA is allowing a cancer-causing substance to be used widely by the food industry and consumed by millions of people daily, without warning? Evidently so.
To illustrate the difficulty our regulatory institutions face in trying to protect the public health against intense industry pressure to do nothing, I can think of no finer example than a simple can of diet cola.

Again, the sweetener in most commercial diet sodas is aspartame, a substance that won FDA approval under questionable circumstances and continues to be questioned by studies that find it carcinogenic.

Moreover, the container soda typically comes in is itself deeply problematic. Nearly all cans used by the U.S. beverage industry contain bisphenol A, commonly known as BPA. Here's how Scientific America describes it: In recent years dozens of scientists around the globe have linked BPA to myriad health effects in rodents: mammary and prostate cancer, genital defects in males, early onset of puberty in females, obesity, and even behavior problems such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

The Canadian government declared BPA toxic. A peer-reviewed study financed by health-care giant Kaiser Permanante found that BPA is associated with decreased sexual desire among men, more difficulty having an erection, lower ejaculation strength and lower level of overall satisfaction with sex life.

What's the FDA doing to get it out of our cans? Not much of anything. BPA is pretty scary, but it's so widely used, and used in so many forms, nobody seems to have the foggiest idea of how to remove it from the food supply. So apparently they won't try. It's been around for decades. Your tax dollars at work.

So Diet Coke and its brethren get their flavor from a questionable sweetener and are packaged in a nasty container. And now the Center for Science in the Public Interest is telling us that its color, too, can kill us. How bad is it? When you think of caramel, you probably imagine cooking sugar until it turns brown. But that's not quite what soda manufacturers do to blacken carbonated water for cola. According to CSPI, here's what they do:

Caramel Color IV (synonyms: ammonia sulfite process caramel, sulfite ammonia caramel, sulfite ammonia process caramel, acid-proof caramel, beverage caramel, and soft-drink caramel) is prepared by the controlled heat treatment of carbohydrates with ammonium-containing and sulfite-containing compounds.

So, they take carbohydrates and cook them up with ammonia-based chemicals. In addition to dark color, the process also yields a carcinogenic chemical called 4-methylimidazole, or (4-MI) for short.
CSPI points to studies on both rats and mice fed 4-MI showing significant carcinogenic effects.

Evidence of 4-MI's cancer-causing power is so strong, CSPI points out, that just last month the state of California added the substance to its list of chemicals known to the state to cause cancer. California has determined that [4-MI] levels above16 micrograms per day pose a significant risk, CSPI reports. How much is in a can of cola? According to CSPI 130 micrograms eight times higher than Californias danger threshold. Drink two cans per day, and you're ingesting 16 times the level deemed dangerous by California.

Aspartame in these apparently addictive soda's can be found in well over 6000 products

In January of 2011, Woodrow C. Monte, Professor Emeritus of Nutrition at Arizona State University, saw a memo that had been kept secret for 30 years. The memo proves that the FDA knew in 1978 that lab tests showed birth defects and developmental brain damage caused by aspartame.
And how is this poison still allowed?

Aspartame is a poison, and it is hidden in well over 6,000  processed foods and soft drinks under the brand names Nutra-Sweet among many others. If aspartame were a natural substance, it would likely be banned in the U.S. by the FDA. Some experts say aspartame receives 75% of the complaints to the FDA about food additives.

The birth defects and brain damage is not even the tip of the ice berg shown in more recent studies.  Aspartame is the perfect example of how money and politics control our food supply. It has absolutely nothing to do with health. 

The Shocking Story of How Aspartame Became Legal

The story of Aspartame is the perfect example of how money and politics almost totally control the health of the nation and our health is secondary in their decision making process. Hard to believe?

Did you know that Aspartame was banned by the FDA twice? How is this product legal now?

The bittersweet argument over whether Aspartame is safe has been going on for a long time. On one side we have medical evidence that suggests we should avoid using it and on the other side we lean on the FDAs approval that suggests it is safe. Since generally that seems to be the factor that many continue to hold trust based upon, I thought we could look into the Aspartame story to find out how it came to be accepted as safe by the FDA. You would think that something so widely used and so well accepted would have quite the pristine story leading to its acceptance. I imagine one will discover otherwise after reading this.

It all starts in the mid 1960's with a company called G.D. Searle. One of their chemists accidentally creates aspartame while trying to create a cure for stomach ulcers. Searle decides to put aspartame through a testing process which eventually leads to its approval by the FDA. Not long after, serious health effects begin to arise and G.D. Searle comes under fire for their testing practices. It is revealed that the testing process of Aspartame was among the worst the investigators had ever seen and that in fact the product was unsafe for use. Aspartame triggers the first criminal investigation of a manufacturer put into place by the FDA in 1977. By 1980 the FDA bans aspartame from use after having 3 independent scientists study the sweetener. It was determined that one of the main health effects was that it had a high chance of inducing brain tumors. At this point it was clear that aspartame was not fit to be used in foods and banned is where it stayed, but not for long.

Early in 1981 Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (who is a former Secretary of Defense - surprise surprise) vowed to call in his markers, to get it approved. January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagans inauguration, Searle took the steps to re-apply aspartame's approval for use by the FDA. Ronald Reagans new FDA commissioner Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry's decision. It did not take long for the panel to decide 3-2 in favor of maintaining the ban of aspartame. Hull then decided to appoint a 6th member to the board, which created a tie in the voting, 3-3. Hull then decided to personally break the tie and approve aspartame for use. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller. Burstone-Marstella is the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame.

It is clear to this point that if anything, the safety of aspartame is incredibly shaky.  It has already been through a process of being banned and without the illegitimate un-banning of the product, it would not be being used today. Makes you wonder how much corruption and money was involved with names like Rumsfeld and Hull involved so heavily. In 1985, Monsanto decides to purchase the aspartame patent from G.D. Searle. Remember that Arthur Hull now had the connection to Monsanto. Monsanto did not seem too concerned with the past challenges and ugly image aspartame had based on its past. I personally find this comical as Monsanto's products are banned in many countries and of all companies to buy the product they seem to fit best as they are champions of producing incredibly unsafe and untested products and making sure they stay in the market place.

Since then, aspartame has been under a lot of attack by scientists, doctors, chemists and consumers about its safety and neurotoxic properties. Piles of comprehensive studies have been completed that show aspartame is a cause for over 90 serious health problems such as cancer, leukemia, headaches, seizures, fibromyalgia, and epilepsy just to name a few.

Most recent findings on the dangers of Aspartame   Article

Aspartame Linked to Leukemia & Lymphoma in Groundbreaking Study

Each year, Americans consume about 5,250 tons of aspartame in total. 86 percent of this aspartame (4,500 tons) is from the consumption of diet sodas. Diet soda is the largest dietary source of aspartame in the U.S. A study recently published at the beginning of December 2012 links the consumption of Aspartame to increased risk of Lymphoma and Leukemia. The study was conducted by the Channing Division of Network Medicine, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA and Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA. The study was a follow up after a 22 year period of data collection including frequent dietary and health checkups of the study group.

We have covered the subject of aspartame on several occasions that included findings that show how aspartame damages the brain. This new study suggests that as little as a single 355ml can of diet soda daily greatly increases the risk for cancers in men and women. It can also increase the risk of multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in men. The results of this study forces us to really look at the effects of aspartame as there has never been a more comprehensive, long term study ever done on the topic. It is important to note that this can also reveal many more serious diseases and illnesses as data is observed even further. How many more years will the FDA allow this product to be consumed by millions of dumbed down Americans? I'm guessing at least another decade or so. It's all about money and armies of lawyers and the giant food suppliers have plenty of both.