ASPARTAME: IS DIET COKE AND ZERO COKE REALLY SAFE?

Coca-Cola has conceded that it is “under a bit of pressure” from US consumers over its use of artificial sweetener, aspartame, in  Diet Coke, Coke Zero and other low- and no-calorie products.

SOURCE

Mark Astley, Beverage daily.com

Aspartame is made up of three chemicals: aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and methanol. The book, Prescription for Nutritional Healing, by James and Phyllis Balch lists aspartame under the category of "chemical poison."

Aspartame is the technical name for the brand names NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and Equal-Measure. Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the FDA in the United States. Many of these reactions are very serious, including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame includes:

Headaches/ migraines	Dizziness	Seizures	Nausea	Numbness
Muscle spasms	Weight gain	Rashes	Depression	Fatigue
Irritability	Tachycardia	Insomnia	Vision problems	Hearing loss
Heart palpitations	Breathing difficulties	Anxiety attacks	Slurred speech	Loss of taste
Tinnitus	Vertigo	Memory loss	Joint pain

SOURCE:

Dr. Joeseph Mercola

Please where is our NAFDAC? Where is Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON)? 

COCA COLA WITH IT'S OWN DECEIT

Coca-Cola Co. has launched a new ad campaign to assure consumers that its no- or low-calorie beverages containing the artificial sweetener aspartame are a safe alternative. (This advert was launched in the US earlier this year but I believe most of us Nigerians never even knew about it)

Coca cola says “There are no studies showing the use of diet drinks for foods lowers ones weight. In fact, calorie counting as a weight loss strategy has been firmly debunked by research. Coca-Cola believes a calorie is just a calorie, and if you consume more than you burn - that's why you become obese. In other words, their products and marketing to children are not to blame - the problem is that Americans just don't exercise enough. It is far more important to look at the source of the calories than counting them. You get fat because you eat the wrong kind of calories, and artificial sweeteners cannot fool your body.”

But Dr. Mercola (an alternative medicine proponent and osteopathic physician) says

“Despite being promoted for weight loss, foods and beverages with artificial sweeteners have never been proven to help weight loss. In fact studies that look at this actually find artificial sweeteners promote weight gain

Research has also demonstrated that aspartame worsens insulin sensitivity to a greater degree than sugar, which is quite the blow for diabetics who obediently follow the recommendation to switch to diet sodas to manage their condition

Aspartame has also been found to cause cancer, such as leukemia, lymphoma, and other tumors, in laboratory animals.”

100% PURE FRUIT JUICE?: CHIVITA stop the deceit!

I don't know why companies in Nigeria are allowed to get away with this kind of deceitful advertising. I have been to CHIVITA factory in Ajao Estate in Lagos and i saw them bring in big bags of white sugar (obviously for mixing with their concentrate). My 4 year old son was a lover of CHIVITA orange juice and he developed a running nose. We actually were giving him more of the juice because we thought it will have natural vitamin C(which deals with cold and running nose). I went the natural way and  started to juice oranges(4 a day) for him.That's when the running nose stopped and he has not had it again. We stopped giving him any form of packet juice because we discovered that they all had processed sugar mixed with them and of course processed sugar suppresses the immune system. See the damage we do to our kids?

THE TRUTH ABOUT PACKET (ORANGE)JUICE 

Rev. George Malkmus in his book "Why Christians get sick" has this to say.

"To make orange juice into concentrates, they first squeeze the juice from the orange. They then remove the moisture from the juice by boiling it away or spray drying. both methods use high heat to remove this moisture. It is after this you have orange juice concentrate.Here is the problem. When the orange juice was subjected to the high temperatures(through boiling), it lost 100% of it's enzymes, over 80% of the vitamins and 100% of the organic minerals that were in the fresh juice. In order words, the processing destroyed almost the entire nutritional value of the original freshly squeezed juice."

When companies like CHIVITA buys the concentrates, they reconstitute it by adding water to replace the liquid that had been previously removed. This water added is really inferior to the liquid removed originally.

Now tell me somebody, at this point, do we still have 100% pure, 100% orange juice as claimed by CHIVITA?

Dr.Joseph M. Mercola (an alternative medicine proponent and osteopathic physician) says

"When the juice is stripped of moisture and oxygen it is also stripped of flavor providing chemicals. Juice companies therefore hire flavor and fragrance companies, the same ones that formulate perfumes for Dior and Calvin Klein, to engineer flavor packs to add back to the juice to make it taste fresh. Flavor packs aren’t listed as an ingredient on the label because technically they are derived from orange essence and oil. Yet those in the industry will tell you that the flavor packs, whether made for reconstituted or pasteurized orange juice, resemble nothing found in nature."