Neotame, the new neurotoxic sweetener

Good old Monsanto! What chemical they were cooking in their lab again  to be approved as food!? Neotame! More toxic than aspartame! Since some of us already know how toxic aspartame is, or maybe they thought that it's not toxic enough, they felt the urge to come up with something lovely again. And guess what! By the time we learnt how to read food labeling, FDA won't require Neotame to be labeled. Not even in organic and kosher food. After all, why would you bother with this when FDA is always there for you to keep you safe?! 

The article below is written by Heidi Stevenson

Aspartame can step aside. There's a new sweetener in town and it isn't saddled with the inconvenience of having to be listed on labels, so it can be sneaked into any prepared food, even USDA so-called Organic. So sayeth the FDA. Neotame is a Monsanto-created chemical similar to Aspartame, including its neurotoxic properties.

Monsanto developed Neotame as their Aspartame patent was expiring, and had no trouble in gaining FDA approval in 2002. They added 3-dimethylbutyl, a chemical listed as hazardous by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to Aspartame, making it both sweeter and more toxic.

Both Aspartame and Neotame contain substances that are metabolized into formaldehyde, a highly toxic poison, and an excitotoxic amino acid that agitates, thereby damaging, nerves.

Up to this time, Neotame hasn't been sold to the public, but that hasn't been necessary. It's been used widely in prepared foods. So, the less awareness the public has, the less likely it is that people will try to avoid it. For the most part, the technique has worked. Now, very quietly, the FDA has decided that the public shouldn't be informed when Neotame is included in any product. Even Organic products, which are supposed to be unadultered with chemicals, are not required to state when Neotame is inside.

India will soon serve as guinea pigs for Neotame. It will soon be launched there as a tabletop sweetener, like Equal and Splendor, by NutraSweet, which owns and sells the product.

Neotame is now being marketed as Sweetos for use in cattle feed. Molasses has been utlized to get cows to eat foods made unpalatable by chemical additives. Neotame is both less costly than molasses and subject to fewer regulations. How do you like that? A natural food is more stringently regulated than a known-poisonous chemical that's put into food.

The reach of Neotame is likely to be extensive. They're planning to replace other artificial sweeteners with it. A major seller of artificial sweeteners, which goes by the misleading name of Ensigns Health Care Pvt Ltd, intends to use it in place of sucralose.

In the EU, Neotame has been approved by the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA). As is so common in the EU, the product is hidden behind an E-number. So, labels don't have to say that products contain Neotame. They only need to list "E 961". Naturally, with hundreds of E-numbers, how many people can be aware of which ones are truly dangerous?

You can read the original article here.

You can watch the film about the aspartame story here "Sweet Misery - A Poisoned World"