Aspartame ban in New Mexico? Maybe...

Update: 11/28/05

New Mexico activists hope to achieve an unprecedented ban on aspartame

New Mexico may become the first state in the nation to enact an official statewide ban on the artificial sweetener aspartame, if a group of determined activists has its way. Activists there are fighting hard to ban the sale of any and all products containing the chemical sweetener, and they achieved a major victory in October when the state's Environmental Improvement Board agreed to hold hearings on a possible aspartame ban in July of 2006.

Efforts to ban aspartame in New Mexico have been spearheaded by concerned citizen Stephen Fox, who enlisted the help of numerous medical and legal experts to help him with the battle. After years of unsuccessfully trying to establish a state Nutrition Council in New Mexico – free of Food and Drug Administration limitations – to tackle issues like the dangers of artificial sweeteners, Fox has found a different path that could allow him to bring harmful food additives to the attention of the state government. That path involves using an existing state statute that prohibits the use of poisonous or deleterious food additives.

Specifically, the statute states, "A food shall be deemed to be adulterated, (1) if it contains any poisonous or deleterious substance which may render it injurious; (2) if it contains any added poisonous or added deleterious substance which is unsafe, and (3) if it consists in whole or in part of…decomposed substance, or if it is otherwise unfit." Although the statute has never been used to ban the sale of a particular food item or additive in the state, Fox and his supporters hope to convince the Environmental Improvement Board – the regulatory body with statutory control over food quality in the state – that aspartame fits the bill of a dangerous ingredient....

The byproducts of aspartame – aspartic acid and phenylalanine – are brain toxins held together by methyl alcohol, which turns into formaldehyde in the liver and can cause serious neurodegenerative damage. Reports also show that aspartame beaks down into formaldehyde at high temperatures, and many of Fox's supporters note in their letters to the board an instance in the Gulf War in which diet sodas sent to the troops were left in the sun for some time, turning them into what one physician called in her letter "formaldehyde cocktails." ...............

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Update 10/8/05 New sites exposing Splenda and other AS's:

http://www.artificial-sweeteners.org
http://www.splendaexposed.com
http://www.truthaboutsplenda.com