Member of UK Parliament Calls for Ban on Aspartame

(UK) Daily Express
Thursday December 15th, 2005

RISK in 6,000 food and drink products
CANCER LINKED TO SWEETENER
By Tom Price and Sally Guyoncourt

More than 6,000 food and drink products should be stripped from shop shelves because they contain a sweetener linked to cancer, experts said yesterday.
Leading scientists joined forces with MPs to urge the Government to ban all products which contain aspartame.
The artificial sweetener is found in diet drinks, juices, sweets, chewing gum, cereals, yoghurts and snack foods such as crisps, medicines and vitamin supplements.
The scare follows the alarm which spread across Britain earlier this year when food dye Sudan 1, a potentially cancer-causing chemical, was found in chilli powder.
Lib Dem MP Roger Williams said yesterday: "The Government should withdraw aspartame from supermarket shelves.
"This will have massive economic consequences but I am asking them to withdraw it as they did with Sudan 1."
Rats developed leukaemia and lymphoma after being fed the sweetener by researchers in Italy.


(UK) Daily Express
Page 2, December 15, 2005

EVERYDAY FOODS YOU SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR

By Tom Price

SHOPPERS were advised last night to check the labels on food packaging as they were warned that more than 6,000 everyday products contain an artificial sweetener which may cause cancer.

Liberal Democrat MP Roger Williams said: "My advice to people is that every product with the sweetener aspartame has a label and consumers can make up their own minds."

MP5 were told the Government should ban aspartame and experts warned it should be urgently withdrawn from sale to protect the public. As a special debate was called in the Commons to press for a full-scale ban, Mr Williams warned that aspartame is potentially "far more dangerous" and is found in 10 times more products than controversial food dye Sudan 1, which caused a major health scare earlier this year.

Food safety campaigner Joanna Clarke demanded: "Aspartame should be out of the food chain completely." Erik Millstone, professor of science at the University of was no danger. Sussex, added: "There are now European safety regulations sufficient grounds for banning say the recommended daily aspartame. There are serious intake of aspartame is 40 -problems about its testing and serious problems about how it to was approved

In July doubts about the safety of the sweetener were raised this, by Italian scientists was used in the drink at the They called for "an urgent re- maximum permitted level. examination" of its safety. Concerns have been raised about aspartame in the past sweeteners but an analysis by UK regulators in 2002 concluded there was no danger. European safety regulations say the recommended a daily intake of aspartame is 40 milligrams per kilogram of body weight. An adult would have consume 14 cans of a sugar-free drink every day before reaching this, assuming that the sweetener was used in the drink at the maximum permitted level.

But many drinks use aspartame in combination with other sweeteners so the level is considerably lower. Manufacturers have challenged the validity of the Italian study. They point out that numerous studies have shown aspartame to be safe.

They say the Italian research is flawed and have questioned why it has not been handed over to food safety inspectors.

Manufacturers claim that aspartame is one of the most tested of ingredients and there is no indication of any link to cancer in humans.

They say they are confident that when the Italian research is looked at by third parties the ingredient will be exonerated.

The European Food Safety Authority is not at present recommending any change in consumers’ diets.

A spokeswoman for Britain’s Food Standards Agency said: "The safety of aspartame was last reviewed in Europe in 2002 when the European Commission’s scientific committee on food reviewed the data from 500 reports published in the scientific literature between 1988 and 2001 on the safety of aspartame. "The extensive review concluded that the use of aspartame in food does not present safety concerns."


Daily Express OPINION: PAGE 10

DAILY EXPRESS
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NUMBER 10 LOWER THAMES STREET LONDON EC3R 6EN Tel: 0871 434 1010 (outside UK: +44 (0)870 062 6620)

It’s time we were told the truth about what’s in food

IT IS deeply worrying to learn that aspartame, a sweetener used in more than 6,000 different food and drink products, may be linked to cancer and other health problems, according to a group of scientists and MPs. They are calling for a complete ban on the sweetener, while the food industry itself has responded by claiming that there is nothing to worry about - a claim that would carry considerably more weight had the food industry not been proven wrong so many times before. Indeed, such is the confusion and concern about aspartame and the thousands of foods it is used in that it is not too much to ask: just what, exactly, is safe to eat in Britain today? Over the past few decades we have had so many food alerts and been exposed to so much that has turned out to be dangerous that it is almost impossible to know who or what to trust. Nor has the food industry itself been exactly forthcoming with information, either in this case or in the past.

It is absolutely imperative that greater transparency be introduced into the market so that consumers can make more informed choices, especially where labelling is concerned. And it is time to cut down on the enormous number of dubious chemicals to be found in food today.


What to do?
Please move this on.
Send your experiences of aspartame and other artifical sweetners e.g. SPLENDA and their health effects to:
UK National Newspapers
Your own Regional Papers
Your MP and MOST INPORTANT - Addivities Survivors Network (ASNUK) to register your health effects with the Food Standards Agency (UK) see list below:

ASNUK:  gc@brewer.wannadoo.co.uk

Daily Express Journalist:  tom.price@express.cp.uk

Guardian:  politics.editor@guardianunlimited.co.ik

UK Public Health Minister, Caroline Flint MP:  flintc@parliament.uk
Alphabetical List of Constituencies and Members of Parliament is available at:  http://www.parliament.uk/directories/hciolists/alcm.cfm

Websites with more information on aspartame:
www.whno.org
www.dorway.com
www.soundandfurypructions.com
www.namastepublishing.co.uk
www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/index.htm
www.sunsentpress.com

To keep up up todate the new on the banning of aspartame around the world, subscribe to the aspartame information list on www.wnho.net front page banner.