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Soft drinks and artificial chemical sweeteners severely compromise human health: An interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola
MIKE: We've seen a lot of headlines recently about soft drinks and the correlation between soft drinks and diabetes. I know you talk about this quite a bit. What do you think people need to know about soft drinks?
DR. MERCOLA Well they should never drink them. It's as simple as that. It's one of the easiest things to stop. It really is simple. I mean, I've been treating people for over two decades, and primarily with nutritional recommendations, and there's a lot of hard things that people have to do to get healthy, but stopping soft drinks (see related ebook on soft drinks) is one of the easiest things they can do. Up until recently I wasn't sure which was worse -- the diet ones or the regular ones. But now I'm convinced it's the diet soda, especially NutraSweet. That stuff really is a poison; it causes brain tumors, seizures, migraines, headaches, depression ... I mean this is a dangerous, dangerous substance and we have a video called ?weet Misery·which details [this]. You know, I've read a lot of books about it but it's somewhat of a challenge to get all the details from a book when you can just pop in a DVD, like a movie, and in an hour and half you can get all the science behind it and understand it really clearly. But it really has devastated a lot of people's lives. And now Splenda is coming out to replace it because the patent is up on NutraSweet, so that's got its own set of issues. But you know, the regular traditional sodas are full of sugar, but the sugar comes from corn syrup, high fructose corn syrups. That's been studied really carefully and a lot of the researchers and the experts believe it's one of the main reasons for the obesity epidemic, because it's worse than regular sugar and it causes major challenges with insulin and contributes to pretty significant weight gain in most people.
MIKE: Carrying on with your mention of aspartame and Sucralose here, many people still believe that the FDA protects their health, watches out for them and makes sure these dangerous additives end up in the food supply. What's going on here? Why are these dangerous ingredients still legal to use?
DR. MERCOLA Well, it's going to be challenging to answer that briefly, and for further specific information I would encourage viewers to get a view of that ?weet Misery·video, because it really goes into great detail. But the makers GD Searle were fond of claiming that it was the most studied ingredient ever. But the problem is that it really is a drug. Even though it was placed on the GRAS list (which is "Generally Recognized As Safe" food additive), it really isn't a food additive, this thing is a drug. And the studies that were done -- it get backs to the industry doing the studies. I mean, all these studies that they claim were done were 100% funded by the company that was making the product. And then when they did hire independent investigators and researchers to review this, they found it was some of the most seriously flawed data ever written. I mean, they had such ridiculous things as the scientists were just plucking out the brain tumors and throwing them away and not counting them, or classifying a lymphosarcoma as a lymph node swelling and not even recognizing it as a cancer. And then when the FDA got hold of them they just were forced to do it, they actually made a new law that got passed by Congress that they could never do this kind of research. Unfortunately somebody forgot to grandfather it in, and they didn't exclude the previous research that they'd done, so they had a special FDA panel meet... And if you look at the history, it's just insane. I mean, the majority of the people in the panel -- because it took them 10 years to get this thing approved -- but finally the FDA commissioner decided to get rid of three of the panel members (this is a five member panel), the three that were in favor of continuing to not allow it to go into supply were replaced with three others chosen by the FDA commissioner. The FDA commissioner quits three months later and is hired by the company GD Searle with a $350,000 a year job!
MIKE: The old revolving door again, right.
DR. MERCOLA Yeah, it's just amazing how the money greases the wheel and they were able to introduce a multi-billion dollar product and generate revenues from it at a cost to society and people's health that is just profound.
MIKE: All the conditions, then, caused by aspartame, these food additives then, are of course treated with more prescription drugs. So when you get blindness, and neurological disorders, migraine headaches, that kind of thing, they just get more drugs for it!
DR. MERCOLA Yeah, they do, I don't think there's some kind of conspiracy, I think that's just an unrelated good benefit from GD Searle because they sell some of these drugs too. I don't think there's a conspiracy to increase the number of diseases so they could benefit from it. I mean I doubt it, I haven't seen the evidence to support it.
MIKE: Yeah, I agree, I say, look it's just greed, from their point of view --
DR. MERCOLA Right, it's greed, it's pure, unmitigated greed.
You've been reading part three of a six-part interview with Dr. Joseph Mercola, author of ?he Total Health Program" and the Mercola e-newsletter, one of the world's most widely-read newsletters on health. Dr. Mercola? extensive archive of newsletters and articles can be found at
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Should you wish to discuss any points raised in the above interview, please do not hesitate to contact our Naturopath Kirsten Taylor on (09) 378-0444 or email: Kirsten@nzhealthshop.co.nz |
