One of the active ingredients in Diet Coke is aspartame, better known as NutraSweet, which was approved for human consumption by the Food and Drug Administration about 20 years ago, paving the way for the diet soda boom.
In the years since, a number of people have begun to attack NutraSweet, claiming that aspartame can be broken down into three amino acid components, aspartate, phenylalanine, and methanol. All three can be broken down into smaller entities, called metabolites, which can be toxic. For example, methanol, or wood alcohol, can spontaneously become formaldehyde, while phenylalanine can decompose into diketopiperazine, which is a carcinogen.
In fact, conspiracy theorists credit NutraSweet for causing everything from multiple sclerosis to Gulf War syndrome, but say that "aspartame disease" is what hits most people. Symptoms of aspartame disease include headaches and dizziness
and about a billion other things. In February 1994, the Department of Heath released a......
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