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Authors: Zack Parsons
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payouts.”
“So we need to stop using it?”
“Stop, but be careful,” Dr. Schwab said. “You have to wean yourself off, because your body stops producing natural enzymes. You can have seizures or even go into a coma like a diabetic if you just quit cold turkey.”
I was a little surprised by this aspect. I had read about many of the supposed health risks relating to aspartame, but I had no idea that quitting it could be like quitting a serious drug.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “If not drinking Diet Cokes could cause you to have seizures and lapse into a coma, wouldn’t there be an epidemic of these sorts of problems? There are millions of Americans who drink diet sodas. What if they switched to water?”
“Aspartame is in water,” Leslie said.
“Trace amounts,” Dr. Schwab amended. “Enough to prevent withdrawal. Enough to be toxic.”
“Don’t they have to list that on the label?”
“You pee it out and then they bottle it,” Leslie pronounced with no further explanation.
“Aspartame is in over seven thousand products,” Dr. Schwab said. “Often it’s so far down on the list of ingredients you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s in medicines and foods. You have to be very careful to avoid aspartame.”
“So how do you avoid it if it’s in water and all this other stuff?”
“You educate yourself and…”
Dr. Schwab held up her thermos.
“Make your own water.”
I left Ed Debevic’s with two things certain in my mind: I was going to drink the first cold diet cola I could get my hands on and I was never going back to Ed Debevic’s. My thirst for diet cola wasn’t some outrageous need to show up Dr. Schwab. I needed something with aspartame because I believe that old cowboy wisdom that when your horse throws you in the dirt you better get right back on before it decides you don’t belong in the saddle.
If I didn’t act quickly my natural paranoia would take over and I’d fall into the horrible spiral of aspartame fears. If that happened my nightmares were sure to become a twisted, Grease -themed, aspartame apocalypse. Rizzos dead in the street from Gulf War syndrome. The Scorpions thrashing like epileptics in pools of Diet Dr Pepper.
I stopped at a gas station a few blocks away and made haste for the cooler in the back. I grabbed a Diet Coke, paid for it, and popped it open the moment I was back outside. It tasted crisp and jagged. It was refreshingly unlike something that should prominently feature skull and crossbones on the label and be kept out of reach of small children.
As I savored the deadly beverage, my mind snapped back to the parting comments from Dr. Schwab. We were standing just outside the door at Ed Debevic’s. I was eyeing my car, the thick stack of papers tucked under my arm. She was clinging to my bicep with a small hand, urgently telling me about Donald Rumsfeld.
“It may be a joke to you, but this is a deadly game to him. He was on Reagan’s transition team when he took office. He helped pick the FDA commissioner who approved aspartame. His former company, Searle, makes aspartame. They created it!”
I nodded, wanting to get away from Dr. Schwab and her huge doom-saying friend.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen. You know, ‘Beware the military-industrial complex.’ No, no, it’s, ‘Beware the pharmacological-food industrial complex.’ If you hear only one thing from me, if you only put one thing in your book, put that in there. These guys are putting their drugs in everything you eat and drink.”
Something in the sad desperation of that moment overwhelmed my cynicism. It wasn’t that I believed all the books claiming every food and drug and new sweetener causes every imaginable ailment, it was that I believed that she believed them.
There are those in the anti-aspartame groups cynically trying to make a profit from junk science and fearmongering. Even Princess Diana knew that. But many are honestly attracted to the topic by a need to
“So we need to stop using it?”
“Stop, but be careful,” Dr. Schwab said. “You have to wean yourself off, because your body stops producing natural enzymes. You can have seizures or even go into a coma like a diabetic if you just quit cold turkey.”
I was a little surprised by this aspect. I had read about many of the supposed health risks relating to aspartame, but I had no idea that quitting it could be like quitting a serious drug.
“How is that possible?” I asked. “If not drinking Diet Cokes could cause you to have seizures and lapse into a coma, wouldn’t there be an epidemic of these sorts of problems? There are millions of Americans who drink diet sodas. What if they switched to water?”
“Aspartame is in water,” Leslie said.
“Trace amounts,” Dr. Schwab amended. “Enough to prevent withdrawal. Enough to be toxic.”
“Don’t they have to list that on the label?”
“You pee it out and then they bottle it,” Leslie pronounced with no further explanation.
“Aspartame is in over seven thousand products,” Dr. Schwab said. “Often it’s so far down on the list of ingredients you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s in medicines and foods. You have to be very careful to avoid aspartame.”
“So how do you avoid it if it’s in water and all this other stuff?”
“You educate yourself and…”
Dr. Schwab held up her thermos.
“Make your own water.”
I left Ed Debevic’s with two things certain in my mind: I was going to drink the first cold diet cola I could get my hands on and I was never going back to Ed Debevic’s. My thirst for diet cola wasn’t some outrageous need to show up Dr. Schwab. I needed something with aspartame because I believe that old cowboy wisdom that when your horse throws you in the dirt you better get right back on before it decides you don’t belong in the saddle.
If I didn’t act quickly my natural paranoia would take over and I’d fall into the horrible spiral of aspartame fears. If that happened my nightmares were sure to become a twisted, Grease -themed, aspartame apocalypse. Rizzos dead in the street from Gulf War syndrome. The Scorpions thrashing like epileptics in pools of Diet Dr Pepper.
I stopped at a gas station a few blocks away and made haste for the cooler in the back. I grabbed a Diet Coke, paid for it, and popped it open the moment I was back outside. It tasted crisp and jagged. It was refreshingly unlike something that should prominently feature skull and crossbones on the label and be kept out of reach of small children.
As I savored the deadly beverage, my mind snapped back to the parting comments from Dr. Schwab. We were standing just outside the door at Ed Debevic’s. I was eyeing my car, the thick stack of papers tucked under my arm. She was clinging to my bicep with a small hand, urgently telling me about Donald Rumsfeld.
“It may be a joke to you, but this is a deadly game to him. He was on Reagan’s transition team when he took office. He helped pick the FDA commissioner who approved aspartame. His former company, Searle, makes aspartame. They created it!”
I nodded, wanting to get away from Dr. Schwab and her huge doom-saying friend.
“Listen,” she said. “Listen. You know, ‘Beware the military-industrial complex.’ No, no, it’s, ‘Beware the pharmacological-food industrial complex.’ If you hear only one thing from me, if you only put one thing in your book, put that in there. These guys are putting their drugs in everything you eat and drink.”
Something in the sad desperation of that moment overwhelmed my cynicism. It wasn’t that I believed all the books claiming every food and drug and new sweetener causes every imaginable ailment, it was that I believed that she believed them.
There are those in the anti-aspartame groups cynically trying to make a profit from junk science and fearmongering. Even Princess Diana knew that. But many are honestly attracted to the topic by a need to
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