For Hearing in Room #329, 8 A.M., Friday 2/8/08

PLEASE COPY AS COMMITTEE HANDOUT FOR THIS HEARING

TO: CHAIR JOSH GREEN M.D., VICE CHAIR JOHN MIZUNO, MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE

No doubt you will be lobbied by companies like Ajinomoto, Coca Cola, Pepsi and others to not ban Aspartame. You must not lose sight of the fact that their sole motivation for you to not ban Aspartame is money and profits and most definitely not the health of the people. We, the people of Hawaii, can only hope and pray that you will focus on our health and not corporate profits.

Aspartame is marketed as a "diet aid". The reality is that Aspartame causes the brain to stop producing serotonin, which results in feeling as though you haven't had enough to eat even when you are full.

75% of ALL recorded complaints received by the FDA were concerning Aspartame. Those symptoms complained about included headache, nausea, vertigo, insomnia, loss of control of limbs, blurred vision, blindness, memory loss, slurred speech, depression, hyperactivity, gastronomical disorders, seizures, skin lesions, rashes, anxiety attacks, muscle and joint pain, numbness, mood changes, menstrual cramps out of cycle, hearing loss or ringing in the ears, and heart palpitations.

Aspartame has three components: phenylalanine (50%), aspartic acid (40%), and methanol, aka wood alcohol (10%). But, their breakdowns present an even greater cause for concern. Phenylalanine decomposes into diketopiperazine (DKP), a known carcinogen when exposed to warm temperatures or prolonged storage. At 84 degrees F, the wood alcohol converts to formaldehyde. The body's temperature is 98.6 degrees F. Talk about "Night of the Living Dead"!

Infants are four more times sensitive to excitotoxins, which is what Aspartame is classified as, than adults. FDA refused to approve Aspartame 16 straight times. It was specifically rejected in 1974 because it was shown to cause brain tumors in rats.

Pages S5507 - S5511 of the Congressional Record dated May 7, 1985 showed convincing evidence that G.D. Searle and Company, the manufacturer of Aspartame which is now owned by Monsanto, manipulated its tests to get approval.

If you follow the money trail you will find that Monsanto has a billion dollars in sales annually from the sale of Aspartame, the media has tens of billions of dollars invested in advertisements for over 5,000 products, the medical system makes hundreds of billions in expensive but useless tests that cannot pinpoint patients' problems with certainty, and there is the pharmaceutical industry pushing expensive drugs that don't work.

What's interesting is that the herb stevia, which is completely safe, is a natural sweetener that does not contribute to weight gain, yet the FDA has made it illegal for stevia's manufacturers to state that it is a sugar subsitute.

Please, please put health first and not corporate profits.

Aloha! Hesh Goldstein