Aspartame
Salty Jamie
|
Friend,
Lobbyists for mega-corporations are hell-bent on redefining one of the few foods that is still safe for our kids -- milk. For three years, the uber-powerful dairy lobby has pressured the FDA to approve the artificial sweetener aspartame as an additive to milk without a label.
Now, for the first time in three years, the FDA’s public comment period for the proposal has finally begun. To make public opinion absolutely clear, we’re going to:
- Blanket the FDA headquarters' zip-code with ads targeted at employees, and
- Send people dressed as cows to the entrance of FDA headquarters to hand out milk and ask employees the simple question: Do you want Aspartame with that?
In just the last week, over 100,000 SumOfUs.org members signed our petition telling the FDA not to buckle under the dairy industry’s pressure. But if we want to compete with the lobbyists, we’re going to have to make sure that FDA employees hear about our petition and know that we’ll stand with them if they stand up to the dairy industry.
If all according goes to plan, FDA employees will arrive at work one day and see people dressed as cows standing at the FDA entrance. As they approach, wondering what in the world is going on, a cow will offer them milk. When they roll down their window, we’ll ask them the simple question: Do you want aspartame with that?
For employees who drive to work, we’re going to buy targeted radio ads that they’ll hear on their commute. For those that take the bus, we’ll place ads on the sides of the buses that stop right outside FDA. And when they’re sitting at their computers, they’re going to see our ads when they’re browsing Facebook and using Google.
We’re going to make sure that the dairy lobby’s efforts to get aspartame in milk is the topic of thousands of water cooler conversations in the weeks to come. The quiet agreement the dairy industry had hoped for isn’t going to happen this time around.
This proposal to redefine milk to include aspartame is particularly worrisome, and dangerous, for kids. Aspartame, which was originally marketed by Monsanto in the 80s and 90s, has been linked to increased rates of Type 2 diabetes and obesity. Hyper-sweet additives like aspartame have been proven to rewire children’s brains so that they constantly crave sugary foods. According to a 60 Minutes report, “aspartame’s approval was one of the most contested in FDA history.” The FDA’s own toxicologist told Congress that the chemical is likely to cause brain tumors.
If the FDA decides in May to allow this proposal to go through, then pretty soon kids won’t be able to tell without carefully reading the fine print -- and, let’s be real, what kid carefully reads any fine print -- if the “milk” they’re picking up in school cafeterias is real milk or Diet Milk, chock-full of chemical sweeteners.
SumOfUs.org exists to counter corporate lobbyists whose only interest is advancing profits. Before we got on the case, this issue was relegated to most marginal of websites. Little attention had been paid by mainstream media. Now outlets like NPR and the Huffington Post are telling the story of how the dairy industry wants to put our kids’ health at risk to sell more super-sweet beverages to our kids. We've already changed the conversation, but if we can just get the folks who work at the FDA -- scientists, public health officials and the like -- to take notice, then we can stop this threat to our kids’ health once and for all.
Thank you for standing up for against corporate lobbyists,
- Claiborne, Kaytee and the rest of us
