Sweet Poison: How the World's Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us - My Story [Hardcover]

Janet Hull (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999

Millions of dieters using chemical sweeteners will be shocked by firefighter Janet Starr Hull's story. Diagnosed with a deadly case of Grave's Disease after she collapsed on the job, Hull was told she would die. Searching for the cause of her illness, Hull discovered that the chemical sweetener aspartame found in Nutrasweet was to blame.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: New Horizon Press; 1st edition (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0882821644
• ISBN-13: 978-0882821641
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,344,333 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

147 of 157 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting case study, but full of inaccuracies, April 26, 2000

By 

Michael Vanier (Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sweet Poison: How the World's Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us - My Story (Hardcover)

I fully agree with the central premise of this book: that aspartame is dangerous and should be avoided. The author's case study of how she traced her case of Graves' disease to aspartame toxicity makes for interesting reading. However, her description of the biochemistry and neuroscience involved in the effects of aspartame is full of inaccuracies. For instance, she states that the "methanol component" of aspartame binds the two amino acids (phenylalanine and aspartic acid) together. This is simply false; in fact, aspartame is composed of a phenylalanine residue bonded to an aspartic acid residue via a peptide bond identical to what you find in proteins; the phenylalanine residue is modified by the addition of a methyl group on its C-terminus (so COOH becomes COOCH3). Methanol is not a "part" of aspartame, but is formed when aspartame is digested. The author's description of the blood-brain barrier "squeezing out toxins" is particularly absurd. I wish she had asked a biochemist to proofread the book, because the mistakes weaken her credibility substantially. That's a shame, because the point she makes about the hazards of aspartame is an important one.

43 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Critically important book, March 26, 2005

By 

Tired Eyes "book addict" (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Sweet Poison: How the World's Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us - My Story (Paperback)

What is important about Janet's book is not whether or not she is a great writer (as a very long life of obsessive reading, I can tell you, there are very few) or whether she made mistakes about the minutea of science. What is important, is that she is right. I know. I've been there.

About four years ago, my mother told me that she saw a segment on the news about the adverse effects of aspartame (weight gain, headaches, hair loss, etc.) and told me because she knew that I drank diet drinks. At that point, I was drinking one can of Diet Coke, Monday through Friday, in the afternoon at work because that was what was available. At home, I was drinking Diet Rite which uses Splenda. I was not using any other diet products and still don't. So, I thought it was no big deal to just drink the regular Coke with sugar for a week to see if I noticed any difference.

At that point, my feet were in such increasing pain from "arthritis," I felt I was fast on my way to using a wheelchair. The condition had gotten increasing worse for more than ten years. I came home one Friday night and was not even sure I could walk the few feet to the bathroom. I had spent a fortune on extremely expensive doctors, shoes, inserts, etc.

Within four days of not drinking aspartame, I was able to walk up and down stairs for the first time in many years. About 90 percent of the pain was gone. The balance of the pain went away over a period of months, and today (even though I am four years older), I am in no pain at all, and take a great deal of delight in buying really cheap shoes.

My brother-in-law gets migranes from aspartame (obviously, he is not genetically-related to me). My mother has had two cans of diet drinks in her life; the first sent her to bed with a severe headache, and the second one made her feel like she was high on drugs. None of the three of us ever talked about it until after my dramatic experience. That's not coincidence.

Mind you I was drinking five cans a week. People that are drinking a lot more and not making the connection (as I didn't) are being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, lupus, etc. This is not a small cost to what we laughingly call our "health care system." We are all paying big time for this in cold hard cash not to mention the loss of productive workers.

Aspartame is a neuro-toxin. In retrospect, it makes absolute sense that I had such pain in my feet because there are so many nerve endings in the feet. It was developed by G. D. Searle in Skokie, Illinois (which was bought out by Monsanto). The CEO of G.D. Searle who pushed aspartame through the FDA was Donald Rumsfeld after Reagan became President. He was adamant about getting this approved despite the fact that the animal studies that Searle did killed some of the monkeys. This is a fact, not as one reviewer stated, in the same category as belief in UFO's.

Given the recent revelelations about the FDA, can anyone seriously think that they are protecting us? They are bought and sold by the drug companies. Period. As individuals, we cannot take anything that they say seriously. We have to do as much homework as we can and keep ourselves as healthy as we can.

There is no excuse for this product being in our food supply in any way, shape, or form. It is completely unnecessary (we're talking about diet products). It is presently in more than 8000 products, no-sugar candy, no-sugar gum, no-sugar yogurt, Crystal Lite, sugar-free Kool-Aid, etc. Please read the labels! And, please, please, don't give these products to children! This is also especially cruel to diabetics who have no idea that other health issues are being caused by the very products that they are using to control their sugar intake.

I presently drink Diet Rite which uses Splenda, and Coke and Pepsi are both introducing drinks with Splenda this year after pooh-poohing decades of complaints, although apparently being on a slow-learning curve, Coke is introducing a drink using aspartame and Splenda. Duh. Diet Rite, by the way, until this month was owned by a British company (not American) Cadbury Schwepps.

Don't believe me, and don't believe the skeptics. Do what I did, go without aspartame for a week and see if you see any difference and believe your own reactions. I had no idea in the world that the excruciating pain in my feet had any connection at all to diet drinks and was stunned and thrilled by the dramatic difference. By the way, I think my hair is a little thicker, and I am much less prone to depression. Don't try aspartame, you'll like it.

You go, Janet!

31 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Aspartame: The Poison They Don't Want You To Know About, January 6, 2006

By 

Daniel McKinnon "Dan" (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Sweet Poison: How the World's Most Popular Artificial Sweetener Is Killing Us - My Story (Paperback)

For the past 2 years or so I had been feeling worse and worse as time went on. Headaches, neurological symptoms such as losing feeling in my arm and face, and the scariest of all, I was having trouble thinking straight. I really was beginning to feel like a different person and there were times that I felt like I was going insane.

Am I exaggerating?? I really wish I was, but sadly that was not the case. After speaking with my primary care doctor several times and having had tests done, I noticed that my symptoms improved at times, but nothing significant. I tried to put my finger on what the problem was, and one day while doing a search online, I found that some people who chewed Orbit gum were complaining of symptoms similar to mine. I had been chewing sugarless gum for years, and I never thought twice that what I was chewing could be hurting my body, potentially for the long term. After reading more, I immediately stopped using all products with aspartame/Nutrasweet/Equal and within a few short weeks I started feeling better.

During my initial research regarding the link between aspartame and the symptoms I was experiencing, I stumbled upon the book "Sweet Poison" by Janet Starr Hull, the story of how she found out that aspartame was the cause of her very own health problems and her research behind how this original ulcer drug got into nearly every type of food we eat every day.

Hull's story is very interesting, and anyone that wants to find out more about the story of how aspartame got into the United States food supply would be able to probably pick some bit of relevant information from this text, but I would be remiss if I didn't point out how sloppy the writing is. It's really a shame, because you get the point that the author really does care about educating the masses, but she would have been so better off if she had more people edit this book before it was published.

My favorite parts of this book relate to the story of the shady way in which aspartame got on the shelves of supermarkets around the country and how it probably should have been stopped long, long ago. It's just a sad realization that the corporations control America and it's not a new trend. The original fights to get aspartame FDA approved date back to the 1970s, and through loopholes and political tricks that is exactly what happened in the 1980s.

If you want to learn more about the history of aspartame and the story of an individual that had an adverse reaction to this drug, this is a nice read but it's very sloppy. Sometimes you will get done reading a paragraph and just say to yourself that the writing is outright POOR.

Some people will read this book and just say it's a bunch of hogwash and they have never had a bad reaction to a diet soda, but I can tell you from personal experience that this chemical CAN cause major problems so buyer beware.

In the battle between calories and chemicals, I'll take the calories, at least I can pronounce sugar more easily than many of the chemicals you see when you turn the label over of far too many foods that are purchased every single day.

*** RECOMMENDED