The new documentary, Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World, thoroughly
examines a hot-button subject many consider to be imaginary: the
toxicity of aspartame. This man-made sweetener is certainly a fact
of life and hard to avoid. Aspartame is found in more than 5,000
food products, including diet soft drinks and snacks like puddings.
Sweet Misery starts with filmmaker and narrator Cori Brackett's
moving story about how she discovered aspartame's effect on her
health was affecting her fight with multiple sclerosis. Once she
stopped using aspartame-sweetened products, her symptoms went away
almost by magic.
But that's just the beginning of Brackett's journey across the
United States to learn more about the devastating effects of aspartame
from a laundry list of well-known medical experts, including Dr.
Russell Blaylock and Dr. Betty Martini.
Martini is the director of Mission
Possible, an Atlanta-based non-profit group that works to spread
the word about the dangers of aspartame as a toxic poison, unfit
for human consumption and a slow neurotoxin that's especially bad
for diabetics.
In addition to the experts, the filmmakers use archival footage
from G.D. Searle and federal officials to describe the amount of
propaganda and "dirty tricks" big business used to get
aspartame on the market.
Some of the most moving moments were heartfelt interviews sprinkled
in between the scientific data with some of the victims of aspartame.
One victim Brackett interviewed suffers in a different and more
excruciating way than most: This middle-aged mother and spouse is
serving a 50-year sentence for allegedly poisoning her late spouse,
although many of the health signs point to her late husband's bad
reaction to aspartame.
Another key interview is Brackett's fireside chat with Arthur Evangelista,
a former Food and Drug Administration investigator, who exposes
how far major conglomerates went to legalize the use of aspartame
in the United States, and the resulting domino effect on its use
in other countries.
News
with Views July 6, 2004
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