LAST SWILL AND TESTAMENT: DIET POP


Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
Telephone: 770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com



Posted: 15 August 2008


From: Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum., Bettym19@mindspring.com
To: letters@grist.org
Date: Mon, Aug 11, 2008 12:09 pm
Subject: Last Swill and Testament: Diet Pop


Dear Editor:

In reading Umbra Fisk's excellent article, the answer to the addiction of diet pop is that it contains aspartame which has free methyl alcohol which is classified as a narcotic. This causes chronic methanol poisoning which effects the dopamine system of the brain and causes the addiction. (Aspartame Disease: An Ignored Epidemic, http://www.sunsentpress.com H. J. Roberts, M.D. ) A lot of people won't give it up because they use so much they are no longer rational. Aspartame effects the front lobes of the brain and as Dr. Bill Deagle says: "It's like talking to someone who has had a lobotomy."

My compliments for Umbra's title. Aspartame also triggers sudden cardiac death: http://www.wnho.net/aspartame_msg_scd.htm You don't have to worry about embalming because the formaldehyde converted from the free methyl alcohol in aspartame embalms living tissue: www.mpwhi.com/formaldehyde_from_aspartame.pdf Eat, drink and be buried, already embalmed.

For those who wish to give up the addiction here is the detox formula: http://www.wnho.net/wtdaspartame.htm

For those who want to know how aspartame poisoned the world and the environment here is the documentary: Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World http://www.soundandfury.tv

For a safe sweetener use Just Like Sugar which can be gotten in Whole Foods or http://www.justlikesugarinc.com It's made from chicory and orange peel. As to the environment, these are the people behind the project: "Save the Amazon Rain Forest".

All my best,

Dr. Betty Martini, D.Hum.
Founder, Mission Possible World Health International
9270 River Club Parkway
Duluth, Georgia 30097
770-242-2599
E-Mail: BettyM19@mindspring.com
http://www.wpwhi.com
http://www.whno.net
http://www.dorway.com

Aspartame Toxicity Center: http://www.holisticmed.com/aspartame

Last Swill and Testament
On diet soda
http://www.grist.org/advice/ask/2008/08/11/index.html

By Umbra Fisk
11 Aug 2008

Question

Dear Umbra,

My name's Jon and I'm a diet pop addict. My diet right now is 70-80 percent local, organic, or both, but I just can't help myself when it comes to getting my fix. I drink several 20-ouncers a day of diet and just can't seem to stop. Is my habit hurting the earth? Common sense says that water from my stainless steel canteen is a whole lot better than chemicals from a plastic bottle, but my addict brain is grasping at straws, hoping that diet pop is one of those rare exceptions.

Jon B.
Lakewood, Ohio

Answer

Dearest Jon,

As you no doubt know, your question is funny, and the answer is: Of course your processed beverage and its container have an environmental impact. Plus, it's gotta be horrible for you. The ingredients were made in a lab, and I'm not sure the new fortified Coke or Pepsi diet sodas (Niacin! B vitamins! Chromium!) will close the nutrient gap. Several countries and at least one American state have tried to ban aspartame, that pop-ular artificial sweetener. Health isn't my bailiwick, though. I get to ignore your teeth, intestines, and major organs and focus on the planet.

Is your habit hurting the earth? Sure -- the manufacturing process for the chemicals (synthetics and "natural flavors," anyone?) all have emissions impacts. But more on the carbon footprint of soda ingredients in a moment -- first we must speak of Coke and water. I use Coca-Cola as a whipping boy (er, representative example) because there is ample documentation about how the soda giant operates.

Water is the primary ingredient in all Coke products, and a major component of pop-making in general. Each liter of a Coke product requires approximately 2.5 liters of H20 -- and that's just at the bottling plant. In 2006, for example, Coca-Cola apparently sucked up about 80 billion gallons of water for use in its drinks, for growing the ingredients, and for general manufacturing uses. The mildest thing we can say about your addiction in this context is that it wastes water. A harsher comment might be: You are actively complicit in global corporate water hogging, stealing a scarce resource from impoverished communities.

We can also get a little extrapolative climate change information on your addiction from our new toy, the Carnegie Mellon Green Design Institute's Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment model. Remember, EIO-LCA is an online tool that calculates the overall environmental impact of producing certain dollar amounts of various products. In this case, we click on the "food, beverage, and tobacco" industry, then choose "soft drink and ice manufacturing," which, the model reveals, involves power generation, grain farming, wet corn milling, trucking, aluminum production, paper mills, oil and gas extraction, and more. Forgive my ignorance -- do you spend somewhere in the dollar-and-change range on those 20-ounce plastic bottles? If so, and if "several" per day means three, you're drinking more than $1,000 retail per year, which must be at least $500 worth of wholesale soda per year. For each $500 of economic activity in wholesale soft drink and ice manufacturing, 0.439 metric tons of CO2 equivalent are released. Given those very approximate numbers, and leaving lots of wiggle room to account for variations in soda brands, your fizz fixes emit maybe half a ton of CO2 equivalent a year. To what is this comparable? Flying round trip from Cleveland to New York City.

As to the packaging, I sweetly refer you to the many discussions in this space about the importance of reusable vessels over disposable (search Grist for "plastic bottle" and prepare to be rewarded). Yes, your stainless steel canteen, used many times, is better than a single-use plastic bottle. And it's certainly better than virgin aluminum -- gadzooks. In sum, as we already knew, your diet soda habit is not remotely compatible with the rest of your organic, local food lifestyle. You alone can decide if the impact of the addiction is acceptable to you and by extension to your fellow earthlings. Water also has a large advantage over diet drinks: It is good for you. In fact, you can't live without it.

Drippily,

Umbra