I had a funny, but sobering, experience when I was in Southern Europe two years ago, meeting with a company and potential client that wanted to start marketing its dietary supplement powders into the United States. I looked at their product labels and immediately realized that as good as their products were, they suffered from a major drawback – they contained aspartame as their sweetener. “What?” I was asked in disbelief, “That would be a problem in the United States?” Yes, it most definitely would be, at least to the health-food retail market that they sought to enter. They weren’t laughing.

Unfortunately, as with so many others, they were simply ignorant of the dangers of aspartame and had used it in their powdered supplements as sweeteners. They had never read the Congressional testimony of Dr. M. Adrian Gross, a former senior FDA toxicologist, who said, “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, aspartame triggers brain tumors” and that “by allowing aspartame to be placed on the market the FDA has violated the Delaney Amendment, which forbids putting anything in food that is known to cause cancer.”

Herein lies the problem: While many of us and our friends and colleagues recognize that aspartame is a dangerous, carcinogenic toxin, there are too many who do not. They have bought into the G.D. Searle and Company propaganda line that claims aspartame is a healthy alternative to sugar and that studies “show” it to be safe to consume. As a result, over the last two decades, we have seen approval for this toxin’s use in many different food and beverage products grow almost astronomically. Now it can be found virtually everywhere. It is ubiquitous. In fact, it is hard to avoid now.

Codex Alimentarius

It is with this growth as a background, and with decades of opposition to its approval, that we at the National Health Federation (NHF) – the World’s oldest health-freedom organization and the only one accredited to attend and speak out at the Codex Alimentarius meetings – sought to oppose aspartame standards not just at the national level but at the Codex level.

    Codex Alimentarius, as many of you already know, is an international body organized back in the early 1960s under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for the two-fold purpose of eliminating international barriers to food trade and protecting the consumer from unsafe foods. To that end, Codex created various committees to develop food standards and guidelines for those foods and beverages each substantive committee was considering (some other committees were charged with developing measurement and general operating principles). One of those committees was known as the Codex Committee on Contaminants and Food Additives. Note the combination.

Many years later, the Committee was broken apart into two separate committees, one called the Codex Committee on Contaminants in Food (CCCF) and the other the Codex Committee on Food Additives (CCFA). Why is this dull Codex history of any importance? Because aspartame approval had been obtained in the previously joined Committee and then Codex consideration of additional standards for aspartame use in many other foods and beverages was moved over to CCFA when the Committee split.

Although NHF had covered other Codex meetings since the mid-1990s, this Committee was not one that NHF could afford to attend until 2008. At that meeting, on behalf of NHF, I spoke out against any approval of any standards that would allow aspartame to be used in either foods or beverages. My pleas, unfortunately, fell on deaf ears. The aspartame industry had already done its damage with this Committee. So, too, with the more recent CCFA meeting held in China last March. NHF submitted written comments to the Committee (see http://www.thenhf.com/files/pdf/AspartameCRD.pdf) opposing aspartame’s food use. Again, our urgings to stop aspartame were not heeded; but I have found that even though our words seem to be at times of no use, over time they have a cumulative effect.

We have seen this happen with the CCCF and melamine use (melamine, a man-made toxin that contaminates infant formulas), where our lone voice in 2009 has now been joined by ten other strong voices that actually stopped one melamine standard from being approved last year by Codex. (Read about it at http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=2947.) And NHF’s virtually sole efforts at the 2009 Codex nutrition committee meeting in Germany halted the adoption process for “dumbed down” Nutrient Reference Values (essentially RDIs) that would have, for example, lowered the daily requirement for Vitamin C from an already ridiculous 60 milligrams per day down to 45 milligrams per day! Our solitary voice has caused a snowballing effect that has resulted in these NRVS having been stymied at three successive, annual Codex meetings! (See http://www.thenhf.com/article.php?id=3109)

So, with enough effort and ammunition to back that effort, it will be possible to impact aspartame at the Codex level, that is, the global level. We have already shown that other ill-advised Codex standards can be impacted when enough heart-felt and persistent action is taken to stop or change them.

Codex Is Important


Often with the cry “Think globally but act locally” ringing in my ears, I am asked by others about the real importance of Codex to local communities. It seems to many people that the States and Federal government are the main culprits enacting increasing legislation to shut down healthy foods, from raw milk to new dietary supplements. And that is true – up to a point. However, through various Treaties (the World Trade Organization, as well as the CAFTA, Sanitary and Phytosanitary, and Technical Barriers to Trade agreements) and national legislation, the United States has become increasingly bound by treaty obligations and law to incorporate Codex standards into our domestic food laws.

     Legislators will say that exceptions are built in so as to protect domestic legislation such as the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), which has protected supplements since its passage. Yet, the reality is that we are being hemmed in by a regulatory fence of Codex guidelines and standards that our own Department of Agriculture and Food and Drug Administration have chosen to follow whenever and wherever possible.

Moreover, our own food industry loves Codex guidelines and standards because then it can then sell more of its debased food products throughout the World without trade barriers and their accompanying costs. Using Codex food standards that favor debased and contaminated foods, these big food corporations then have trade portals that are window-pane clear while truly healthy products slam up against opaque barriers. That is how our World is being crafted these days.

But Your Voice Is More Important

For those of us tired of seeing our healthy food and dietary-supplement choices slowly whittled away by uncaring and greedy government officials and industry fatcats, there is much that can be done to counter these losses. We are certainly not powerless, as was proved so amazingly before when we all banded together and overwhelmingly petitioned Congress to pass DSHEA, which it did unanimously. To this very day, Congress is still afraid to directly attack DSHEA and must content itself with snipping away at its corners and letting the FDA and Codex do its dirty work for it.


Our previous NHF president would always remind us that “Politicians don’t see the light, they feel the heat!” So, I would urge all of you to educate yourself thoroughly on all of the issues that stir your passions. Then, being fully informed, be what I call “Persistently Vocal.” That is, don’t just contact your Congressional representative once and then let the matter go; contact him or her by every means possible: e-mail, telephone, correspondence, and even personal visits at their offices. Then, once you have finished that set of contacts, start over again. And be sure to include contacting family, friends, and work colleagues to enroll them in the campaign.

Remember, too, that letters to the editor of various publications, even submitting the more widely read Op-Ed pieces, as well as writing on Internet Blogs can be very effective means of motivating people and changing public opinion. Always, “Challenge, Challenge, Challenge.”

Perhaps, most importantly, join with others of like mind to act together to make effective change. That could be your local professional associations, it could also be active health-freedom organizations such as the National Health Federation (www.thenhf.com). The NHF has been active protecting your health for almost six decades now. Whether you knew it or not, NHF has been your voice for health freedom.

As important as it is, aspartame is only one of many issues that affect our health. If we want to protect both our rights as practitioners and as consumers, we need to take action now at Codex, national, and local levels to protect and even advance our health freedoms. Not only our health but our children’s health depends upon it.

As Margaret Mead once wrote, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” You and the rest of us are that small group, and we can and will change the World.