If you google “aspartame, ronald regan”, this is the first link that pops up:

http://www.rense.com/general33/legal.htm

(I copied the article below in case you are too lazy to copy the link in a new window!)

“In 1985 Monsanto purchased G.D. Searle, the chemical company that held the patent to aspartame, the active ingredient in NutraSweet. Monsanto was apparently untroubled by aspartame’s clouded past, including a 1980 FDA Board of Inquiry, comprised of three independent scientists, which confirmed that it “might induce brain tumors.”

The FDA had actually banned aspartame based on this finding, only to have Searle Chairman Donald Rumsfeld (currently the Secretary of Defense) vow to “call in his markers,” to get it approved.

On January 21, 1981, the day after Ronald Reagan’s inauguration, Searle re-applied to the FDA for approval to use aspartame in food sweetener, and Reagan’s new FDA commissioner, Arthur Hayes Hull, Jr., appointed a 5-person Scientific Commission to review the board of inquiry’s decision.

It soon became clear that the panel would uphold the ban by a 3-2 decision, but Hull then installed a sixth member on the commission, and the vote became deadlocked. He then personally broke the tie in aspartame’s favor. Hull later left the FDA under allegations of impropriety, served briefly as Provost at New York Medical College, and then took a position with Burston-Marsteller, the chief public relations firm for both Monsanto and GD Searle. Since that time he has never spoken publicly about aspartame”

RUN N’ TELL THAT, HOME-BOY!

So, you may or may not recall from earlier blogs, my Grandfather died from brain cancer.  Now, this is NOT my Dad’s Dad.  This is my Mom’s, Step-Dad (being ‘technical’…. I always knew him as my flesh and blood, but the grandfather with the blood took off when my Ma was 4 or so).  Anyway, my Grandpa Wade was awesome.  I loved the man.  He is the one who taught me how to golf.  He also tried to teach me how to play chess, but that didn’t work out so well.  One of the smartest men I’ve ever known.  Kinda reminds me of The WB.  Anyway, at a very young age, (late 60′s), my Grandfather died from brain cancer, after my family watched him slowly loose himself over the course of a long, long year.  Ironically, this was the same year I was at my worst and out of control, with drinking.  The ol’ sophomore year of College…… what a doozie!

Anyway, Grandpa Wade LOVED sweets.  He was always agile and spry (both words he happened to teach me the definition of).  He was always, since as far back as I could remember, carrying a pot belly!  My Grandpa had the hardest pot-belly you’d ever felt.  My grandpa loved 3 things in life.  Equal, my Grandmother (“Pop”… yes, I named her that before I started talking….the story itself is a mystery with many myths amongst the family as to how she came to be ‘Pop’), andddddddddddddddddddd at best, number one, golf!  Maybe golf, then Pop…. haha!  But Grandpa Wade loved sweets.  He’d have a bowl of vanilla bean ice cream almost every night.  He also had equal sweetener in his kona coffee, or sacrine (don’t think sacrine is around anymore).

You may recall that when I got down here to Oz earlier this year, I was blown away at how Coke Zero was to be found EVERYWHERE!  it was great!  then I realized that I was slowly craving it at non-appropriate times…. such as WORKING OUT! WTF! I did some research a while back (like a year ago I think), one night while on tour in L.A. about diet coke and it being addicting.  I never knew what aspartame was, or really understood what artificial sweetener was in general.

Baracca (I think the drink should launch a “Barack Obama” marketing campaign) is a drink out here, that is like airborne, but is not marketed as a ‘health pre-caution’.  it’s marketed as a ‘healthy energy drink’.  you unscrew the cap, and this tablet drops in the water (I think it’s water), and dissolves into a fizzy “healthy” drink.  My mate suggested I drink one last week, after landing in the Gold Coast, as I was dragggggging massive ass, and didn’t want to drink a red bull, and was SICK of coffee.  As I was scouring the back of the bottle for the nutrition content, I read the label:

“a healthy energy drink….. contains aspartame”

BAHHHHHHH HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!  So there is something else Oz is def behind on:  ASPARTAME, as well as CRAIGSLIST!  I thought craigslist was not usable down under.  But I was wrong.  I found the .com.au version earlier this evening, and of course, there isn’t JACK SHIT ON it!  LOL.

Another fun topic I’d love to go into, but will hold-off, because I have a custom clip to make.  My mate and I were talking about politics, and how he was part of the Revolutionary Communist Party while “at University” (I say, ‘in college’, but out here and in the UK, it’s ‘at university’), and of course I asked why… he said ‘because they had free drinks on Tuesdays!’

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  hilarious.  ah love his accent. ok off to do the damn thing. big things on the horizon kids.  big things.

x KO x