From Betty Martini <Mission-Possible-USA@altavista.net> 7-28-00 James Bowen, M.D.   The fact that aspartame fattens people is generally well known. We have all seen the post cards and comics that depict an overweight person with a Diet Coke in one hand while reaching for a bowl of corn chips with the other hand. The reason aspartame so strikingly stimulates the appetite is it provides over half of its content in a form of a phenylalanine isolate.   The amino acid phenylalanine outcompetes all the other at enzyme sites in the body. This suppresses the formation of dopamine from tyrosine and the formation of serotonin from tryptophan. The serotonin is the neurotransmitter that reports carbohydrate metabolism. When your serotonin levels are not allowed to raise as they normally do when you eat carbohydrates you crave more and more food. The dopamine is the neurotransmitter that lets you feel satisfied, so when you use aspartame you have unsatisfiable cravings. The aspartame also poisons your metabolism so you cannot burn calories.   One of the major components of the aspartame molecule is methyl alcohol. Methyl alcohol has long been recognized in medicine for its ability to block metabolism. For this reason when doctors see somebody who has been poisoned by ingesting methyl alcohol or methyl esters they can accurately predict the patient will develop a severe acidosis because the food cannot be metabolized in the normal manner and the breakdown products of the methyl alcohol in addition to the acids developed from the blocked metabolism gravely endanger the patients life. NutraSweet, is a very aggravated form of methyl alcohol poisoning. Moreover, the neuroexcitotoxins act in the brain to stimulate appetite. This is why manufacturers put it into foods. It does not actually change the taste of food at all, but the food taste better to you because your appetite has been stimulated. Arsenic is routinely included in chicken food when the chickens are being raised for meat production because it poisons the metabolism and the chickens don't burn off the calories, they turn it into fat, and thus they produce rapid weight gain for the farmer.   When the FDA first looked at this molecule they held aspartame off the market for many years because it is a potent chelating agent which carries many heavy metals including arsenic into the body. The heavy metal poisoning from Nutrasweet also poisons your metabolism, blocks the burning of calories and on the long haul this virtually irreversible poisoning from heavy metals will continue to encourage weight gain.”