On July 3rd, 1999, the Lancet publishes an assessment by two members of the Department of Endocrinology in Westmead Hospital, Syney Australia. The article is entitled "Aspartame and the Internet."
This article is a Monsanto favorite, because authors Anthony Zehetner and Mark McLean sum up websites expressing concerns for potential toxicity as sensationalist campaigns.
"By targeting a manufactured chemical agent , and combining this pseudoscience and selective reporting, the campaign makes complex issues deceptively simple", they claim.
Ironically, in their previous paragraph, they make the methanol issue deceptively simple with the "same amount in fruit" argument and, through selective reporting, fail to mention how methonal binds with pectin or to remind us that fruit juice typically has an offsetting amount of ethyl alcohol.
When they begin to push the "same as in meat" argument for phenylalanine they fail, of course, to mention the staggering percentage difference of phenylalanine between meat substances and the aspartame molecule.
Ultimately, Antony Zehetner and Mark McLean state: "Clinical studies have shown no evidence of toxic effects and no increase in plasma concentrations of methanol, formic acid, or phenylalanine with daily consumption of 50 mg/kg aspartame ."
Check out the levels of toxicity just with the phenylalanine in the same daily consumption by pregnant mothers:
