sweet poison

i think it's fun that a lot of people set new year's resolutions. i never really have, mainly because i know i'll make this huge deal out of it and when i decide i'm bored/tired/annoyed with the whole bit, i'll quit, then feel like a big, fat failure. soooooo, why not just not set yourself up for that beating? good idea.

however, 2010 is already chalked full of surprises. first and foremost being that i have a new year's resolution. sitting at santa rita the weekend after christmas, my overly-observant friends noticed that i had just ordered my fifth diet coke since we'd been there less than an hour. nbd, right? i mean, it wasn't my fifth,

say, shot of whisky, or my fifth large bowl of queso- get off my back. things could be way worse. then one of my friends, cheryl, started telling me about a lady who was diagnosed with throat cancer recently, after never smoking or being around a smoker or any of the suspect situations that would lead to that awful disease. apparently this lady's "thing" was diet coke. she drank it non-stop her whole life. now. clearly i cannot say for sure this lady got the big c strictly from, um, pounding one diet soda every 10 minutes when she's out eating mexican food, but it did get me thinking that maybe i need to take a look at exactly what diet drinks do to me.

the major culprit in these drinks is the aspartame. i've heard for years now that aspartame is this deadly chemical that is pumped into basically everything i eat/drink, but my main problem with quitting my consumption of it is 1) it's in everything i eat/drink and 2) is the government really going to know all this super secret intel regarding the fatal drug aspartame and just sweep it under the rug and watch people slowly slip away and DIE from it?! i just cannot imagine it being that dangerous and yet still being allowed to be used. naive? i choose to think it's more me being pure of heart.

essentially aspartame is a man-made, zero fat, zero calorie fake sugar that is put into things making it taste as though there is real sugar. anytime you see "sugar-free" anything, you can bet your new hunter rain boots there's aspartame in there. the biggie for me is clearly diet dp, but i also drink crystal lite peach tea like it's the nectar of the gods and that has aspertame in it, too. so does orbitz gum. most likely so does your light & fit yogurt. and your skinny cow ice cream sandwiches.

so i've done a little research, really just wanting to find out why it's so bad and what it does to us. from multiple sites, i discovered that when aspartame enters your body and gets into the small intestine, it converts into formaldehyde (remember science class, kids?), which then converts into formic acid, which is what ant sting venom is made up of. and then it wrecks havoc on everyone's systems differently. the laundry list of symptoms can be found here... quite a few, huh? there are so many and who knows if your struggles are due to aspartame consumption, but maybe it would be worth it to try not to put it in your system for the next month or two? see what happens?

i've been off the stuff for the past two weeks and i think and dream about diet dr. pepper every night, but guess what? i swear my skin texture is better. crazy, right? and i haven't had trouble with my contacts blurring up. and i'm not as bloated (tmi). and oh my gosh what if this cures my cankle?!?!?! only time will tell. but i swear i'm convinced it could happen.

the other thing to note is that a lot of us drink diet cokes because we don't want the calories. well one of the huge side effects of aspartame is a craving for sweets. so you end up drinking zero calories of toxins, but going and having a

dozen tiffwiches to make up for it. when they tested the chemical in rats, the ones with aspartame in their diet were heavier. go freaking figure.

i am no expert. and am not real sure about any of this. if you want to know more, i'm sure you can buy about a billion books with plenty of scientific details and facts pointing to how everything in our country is tarnished and poisoned by something and we're all going down together unless our meals start consisting of 75% raw, organic veggies. but i thought i'd share a little of what i'm doing to cut down on at least one thing i know isn't benefiting my health in the least. and, lucky you, i found just the graphic to really drive the point home...