I just read an article that made me so mad that at least I'll have enough energy to get the house cleaned today! The Dairy Association is asking the FDA to approve adding aspartame (and other artificial sweeteners) to milk and other diary products WITHOUT HAVING TO LIST THEM ON THE INGREDIENTS LABEL. The Dairy Association's claim is that this will help to get kids to drink more milk and thus be healthier. The truth behind it is that milk drinking has decreased significantly and this is another effort to add a sweetener to a product to increase consumption.

It's bad enough that they want to add artificial sweeteners to the diary products, but to ask to not have to list it in the ingredients is just downright dishonest.

I'm sending emails off to my Representatives and Senators asking them to stop the FDA from even considering this request. If you agree, please write to your Congressmen as well.

What!!!!? I'm going to have to investigate and find out if this is true! Who was the article written/published by?

Wow Betsy, that makes me sick! To get the kids to drink more and be healthier? I don't know that aspartame is necessarily healthy for kids. And I don't like the sneakiness of skipping the labeling and disclosure.

I have nothing against aspartame in moderation (whatever that is...) for myself as it can't be as bad as any of the other junk I was putting in my body when I ate unhealthy fried, processed, etc. food. But I am an adult and free to make my own decisions. And I think everyone else should have that choice too.

Thank you for sharing that. I just screamed to my husband upstairs about it as I was so angry.

Here's links to two articles about it

http://www.inquisitr.com/548725/aspa...r-rule-change/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_2764729.html

I got that message too. What they will do to sneak in sugar.

Of course, all in the premise of, "We need kids to drink more milk, so what's a little bit of artificial sweetener to make it taste better? No harm done, right?"

Um...

Here's a link to the FDA website where you can voice your opinion:
https://www.federalregister.gov/arti...dairy-products

Thanks for this link!

Just to be clear, the milk industry wants the term "artificially sweetened" to be removed from the front label of milk products with aspartame. Aspartame, sucralose, etc would still have to be listed on the ingredient list. The FDA already allows milk with sugar to use the unmodified "milk" label. The milk industry wants the same treatment for aspartame. Seems like a minor issue for anyone who can read an ingredient list.

From the HuffPo article....

"Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) acknowledged a 2009 petition from the International Dairy Foods Association (IDFA) and the National Milk Producers Federation that seeks to drop the FDA requirement to label milk and other dairy products as "artificially sweetened" when they contain sweeteners such as aspartame....

....The agency currently lets the dairy industry use the unmodified "milk" label for unsweetened milk or milk that contains sweeteners with calories, like sugar and high-fructose corn syrup "

Drinking more milk will not make kids healthier, with or without sweeteners. They're not baby cows.

I think the angle that they are trying to take is that offering a sweet-tasting milk beverage that doesn't have the calories (due to artificial sweeteners) of juice and pop they are offering a 'healthier' choice.

What I can't possible fathom is how they justify wanting to make it less obvious that it's been artificially sweetened by removing the label on the front. If it's such a great 'healthy' alternative, why are they pushing so hard to hide it from consumers as much as they can?

This kind of stuff bugs me.

First, until modern times, babies were nursed much longer - until they were like four. How many babies do you think are nursed that long? not many.

Second, for a big portion of Eurasian descendants, they had a mutation that allowed people to drink milk (as all people were lactose intolerant). This gene change is extremely recent (like EXTREMELY). But it helped survival so much, that it spread very, very quickly.

Before the mutation and in parts of the world that didn't have the gene mutation, humans found ways around it - kefir, cheese, yogurt - things that took out the lactose to make it available for all populations.

It is the dairy from the animals that has helped us grow in population. While other things might diminish, the milk was there and was replenishable. And they are still trying to figure out why milk in it's raw form was even more beneficial to health - which it had to be to spread so quickly.

Now, do we NEED milk? No, we don't. But to say that kids don't need milk and that we aren't baby cows is going a bit too far. Without your ancestors drinking milk, they probably would have perished.