Aspartame

While shopping last Saturday at Walmart an elderly gentleman approached my family and asked if we knew where the garbage bags were. I walked towards the end of the aisle scanning the aisle signs for garbage bags while my husband walked in the opposite direction showing the man where they really were.
We continued our shopping, ate at the deli area (which was surprisingly good.. perhaps a different post!) and then went back in the supermarket section for diet soda when we saw the same man.
I was walking away from the lady giving out samples with a sample cup of chocolate pudding in my hand, which I felt pretty guilty about grabbing because I'm trying to diet. My husband says to the man, "Any luck? Did you find them okay?" The man says yes and turns to me and asks what I'm eating. He wants to know if it's jello or yogurt? I say, "I think it's pudding? I got it from the lady right there giving out samples" as I put a spoonful in my daughter's now chocolate covered mouth.
"You know," he says, "I bought this yogurt the other day at the store because the nice looking lady on the TV told me too." My husband chuckles. "I get home," he continues, "and I'm looking at the ingredients and I see this (he pronounces it ass-per-ta-me four distinct syllables) aspartame. I look it up and did you know it causes cancer?!?" The guy is visibly upset by this and I guess is implying that I am probably eating aspartame as well. "You know what I do?" says the man. "I bought two six packs and I picked them both up and threw them right in the trash." My husband agrees with him about the aspartame and mentions that there are so many chemicals that are not regulated very well.
I continue eating the rest of my chocolate cup sharing with my daughter. Now I not only feeling guilty about taking the pudding because I'm counting calories, but I may also be eating aspartame. I never looked to see what I was eating or what was in it, but the man did have an impact on me. I did go home and research a bit more about ass-per-ta-me.

The ironic thing about all this is... I have always been very against diet soda and aspartame until last week, which was the second week into my diet. I joined the Dr. Oz 11 week challenge Move It and Lose It in 2011, and on this challenge you have to input everything you eat all day. You are limited to a certain amount of calories you can eat a day and it shows when you go over and how much weight your gaining etc. I never knew how many calories soda had, and they are all empty calories. Then hubby told me that diet soda had no calories, I was elated!! I had also recently heard that some artificial sweeteners in moderate quantities may be okay for you. So I was ignoring my better judgment and going for the diet soda.
Running into this man at Walmart made me realize that diet soda is really not worth putting my health and that of my families at risk for a controversial artificial sweetener. No, perhaps the FDA has not banned it yet, but I don't care. I don't want to wait the thirty years it may take them, as it did for DDT, and find out I've been feeding my family cancer all those years.