Diet Soda and the Quick Path to Depression

For many, many years, I was a six-pack-of-Tab-a-day gal. (Tab, for those of you who missed the '80s, was and still is--if you can find it--the precursor of Diet Coke.) I loved the stuff. I was addicted to it.

Starting about two decades ago, my use began to taper off due to a number of events: frequent solo camping trips into remote areas where there were few stores, none of which carried Tab; four years of living in Northern California, again where any kind of soda, diet or not, was rare; and a news report about how a subsidiary of Coke was murdering union leaders at its South American plants. The last one really got to me,even more so than the knowledge of the harm Diet Coke (since Tab was now difficult to find even in large urban areas) was doing to my body: gas bubbles in the intestinal track, dissolution of bones, alteration of the body chemistry, and depression. In fact, aspertame, the sweetening agent in diet drinks, has been linked to at least 92 symptoms and diseases.

Since a small child, I had been depressed, so I can't blame it all on diet sodas, but I often wonder, now that I've almost completely kicked the habit, how much of my adult depression was due to aspertame, more commonly known under its brand name of Nutrasweet. (Tab, for the record, was sweetened with saccharine, which has its own troubles.)

Every once in a while, I will say, "Oh, I can buy just one six pack of Diet Coke. That won't be a problem." This is alcoholic thinking--Oh, sure, I can just have one drink. This week I gave that a try. I bought six 16-ounce bottles of Diet Coke on Tuesday and had one as soon as I got home. The next morning, at cardiac rehab, the Bette Midler song "The Rose" came on the radio, and I began to cry. No one saw my tears, thank God, but I had trouble keeping my act together during my workout. I was very depressed, seemingly for no reason, since, strangely enough, "The Rose" had played during my workout on Monday and it had not affected me. I must admit that during all my years of Tab consumption, many songs made me cry and feel blue. Once again, I was knocked over the head with the message that diet drinks are a killer.

If you're wondering how such a dangerous substance was ever approved by the FDA, well, I've got one word for you--Rumsfeld, who was the CEO of the chemical company Searle Laboratories, which held the patent on aspertame and was taken over by the evil seed company Monsanto, which is attempting to ruin every farmer who refuses to use genetically modified seed. The FDA had previously banned aspertame because studies had linked it to brain tumors, but Donald Rumsfeld, who became the secretary of defense under Bush II, pushed some buttons. The FDA panel that was assembled to investigate aspertame reached a deadlock, whereupon FDA commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes cast the deciding vote. This man went on to take a high-level position with the PR giant Burston-Marsteller, which, oh my gawsh, had Monsanto as a major client.


Please, everyone who reads this, if you didn't know about aspertame prior to this, spread the message, espeically to parents who give their preeschoolers Diet Cokes! They're killing their kids.