A female rat developed a mammary tumour so large she often used it as a pillow.

I ended up on Thomas Byrne’s blog, ByrneTofferings (geddit?) and wondered who this chap is. The first bit of info on his About Me page is his liking for Diet Coke.

Hello, I’m Tom. I like Diet coke, Indiepop and Politics.

I warned him and thought it might be a timely reminder to repeat here – what with all those New Year resolutions to diet (well, those that are still in effect) – the alleged damage aspartame can do. The artificial sweetener is in many low calorie drinks and even many ‘normal’ drinks. You will also find it in most chewing gums and even in some flavours of Walker’s Sensations. Not so sensational, then.

I don’t know if there’s any aspartame in indiepop, as I’ve never drank it!

Anyway, aspartame has dozens of possible side effects. The biggest irony is that, while it is used to lose weight, it allegedly causes obesity.

If you look at this study, you will not want to touch aspartame again – My Aspartame Experiment.

Look at Victoria’s pictures of her animals that ingested the equivalent amount of aspartame (in human terms) of less than one diet coke a day, until their spontaneous death.  Importantly, the control groups, those fed no aspartame  were free from visible effects.

Those pictures are of rats with tumours (many), paralysed legs, eye problems, torticollis (involuntary twisting of neck), genetic damage and obesity.

Here is a video from Fox about the health risk from aspartame, and there is a list of alleged side-effects here.