The Documentary Channel

In one of our regular afternoons of nerdy indulgence, Hubs and I watched a documentary on (ha, ha) The Documentary Channel this afternoon: Sweet Misery - "The artificial sweetener, aspartame, is the bedrock of the diet industry. Found in everything from fizzy drinks to vitamin pills and marketed under a variety of different names, it is difficult to detect and even harder to avoid. But how safe is it' Does it really cause brain tumours, blindness and other serious illnesses' This shocking documentary investigates how the FDA came to approve such a potentially dangerous product."

Hubs has been cautioning me about artificial sweeteners since we started dating. I've gone through periods where I've listened to him, and other periods where I've tuned him out. But this film was quite compelling, and I dumped out the last of my 2-liter of Diet Coke by the end. Diet Coke isn't as good as classic Coke, anyway - and I know my dentist thinks I need to cut back on soda, given the little cavities I've been getting right at the top of my teeth along the gums. I'm very interested to see how I feel after a few days or weeks without Diet Coke and with as little possible of products containing artificial sweeteners. I try not to use too many products with aspartame anyway, but I think the film raised some serious questions about the long-term (and short-term) health implications of aspartame ingestion.

So, this is just another in a long line of developments and revelations regarding food that lead me to think we'd be better off cooking everything from scratch using natural ingredients. I need to investigate options for organic groceries in this area. Finding variety in organics will be tough, but I think I need to try. If we had the room/time/money/land, I'd definitely be more adventurous about growing my own food...