Editor,
I strongly support the governor's plans to expel junk food for a healthy new year in New Mexico schools. When I first pitched this idea to legislators in 1999 in the context of creating the New Mexico Nutrition Council, with express powers to reject harmful food additives even if they were FDA approved, 14 out of 42 state senators agreed to cosponsor it. It has taken six years to finally emerge as policy from the governor's and secretary of health's office.
The corporate opposition and the inertia of ignorance against such an effort are incredible.
This battle rages on, specifically in the Board of Pharmacy's consideration of banning aspartame in at least 500 children's medications and vitamins. If parents would only start reading the labels.
The world's largest aspartame and MSG manufacturer, Ajinomoto of Japan, has hired several Washington and New Mexico firms to prevent hearings on aspartame before the Environmental Improvement Board and the Board of Pharmacy.
An educated public cannot be bamboozled, if only the Daily Lobo would occasionally illuminate your readers to the mountain of medical evidence against aspartame, which is too enormous to sweep under the rug.
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Ajinomoto will likely ask for a federal district court writ to deny the five-day Environmental Improvement Board hearings on the grounds that the Food and Drug Administration's approval of aspartame pre-empts all state scrutiny. Ajinomoto's efforts to bludgeon consumer protection will fail if the governor and the attorney general will only rise to the occasion - soon - to defend the health of all New Mexicans by supporting aspartame hearings by both the Environmental Improvement Board and the Board of Pharmacy.
Stephen Fox
Daily Lobo reader
