Big food companies have a new secret weapon aimed right at your kid’s sweet tooth: milk.

Yes, milk. The powerful dairy lobby is pushing the FDA to approve the artificial sweetener aspartame for use in dairy products. The goal is to turn the wholesome drink into another artifical flavor-laden sweet snack.

Hyper-sweet additives like aspartame rewire children’s brains so that they always want sugary foods, turning the kids into tiny consumption machines.1 This constant craving fattens up the food companies’ bottom lines as it fattens up their customers, leading to our current obesity epidemic.

Tell the FDA to say no to hyper-sweeteners in healthy food. Stop aspartame from entering our milk.

For decades, food companies have poured millions into research into creating foods that trick our brain into overconsuming. As obesity has surged and the country has become more health-conscious, the industry has moved into formerly healthy foods, pumping them up with sugar, salt, and fat until they, too become part of the problem.

Aspartame has a particularly sketchy history as an artificial substance. It has long been linked to a host of health issues, and was banned by the FDA before a Reagan appointee rigged a committee to approve it.2 The food industry claims that aspartame helps fight obesity by offering up a low-calorie alternative, but by training the brain to crave sweets, aspartame’s been having the opposite effect. Putting it into milk and serving it up to kids is the last straw. Join us today in telling the FDA no way on aspartame in milk.

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More reading:

[The New York Times: The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food, 20 February, 2013

Federal Register: Flavored Milk; Petition to Amend the Standard of Identity for Milk and 17 Additional Dairy Products, 20 February, 2013