Ex-Prez Pushes Aspartame

President Clinton and his foundation, along with the American Heart Association, yesterday announced a deal with the three biggest soft-drink companies to pull their products from schools throughout the country. Under this plan, grade school and middle school kids will lose the soda completely from their cafeterias and vending machines, while high schoolers will only be able to get the diet versions of these drinks.

Hmmm. This deal was negotiated by the very model of a modern major heart attack. Do you think having quadruple bypass surgery a year and a half ago makes him more or less believable on this topic?

Think about those poor high schoolers for a moment. Regular soda has sugar, which (in moderation) at least has some nutritional value. Diet soda, which they will literally be forced to drink now, has aspartame (mostly), or saccharine, sucralose, or acesulfame potassium. None of them has any nutritional value, and all of them have either had questions raised about negative health effects or have no long-term studies.

All of this on top of a study a year ago that showed that people who drink diet soda actually gain weight, much more than regular soda! It's enough to make you give and just drink beer.