Aspartame (Nutrasweet)
Aspartame (Nutrasweet) Toxicity Information Center
Aspartame Kills
Aspartame & Aspartame Poisoning Informational Site
Aspartame And Other So-Called “Artificial Sweeteners” News and Articles
What is aspartame?
Aspartame, cause of diseases? Nutrasweet Equal Spoonful Equal-Measure
Aspartame – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aspartame, Nutrasweet – the danger of consumption
Aspartame controversy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aspartame – most dangerous of all artificial sweeteners! (also has information about other artificial/chemical sweeteners)
Animal studies suggest aspartame is toxic to the nervous system. It was shown to cause damage to the brains of infant mice. Approved by the FDA, with a warning label required for those with PKU.

Acesulfame-K (or Acesulfame Potassium)
Acesulfame-K Toxicity Information Center
Life After Aspartame
Acesulfame-K from a college website
Sample Quotes From Cancer Experts’ Letters On Acesulfame Testing
Whole Foods Market: Whole Body: Ingredients: Acesulfame-K
Acesulfame potassium – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Animal studies suggest it may cause cancer and breakdown products shown to be toxic to the thyroid gland. Approved by the FDA.

Cyclamate
Cyclamate Update from the FDA
Cyclamate Controversy
Cyclamate – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Animal studies indicate it causes cancer and may increase the potency of other cancer-causing chemicals. A National Cancer Institute study found that heavy use of blended cyclamate and saccharin was associated with a higher incidence of bladder cancer. Like saccharin, it was created early enough to be considered GRAS at first, so it was likewise not examined until independent non-FDA investigations exposed the possible dangers. It has been banned by the FDA, but may be considered for reapproval.

Neotame
Neotame Toxicity Information Center
Neotame Artificial Sweetener Approved by FDA: But is it Safe? Mindfully.org 7/6/02
For Better or Worse: A Quarterly Commentary
Neotame from the Feingold ADHD dietary management website
Neotame (Near Clone of Aspartame) Now In Spain? The Latest on Nutrasweet
Neotame – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aspartame plus 3-di-methylbutyl, which can be found on the EPA’s list of most hazardous chemicals. Approved by the FDA.

Saccharin
Saccharin
Saccharin – the sugar substitute we’ve all heard about – but how bad is it really?
Saccharin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Animal studies show it can cause cancer of the bladder. Saccharin has also caused cancer of the uterus, ovaries, skin, blood vessels, and other organs. Created early enough to be considered GRAS at first, it was not examined until independent non-FDA investigations brought the potential dangers to light. The FDA required a warning label on it for a while, but it no longer does.

Sucralose
Whole Foods Market: Ingredients: Sucralose
Sucralose Toxicity Information Center
Splenda (Sucralose) Toxicity Exposed
The Potential Dangers of Sucralose: Reader Testimonials
BodyTechnician.com – Splenda Sucralose Causes Pain
Sugar-Free Blues from the Weston A. Price Foundation (also contains information about other artificial chemical sweeteners)
Sugar substitutes and the potential danger of Splenda
Sucralose – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Preapproval data showed evidence for antifertility effects, immune system toxicity, potential mutagenic activity, and fetal edema in offspring. Approved by the FDA.

The Delaney Clause:
“the Secretary of the Food and Drug Administration shall not approve for use in food any chemical additive found to induce cancer in man, or, after tests, found to induce cancer in animals.”
Delaney Clause – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When I wrote the authors about something I thought they left out (the breast cancer and abortion link), one of them wrote me back! It is a good book for detail if you have plenty of time and patience, and I recommend it for its history at least.

- Enjoy the new counter space if you haven’t filled it already! :)

- Unless you need more than a few cups of water, water boils faster in a pot on the stove. If you only need a little for something like instant oatmeal, measure the water and boil it in a pot and you will enjoy not having to wait at least 3 minutes for it to boil in the microwave.

- Get used to automatically looking for conventional oven heating instructions on packaged foods. Yes, you will need to heat it longer, and you usually can’t eat the food in the same food you heat it in, but your body will find it much easier to eat it when it’s been cooked properly. I think the oven doesn’t need as much cleaning as a microwave, too, though I don’t bake a lot of food that tends to spill over.

- If nobody is smoking outside, I usually open a window when I turn on the oven, just so I don’t have to smell the gas as much. You can close it if it’s too humid or cold or it is too noisy outside.

- While your food is baking, you can use that extra time to do dishes or clean your kitchen in other ways – or give your children a few more minutes. You will be pleasantly surprised at how much more often your sink is empty or nearly empty. It is also healthy to eat appetizers so you don’t eat too much of the main meal.

- You can give your food a minute or two to cool after you cook or bake it by serving it and rinsing off whatever you cooked it in (you might need to wear a glove if it is very hot). This should make it easier to clean.

- If you have a dishwasher, don’t be afraid to use it after baking and cooking stuff that is hard to clean in the sink. I like to start it as we’re leaving the house so we have clean dishes when we come home and we don’t have to hear the dishwasher.

- Experiment with different ways to store and heat leftovers. I have been sealing mine in plastic bags and holding them over boiling water, or putting the bag in a colander and keeping that over a pot of boiling water. I just read that I should store my food in glass instead of plastic but right now that isn’t practical as all of my leftover containers and bags are plastic. Plastic leeching onto my food doesn’t worry me as much as teflon, aluminum or unknown effects of microwave heating.

- If you haven’t already, stop buying microwave popcorn. That is a big source of teflon as the bags are lined with it, so I threw our last bag away instead of giving it away. You could have fun experimenting with popcorn that you can pop on the stove if you don’t mind cleaning up the mess if the pot overflows (in spite of you holding the lid on the pot).

- Enjoy being more creative with how you prepare your food. You can make smoothies to share with your children in a blender, or cut up fruit to make a fruit salad so you are still eating raw whole food. You will avoid buying a lot of unhealthy food just by not buying any more food that is made for the microwave. My husband has always heated his ramen on the stove so that didn’t change and he is still consuming MSG, but I hope to give him different options for a bedtime snack soon, like turkey.

- This isn’t related to the microwave but I like to make a batch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, using up most of the whole wheat loaf, and freeze the sandwiches. That way they are ready in the morning to pack as a lunch or snack, and if you are going to pass corners where you are likely to see a hungry needy person, it is something easy to pass through the window. They usually thaw within two hours and still taste great.

- Add your own please…

So to put it short: We cannot email anyone who uses Hotmail, and this is primarily the fault of Microsoft who runs it.

If you’d like a recommendation for a new email service, try GMail. While they have had similar problems in the past, and still have some pretty big issues (such as not allowing disabling spam filters or supporting IMAP), they also support IM from within the web interface and it is much more reliable than Hotmail! Not to mention that you get virtually an unlimited quota for email space.

-Luke

Well, I hope to have solved that “problem”. A few days ago, I started in business as the first server specializing in hosting internet Armagetron games. Hopefully it will turn out to be profitable so I can justify spending time doing more development on the game.

~Luke-Jr

P.S. Thanks for the prayers; we recovered a day or so after the post of our illness.