A Special Interview with Dr. Woodrow Monte

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

DM: Dr. Joseph Mercola

DW: Dr. Woodrow Monte

Introduction:

DM: Welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Mercola. Today, I’m joined with Dr. Woody Monte, who

is professor emeritus at Arizona State University in food and chemistry. He is here to join us

today because he has developed.. Perhaps he’s well-known as the world expert with the most

proficiency and understanding some of the toxicities of methanol as it relates to aspartame, one

of the most commonly used artificial sweeteners in the world.

I think you’re going to love the information that he is going to share, because it’s just

fascinating. It has many other implications other than just artificial sweeteners. If you don’t drink

artificial sweeteners and you don’t think you need to listen to this, you better think again because

it’s really important.

Thank you for joining us today, Woody.

DW: It’s a real pleasure to be here, Joe. It’s so nice to meet you.

DM: Why don’t you share with our viewers your professional history, your journey and how you

came to start to study this? Then we can go from there.

DW: Basically, I’ve been a food scientist. My career is food science. Basically, it’s

biochemistry. I’m a major in chemistry and biochemistry. I have a biology background. My

emphasis has always been food and food toxicity. I’ve always been fascinated and my research

has always surrounded the area of what is in food that can possibly be dangerous.

I started out being very interested in sulfiding agents. Michael Jacobson and I – from the Center

for Science in the Public Interest – worked very hard to prevent the federal government from

allowing sulfiding agents to be considered or generally regarded as safe.

DM: When was that worked on?

DW: When did that happen? About 30 years ago.

DM: So, you’ve been doing this for a while.

DW: I’ve been doing this a long time. Yeah, I have been doing this a long time. I love the

concept of food safety, because I believe that the cause of most diseases really can be traced to

food. Some of them are obvious, like the parasites and the bacteria and that sort of thing. Some

of them are much less obvious including the food chemicals. Food chemicals are an interesting

mix of safe and very, very toxic chemicals. That’s just been an interest of mine.

DM: Have you studied the range of food additives?

DW: I’ve lightly studied all the food additives, but I’ve concentrated on just a few. Most of this,

of course, is the [inaudible 2:46] of your career – you start studying one chemical and then

something leads to another. You have to become an expert. It takes a long time to become an

expert.

DM: Sure. At least 10 years.

DW: Yeah, at least 10 years. Right after sulfiding agents, I got involved in aspartame. I was

asked by the soft drink beverage industry to look at aspartame…

DM: This would be the late 70s, mid-70s?

DW: Actually, it wasn’t until ’83. These dates are really important, Joe. Basically, the summer

of ’81 is when aspartame first came out, but it first came out in powdered drinks only and for

good reason.

DM: What do you mean by powdered drinks?

DW: Crystal Light, that kind of thing. They didn’t want to put it into liquid form because they

knew in the liquid form it would break down. What it breaks down into is methyl alcohol and

what’s left of the molecule. They didn’t want to start doing that.

DM: Why don’t we take a step back? Because you know this stuff is so cold. I just want to make

sure that our viewers don’t get lost.

DW: Sure.

DM: In studying aspartame, why don’t we just define what aspartame is composed of – it’s a

dipeptide with a methyl ester.

DW: It’s a very small molecule that contains two amino acids linked together. They are a

dipeptide. One of the amino acid has been modified by adding methyl alcohol to it. The

phenylalanine has methyl alcohol added to it. That bond is called a methyl ester, and it’s very

weak.

DM: Is that bond is what attaches to the other amino acid?

DW: No. It’s bound together as a dipeptide as the body would bond together the normal way.

DM: I thought that the methyl alcohol bonded together, but I guess it doesn’t.

DW: No, it doesn’t. The chemistry is fascinating – all food is – the chemistry is fascinating. The

Japanese (Ajinomoto) developed a method to produce that phenylalanine with the methyl alcohol

attached to it, and then they took that and bound it. That made it very cheap to make – much

cheaper to make. That’s the magic of it.

DM: It was primarily done for commercial industrial purposes attached to methyl alcohol.

DW: Strictly for manufacturing aspartame.

DM: Not for safety.

DW: No, no, no. Safety had nothing to do with this.

DM: Or nutritional quality or value.

DW: Absolutely nothing to do with that. We don’t know what makes things taste sweet. When

you stumble on something that tastes sweet, you got to stick with it. They needed…

DM: Do you think the methyl alcohol – excuse me for interrupting, but…

DW: I know the methyl alcohol…

DM: Caused it to taste sweeter.

DW: Yes. You know why?

DM: No.

DW: Because that’s the big issue. That’s what they’re working with now. You might have heard

that Coca Cola is trying to play with its sweetening blend.

DM: They have neotame.

DW: They have neotame, but they’re also trying to mix other chemicals with it because they’re

losing their sweetness. The only way to make aspartame not taste sweet is merely by having the

methanol fall off of it. The minute it falls off, it’s no longer sweet.

When you taste a diet soda – heaven forbid, you shouldn’t taste it – and it doesn’t taste sweet,

that means that all of the aspartame has lost its methyl alcohol, and the methyl alcohol is floating

around in that liquid. That’s what happens.

DM: As you’ll know by the end of this interview, that should be a major red flag, fire alarm.

DW: Extremely important.

DM: Because that means it’s dissociated into methyl alcohol, and that is just danger on steroids.

DW: Danger on steroids. I believe the most dangerous food chemical there is for a lot of reasons.

DM: That’s a profound statement. Please expand on that.

DW: Methyl alcohol – this is amazing. If you study the history of methyl alcohol – in my book,

for a couple of chapters, I talk about the history of it. Methyl alcohol is made from wood alcohol.

Wood alcohol and methyl alcohol are the same thing. If you take wood and heat it in a closed

cylinder, the smoke that’s evolved from that contains a large amount of methyl alcohol.

DM: Interesting. It’s just intrinsic to the nature of wood.

DW: It’s wood, it’s paper making, all the sort of thing. Every ton of wood chips that are made

into paper produces 44 pounds of pure methyl alcohol. That’s the interesting thing. During the

turn of the century – I mean the century 1800s to 1900s – they came up with a method of taking

this wood alcohol, which is the only you would make it back in those days was by heating wood.

It had a terrible flavor, taste, and smell. They found a way to purify it to make it taste exactly like

ethyl alcohol.

So what happened – this is the fascinating thing, and people who love history or love the history

of science need to go back and look at this literature – is here they had two alcohols. Methanol is

the smallest molecule of alcohol there is. It’s one carbon.

DM: Chemically, it’s just one carbon.

DW: One carbon and ethanol is two carbons. [inaudible 7:59] similar. They are similar in a lot of

ways, except as far as the solvent is concerned, methanol is much better. So, if you want to make

a really, really good tasting vanilla extract, you would use methanol to do it. You could, because

you would get more of the flavor essence out of it.

The food industry decided, “We’ve got to test the methanol to see how safe it is.” They went to

the laboratory and they tested animals. Back in those days, believe it or not, they did actually

better laboratory testing than we did when it comes to toxicology. They would take a whole

range of animals. They would take rabbits, dogs, guinea pigs, various kinds of ruminants besides

rats and monkeys – different varieties of monkeys – and test them all.

When you test all of these animals to see how dangerous methanol is compared to ethanol,

ethanol comes out to be more dangerous by a factor of about 30%, depending on the animal.

Right away they decided this is important because we have methanol – methanol is real cheap to

make. We can make it taste good, and there is no tax on it because ethyl alcohol even back then

was being taxed because of the characteristics that it has.

DM: The mental characteristics.

DW: Yes, the very interesting characteristics. Basically, the exciting thing that happened was –

this is terrible actually. I shouldn’t be smiling about it.

Food and drug companies decided to use methyl alcohol (wood alcohol) to make vanilla extract,

to make orange extract, to make all of the accoutrements that you normally extract with ethanol.

A lot of the companies who were making cough syrup and that sort of thing decided to use

methyl alcohol instead, because it honestly did test out to be safer in the laboratory. All hell

broke loose. All hell broke loose for a period of 25 years to 40 years, depending on what you’re

looking at.

[----- 10:00 -----]

All of a sudden you’ll start seeing these truly emotional articles written by doctors, 50- and 60-

page articles, giving exact details of deaths and blindness, pleading with the food and drug

industry, “Please stop this. There is something wrong with methyl alcohol. It’s killing my

patients. It’s causing blindness.”

DM: When did this occur?

DW: About 1904 and 1905. Wood and Buller, two physicians from this area of the world…

DM: A hundred and ten years ago.

DW: They started writing it in the major medical journals. Then it would go back to the industry,

the industry would do some more testing…

DM: On animals.

DW: On animals. To this day, you can only test on, you know… The only test that’s being done

of methanol on humans is the whole aspartame fiasco. It’s tragic. But anyway, they’re doing it

on animals. Here is the story: there is a major biochemical problem here. Talking to you, I went

also to talk to my colleagues out there in the medical profession, and then researchers.

Methyl alcohol is known now and has been known since 1940 to be differently metabolized by

humans from every other animal. Animals have peroxisomes, which are marvelous structures; in

fact, we all have peroxisomes. Peroxisomes are these little structures. There are a couple of

hundred in every cell of your body that are made to detoxify many chemicals. It has catalase in

it. It has a group of enzymes. It’s a beautiful system.

When methanol enters the peroxisome of every animal except humans, it gets into that

mechanism. There is catalase in there it converts to. This is important: the first chemical that

methanol converts to is formaldehyde. Formaldehyde is extremely dangerous as you know.

Everybody knows how dangerous it is, but it’s in the peroxisome. There are other chemicals in

the peroxisome that will take that formaldehyde and immediately convert it to formic acid.

DM: This is in the animals, not in humans.

DW: In humans, we have the same number of peroxisomes in comparable cells, but our

peroxisomes cannot do that. The methanol bounces off the catalase or bounces off something

there.

DM: It’s not known at this point what it bounces off of?

DW: Not really. It’s still unsure. Pretty most people think – I reference various articles in the

book –it’s the catalase that can’t do it. I talk in the book about it being catalase, but I have little

scientific asides and I mentioned the fact that we’re not sure of this. But no matter, we just know

that the peroxisome can’t handle it.

What happens then is every cell in your body cannot metabolize methanol. Wherein the animal

body, every cell can metabolize and turn it to formic acid, which is safe. Most doctors don’t

believe that formic acid is safe. There is a lot of politics behind that. I’m not going to go into

that. I go into it in my work.

DM: Which is published in your book, which I neglected to mention in the introduction.

DW: My book is called While Science Sleeps. The subtitle is “A Sweetener Kills.” It’s available

on Amazon or whatever.

DM: And there is a Kindle book.

DW: There is a Kindle book. I’ve never seen it in Kindle, but I’m going to soon. Thanks to your

advice. It’s a Kindle book as well.

What happens to the methyl alcohol? That’s the key. In humans, methyl alcohol could just as

easily not be metabolized at all. That would be the ultimate and best outcome, and you could

urinate it away and you would be safe. Unfortunately, there are certain places in the human body

– not every cell in the human body – but there are some amazing locations in the human body,

particularly in the lining of the vessels of the body. These enzymes are distributed statistically –

serendipitously practically – in the blood vessels, especially in the brain.

There are layers where you find this alcohol dehydrogenase. You look at it from a tissue, and

then here we have this alcohol dehydrogenase, which is capable of converting – the only other

enzyme in the body that’s capable of converting methanol into something else, and that is

formaldehyde. And then after it’s converted to formaldehyde, of course, then all hell breaks

loose.

But at any rate, there are only a few areas. I would say 11 areas. I outlined those areas. They are

very important disease-wise. There are areas in the body where we don’t want formaldehyde be

made, but that is where it can happen.

If you look in the cell, you say, what part of the cell is this happening? That’s the key. That

enzyme, the alcohol dehydrogenase, is not associated with any organelle that can handle

formaldehyde. It’s just floating around in the cell. That means that you can convert methanol into

formaldehyde right next to your nucleus. You could do it next to the cell membrane. You could

do it next to an important organelle. And when that happens, when methanol turns into

formaldehyde, you have a methylating monster inside of your cell.

It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to get formaldehyde into the cell otherwise. When you

breathe formaldehyde, it’s so extremely reactive – it reacts with the tissue it first makes contact

with. It’s considered a carcinogen in that case.

DM: It wasn’t always though, right?

DW: No. It wasn’t always.

DM: At least in the United States.

DW: Yes, at least in the United States. The Unites States is always slow to deal with any issues

involving methanol or formaldehyde. There are actually extremely powerful lobbying groups

called the Methanol Institute, The Methanol Foundation, and The Formaldehyde Institute that are

constantly lobbying the government and the Food and Drug Administration to ignore any science

relative to this issue of methanol and formaldehyde. I find this disconcerting, to say the least,

because it’s really hampered research in these areas.

Basically, when you produce this formaldehyde, you’re producing a methylating monster. We’ve

only recently been able to understand how important methylation is to cancer and to life in

general.

DM: Maybe you can expand on it. Essentially, it attaches a methyl group, a CH3 molecule…

DW: Exactly.

DM: To these proteins or…

DW: DNA.

DM: Which is even more dangerous. Maybe you can expand on why that is so dangerous. When

you say a methylating monster, you know what that means, but our viewers don’t.

DW: We’re finding out now that methylation is the key… The epitome uses control, the turning

on and the turning off…

DM: The epitome would be the part of the gene?

DW: Exactly.

DM: That’s responsible for switching the gene on and off.

DW: Yeah. It’s for switching it off actually. Methylation – when you methylate a DNA, it turns

off that DNA. It keeps it from producing that protein. The body does that. You don’t want it

happening by accident. That’s what would happen if you did this.

DM: That methylation is permanent?

DW: Not necessarily permanent, but if it’s not controlled negative. There is a possibility it could

reversed, but it’s difficult to reverse especially if it’s done by accident. We don’t even know that

much about this whole process, but we do know it’s probably the major concern in cancers and a

major concern in autism. Autism is considered to be a disease of methylation. This is what really

concerns me.

Anyway, this is sort of a fascinating thing, but the really fascinating thing about the whole issue

if you stand back from it, here we have a chemical that is a deadly poison to human beings. It’s a

food to animals. It can be found in food, but it’s only rarely found in food. It could possibly

cause some major diseases, not just cancer.

My major concern, of course, is multiple sclerosis. I’ll go into that in great detail. But even other

diseases… One of the major non-food sources of methyl alcohol is cigarette smoke. My feeling

is there is only about 4000 or so chemicals in cigarette smoke. We’ve never looked to find out

which one of those chemical is responsible for causing all these increase in diseases. We know

MS is associated with it. Atherosclerosis is associated with it. Alzheimer’s is associated with

smoking. What’s the chemical that does it? What’s the exact mechanism?

I’m saying, I think we have now is the exact mechanism that causes these things, and now we’ve

got to stop consuming methanol. The wonderful thing about it is it’s not that hard to do. There is

not methanol in a great number of foods. The really fascinating thing about it is the processes

that take natural food and cause the methanol to increase are all food processing techniques and

flavoring techniques that have evolved since 1807, when canning was first developed.

[----- 20:00 -----]

DM: We’ll expand on that in a moment. Just finishing up on the smoking and your speculation

as to what is the most toxic component of it: it gets back to this methanol, which is in wood

products. Paper is part and, I would imagine the leaves that the methanol is in there, and when

you burn it you liberate it as methyl alcohol.

DW: Exactly.

DM: Is it something quantified? How much methyl alcohol is liberated when you consume a

pack of cigarettes a day?

DW: Yeah. Just to [inaudible 20:28] something that people would understand, a pack of

cigarettes… The neat thing about tobacco is tobacco is fermented. When you ferment tobacco in

the field, the kind of bacteria are spoilage bacteria, and that liberates the methanol from the

pectin, which normally we couldn’t liberate. That’s what really makes it high. It’s not just the

smoking process itself, but it’s the way cigarettes are produced, which is fascinating.

Basically, one pack of cigarettes, the methanol produced by that would be equivalent to the

methanol liberated from a liter of diet Coke.

DM: Wow.

DW: Pretty horrifying.

DM: Yeah. That’s an interesting point, too. It didn’t occur to me. The lights are starting to click

on. These bacteria actually make the methanol more available through the fermentation process.

DW: Yes.

DM: Would that occur… Because one of the healthiest foods that I’ve been promoting for the

last year or so is fermented vegetables, which are rife with hundreds of trillions of bacteria.

Potentially that’s a concern. Maybe you could address that.

DW: The key is the kind of bacteria of course. It’s always that. The key is the kind of bacteria.

Tobacco, leaves falling on the ground, soil – it’s rotting bacteria. It’s spoilage bacteria.

DM: Putrefying bacteria.

DW: Putrefying bacteria, exactly. Those are the ones that have methyl esterase that will liberate

it, whereas when you’re fermenting food, you’re attending more to bacteria and yeast types – the

bacteria types that actually produce ethanol. You’re fermenting it. It’s like the difference

between making wine and making vinegar, I guess, to a certain extent.

I talk in my book and I talk personally when I discuss this – let’s just stop consuming methanol.

This is what people don’t understand yet, because we’re talking about maybe one step ahead.

How do you prevent methanol from turning into to formaldehyde?

DM: Good question.

DW: That’s fascinating. I can tell you the story about what would happen if I would like alcohol

or something – I really desperately needed a drink. I’m sure none of the people who are listening

will do this. What they used to do is they would get this product called Sterno. This Sterno used

to be made. It’s too dangerous now. They don’t use methanol for much of anything anymore. We

used to able to use methanol.

DM: That was one of the things that triggered – from your book – the story of how you had the

pocket warmer that you’ve received as a child.

DW: Yes.

DM: That actually used methanol as a fuel and liberated formaldehyde and caused this really

severe rash on your leg.

DW: Exactly. Because it was just all you need. That’s how you make formaldehyde

commercially. You can only make it from ethanol, and use just a catalyst platinum wire. They’ll

just pass it. It’s exothermic.

If you’re an alcoholic and you get some Sterno, rub it on your beard, go to a hospital, and they’ll

see what’s going on. They’ll know that you’ve been sucking on Sterno. They call it squeeze –

you don’t hang around with that crowd, Joe, I know – if you take Sterno and put it in a napkin

and squeeze it to squeeze the methanol out and then you get to the hospital. Immediately the

doctors even before tests were done – because it used to take a while to test for methanol – they

would get them drunk. They would keep that person drunk for maybe three or four days, because

it’s ethanol…

DM: Would they do it by giving them Jim Beam, or they would just do intravenous ethanol?

DW: They would do intravenous ethanol, but sometimes in a crunch, they would buy some

vodka or something and actually dilute it down to 10% solution and then I.V. that. It was just

fascinating. Alcoholics had to hold it. But this is the amazing thing. What’s happening is the

ethanol is preventing the methanol from turning into formaldehyde. That is what makes this

whole story so bad.

DM: And it’s because these adhD (alcohol dehydrogenase) enzymes that you referenced that are

in the endothelium preferentially would prefer to metabolize ethanol over methanol.

DW: By 16 to 1 ratio.

DM: That’s quite a bit. So, if you give them the ethanol, it will sort of plug up the alcohol

dehydrogenase system and then, in the meantime, the methanol as you mentioned earlier just

doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t sit there. It’s constantly being filtered by the kidneys, so it’s

actually excreted and urinated out.

DW: In the lungs…

DM: And sweating, I would imagine too.

DW: And you lose it. Within days they’re safe again. That’s the fascinating thing. This is where

the scientific literature gets… I’m sure there are physicians that listen to your show that I want to

make this very clear to. When you go to the literature and you look up methanol toxicity, you’re

going to see that the literature points to – and this is unjust – to formic acid as the cause of all the

problems associated with methanol poisoning in humans.

The literature will also point to the fact that small amounts of methyl alcohol that are consumed,

that are breathe in, or consumed during the day, that will all be processed by liver. This is not

true.

DM: Do you have any idea how that misinformation came to be propagated?

DW: Yes.

DM: Is it through those institutes you referenced earlier?

DW: Even more important than that, this all happened during the time… All these literature was

published out of a university that had close association with what was then the G.D. Searle &

Company. They were desperate to get approval for aspartame. They had been turned down a

number of times. They had a close association with this university.

DM: So, it occurred early 70s, I would assume?

DW: Exactly, in the 70s. All that work is published in the 70s. These gentlemen did everything

they could…

DM: It is so clever.

DW: It’s so clever. The really sad thing is, here we have this terrible sweetener in the market,

and here we may be covering up the real cause for diseases of civilization, at least a group of

them. It’s tragic.

Number one, the fallacy of the small amount of methanol – doctors know, we all know, that there

is a lot of alcohol dehydrogenase in the liver. As everyone knows when you consume something

that contains methanol or anything, everything gets into the hepatic portal vein and goes right to

the liver for processing. What’s to keep the liver which has quite a bit, probably the largest store

of this alcohol dehydrogenase – what’s going to stop it from just taking care of the

formaldehyde? It does some of it, but for the most part what works against this is the ethanol.

Because of the fermentation going on in our gut, there is always ethanol in the hepatic portal vein

during the day or after people eat, because there is fermentation going on in the gut.

Scientists show this again the book. Scientists have shown that most people, not all the time, but

most people have a little bit of ethanol in their bloodstream. If that’s the case then the small

amount of ethanol that comes from aspartame or whatever will not be metabolized in the liver,

because there is just that little bit of… So what happens is – this is not good – it gets through the

liver completely, the low levels of methanol, and it gets into the circulatory system.

And then we start – I call it musical chairs – that methanol is just continuously circulating around

the body and just waiting until 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning when there is no fermentation going

on to speak of, the ethanol gets to zero in the bloodstream, and then any alcohol dehydrogenase

available gets converted to formaldehyde and there you go. You’ll have that stress.

This whole concept of why is a little bit of alcohol a day – this U-shaped curve of alcohol

consumption – why does this one drink a day statistically seem to protect us from all these same

diseases I’m talking about, including atherosclerosis and Alzheimer’s, you know what they are,

the diseases? How can it possibly be that a little bit of alcohol can be beneficial? It’s because it

just gives you statistically a little bit more time with ethanol in your bloodstream. That’s the

amazing part.

DM: To prevent the damage from methyl alcohol, which really I don’t think I’ve ever seen,

heard, or read anyone speculating that as a mechanism as to why a small amount of alcohol on a

regular basis may be beneficial. Usually it’s ascribed to some of the bioflavonoids or

polyphenolics like resveratrol or some other theories, but this is an interesting one.

DW: An interesting theory. It explains why gin and vodka and other straight forms of alcohol

without these beautiful organic antioxidants have the same effect with regard to that.

[----- 30:00 -----]

That publication – I’m sort of proud of that publication and journal of medical hypothesis a few

years back. I talk about methanol’s effect to produce the inscrutable U-curve. A physician or

somebody with some chemical background or scientific training could read that article and see

exactly where I’m coming from there. I think that’s important. Can I talk about my website?

DM: Sure.

DW: The name of the book is While Science Sleeps, and my website is

www.WhileScienceSleeps.com. I have all those articles. In fact, I have all the articles that I’ve

mentioned in the book – 600 or so articles – are all there for you to read. The articles that I’ve

written on this issue are there free of charge, just for people to take a look at and to verify. I want

people to read the book and I want people to say, “Is Monte interpreting this correctly?”

You can go to that actual article and read it yourself. Excuse me, there are my articles that I’ve

underlined the important stuff and have various things written in this, but that’s okay. I think that

helps people understand it.

DM: It’s still readable.

DW: Yeah, it’s still readable. This is so exciting. The fact that finally there is a possibility that

we found in food a cause for certain diseases. I like the science of it. It just makes sense to me,

and the mechanisms – you’ve read a little bit of the mechanisms – I think they’re believable and

sort of fascinating.

DM: You’ve had this theory out for a while, and I’m wondering what the response in the

scientific community has been. Have other researchers reviewed this and come up with it?

DW: Yes.

DM: Have they given you a hard time? Is there a lot of push back and pressure from these

industries to fight that type of pursuing this path of reasoning?

DW: The really encouraging thing is they wouldn’t fight me. I’ll be glad toe-to-toe them anytime

at any scientific meeting. But they won’t, because the argument is difficult to counter. I’ve been

reviewed by an emeritus professor of chemistry in Canada – a 12-page review of the article. He’s

a chemist. He finds it fascinating. It’s young yet. Talking to you actually is probably the furthest

I’ve got relative to getting it out.

DM: It’s just still a theory, but it seems to make a lot of sense. If it makes sense to people who

are viewing this and they want to act on this… Because one of the approaches I take with this

site and really one of the reasons I started it was to decrease the transition time from the time a

fact is really identified and understood by researchers at your level and then spread and become

widely known and benefit to the large community. Typically, that’s decades, and it’s already

been decades in your case. It’s been decades before it’s known. It’s really not out there.

This is the type of information that I really am delighted to seek out and share with. Because if it

makes sense, what’s the danger of applying this? There is virtually no danger. You’re not doing

anything different. We’re already avoiding what we know are known toxins. I guess the

refinement of this, and it still makes sense because what your recommendations are are just to eat

whole unprocessed foods. You just provide a theory as to why this is more beneficial.

Why don’t you expand on the list of items that if someone believes and understood that methyl

alcohol is something they don’t really want to have in their body, how could you make an

argument to say this is fine?

Before we go into that there was another question. I wanted to have you address this, because

many of your detractors primarily from the food industry would argue with you that… And this

is the counter – the manufacturers of aspartame have countered this. They say, there is methyl

alcohol in fruits and vegetables. Why should it be a problem if it’s in aspartame? Why don’t you

counter that? And then we’ll go into the foods that are a source of methyl alcohol.

DW: The counter – that’s how they really got into the Food and Drug Administration – you can

find methyl alcohol in low levels in fruits and vegetables. In fact, it’s an indication of spoilage in

fruits and vegetables.

DM: The putrefying bacteria.

DW: Putrefaction going on, then you get liberation of methyl alcohol, so it’s a negative thing. If

you have a good whole fruit and vegetable, unspoiled, fresh off the field, the amount of methyl

alcohol in that is extremely low. There is methyl alcohol exuded by leaves and this sort of thing.

It’s part of their process of growing and all that. But the mechanism to get rid of it is there. Just

the fact that there are very small amount of methyl alcohol doesn’t mean…

Here is the important thing, and that is, these diseases are not new diseases. They’re not diseases

that have come from GM. They may be 15 years old. They‘re not diseases that have come from

other chemicals that are 25 years old. These are hundreds of years old. We know that nature has

put it at risk because we have a genetic mutation – we can’t handle methanol. Luckily, in good

safe fresh whole foods, it’s hard to imagine anybody consuming methyl alcohol.

Foragers, for instance, who are just consuming food hand-to-mouth stuff, these are people who

we have known for years who have been free from diseases such multiple sclerosis and these

other diseases of civilization. What’s protecting them is they don’t have the money to have their

food processed for them. They can’t afford a cigarette.

Here is the first thing, canned fruits and vegetables – when you take a fruit and vegetable…

DM: Before we go to the cans, I think you may have left out the fact that the methanol was

bound by pectin. It’s these bacteria that actually break that bond that liberate the methanol.

DW: Yes.

DM: Anyway, it’s an important point. It’s there. It’s just protected and bound.

DW: Yeah. You can find methanol in fruits and vegetables, but it’s bound to pectin. We don’t

have the enzymes anywhere in our GI tract to break the methanol off. We can break the methanol

off of aspartame. It happens in the duodenum.

DM: Is it actually an enzymatic reaction?

DW: It’s not even quite enzymatic. It happens by nature. It happens by pH change. It’s very,

very friable. It’s a very weak bond. The weakest methyl ester I’ve ever seen. Chemically, it

doesn’t want to be there and it wants to liberate methanol. But the pectin bound extremely tightly

– the methanol that is bound to pectin gets through our digestive system and comes out with the

fiber.

DM: It’s excreted. So, there is no danger at all. As long it’s not spoiled and those putrefying

bacteria haven’t had a chance to liberate that methanol, it’s just going to pass right through and

not affect you in any way, shape, or form.

DW: And the few bacteria that we probably do have in our gut that can do that are interested in

needing that methanol. They’re interested in liberating it, so they can turn it into formic acid and

then turn it into carbon dioxide themselves and get energy out of it. They’re doing it for a

purpose – the ones that are in our gut. That’s important.

Here is the situation. This is where food processing – I’m talking very basic food processing. I’m

talking about maybe the first food processing that went on commercially, and that’s canned food.

Canned food was developed by Appert in 1807 for Napoleon to help his army have food during

the winters. He was given an award for this. He developed this process. Initially, he only used it

for like meat, fish, and that kind of thing. When you use this canning process to preserve fish and

meat, there is no problem at all because there is no pectin. It’s just proteins.

DM: Because there is no methanol.

DW: This is safe but, then…

DM: Aside from the actual chemicals that are in the can, the can lining, primarily the phthalates

and BPAs.

DW: Yeah.

DM: Which are separate issues, but still an issue.

DW: Exactly. I’m not a big canned food eater, period. I don’t recommend it. If you can your

own stuff in glass. People ask me this all the time, New Zealand is the big problem. Everybody,

they’re all farmers.

DM: You spend half your year in New Zealand.

DW: I spend half a year in New Zealand. I talk to the MS societies there because I’m trying to

get people with multiple sclerosis to do this diet, to get away from methyl alcohol, because all

the symptoms of methanol poisoning are identical to the symptoms of multiple sclerosis.

But then what happens when you can fruits and vegetables (which started happening in the 1820s

and 1830s when cans were getting cheaper and cheaper to make), you’re imprisoning the pectin

in a sealed container. When you do that at room temperature over a period of time, the methanol

is liberated. In a month, 10% of the methanol is liberated. Cans can stay on the shelf for six

months, but by then all the methanol is liberated.

[----- 40:00 -----]

You’re building up methanol in the ca,n and so these diseases of civilization…

DM: How does that occur? Because there is no bacteria in there – otherwise it would be spoiled.

DW: No bacteria but…

DM: It just dissociates with time?

DW: That’s the fascinating thing about these one-carbon molecules. It happens with methanol,

and it happens with formaldehyde. They come and they go. They attach and they unattach. They

just have no residence. There are tremendous strains on the bonds that it forms. Even though they

can be strong bonds, they still have an element of temporality. One-carbon chemistry is

fascinating and confusing. There are not many experts in it.

But methanol, the pectin bond can break. The thermo energy involved even at room temperature,

there is a lot of motion going on. After a period of a month, that’s a tremendous amount of

energy. They’ll just split off. It’s real interesting.

It happens with diet soda in a lot less time than that. All the diet soda that was sent to the Arab

countries during the war and all that sort of thing – those poor people were drinking that stuff

and had no sweetness at all, just a lot of methanol because of just staying in that 120-130 degrees

for just a few days. And they knew it would release methanol. They should never have sent that.

DM: Who is “they” now?

DW: Donald Rumsfeld and that crowd. Aside from this, the canning process does liberate it.

This is the fascinating thing.

DM: And as you mentioned, it could be a glass jar. It’s just called canning as a colloquial term

of preserving food in a container.

DW: I’m glad you mentioned that. Tetra Pak, those aseptic containers, it’s the same thing.

You’re imprisoning a chemical reaction. The chemical reaction is producing an alcohol that is

very volatile. When you cook food, yeah okay, the pectin may release a little methyl alcohol. But

where does it go? It disappears. It’s out of Chicago in no time.

DM: Because it’s a one-carbon alcohol, it’s highly volatile.

DW: Highly volatile, yeah.

DM: It’s just escapes into the atmosphere.

DW: That’s what I recommend. There are only two fruits that I warn people about. One of them

is black currants. Black currants are really high in methyl alcohol. I say just stay away from it,

stay away from the juice of black currants.

That’s what the Food and Drug Administration would always use against me. There is as much

methanol in black currant juice as there is in aspartame and diet soda. So they would say me,

see…I said, you tell me if somebody is going to drink two liters of black currant juice a day

Believe me, I’ll give up.

DM: Which is loaded with enormous beneficial polyphenols and antioxidants, but they don’t

protect you against methyl alcohol toxicity.

DW: No, they don’t.

DM: In any way, shape, or form, because the only way to do that is to prevent the alcohol

dehydrogenase in the blood from causing that to detoxify or metabolize.

DW: Or in the actual cells. Take a look at the table on my chart of the actual areas where this

alcohol dehydrogenase is located. It’s just so stunning to see what diseases could be associated

with this. Because formaldehyde – here is the amazing thing. Let me go that way a little bit. I

know I’m being a little – I’ll come back anytime.

DM: There is so much information it’s hard to figure out how to tackle it.

DW: Yeah, I know. What does the formaldehyde do? I’m talking about multiple sclerosis. You

say multiple sclerosis is sort of an autoimmune disease, behaves sort of a like an autoimmune

disease. How can methanol cause this? The formaldehyde is what causes it. When formaldehyde

attaches to a protein (which it always does)… You can inject formaldehyde into it.

DM: Is it formaldehyde itself attaching or is actually methylating?

DW: No. This is the fascinating thing. This is really a bit complex. I try to use different tricks to

teach it.

DM: With the bird and hawk analogy.

DW: Yeah, the birds and the hawks and all, because this formaldehyde is so amazing. It can do

so many different things. It’s so powerful. We’re not really talking about just one molecule;

we’re talking about two molecules. Because there is the acid form of formaldehyde and the basic

form of formaldehyde. That happens when you add it to water. It turns into a monster. It turns

into a monster that’s both acid and basic. The acid form is predominant.

The protein we’re worried about multiple sclerosis is this myelin basic protein. Here we have this

monster molecule that’s looking for a base to attach to as an acid. It attaches temporarily to the

myelin basic protein and then 400 million years ago, life decided that formaldehyde could be

dangerous. Life uses formaldehyde.

If you go to The Formaldehyde Institute – heaven forbid that you get your science from The

Formaldehyde Institute – you go there, they’ll say the human body produces quite a bit of

formaldehyde. It does, but it’s very carefully controlled and it’s used for specific things mostly in

the nucleus. It knows exactly how to use it. But if it ever got away, it will destroy proteins. It will

take the protein that’s an enzyme and keep it from working. It will modify a protein and that will

be harmful.

DM: Will it shut off the gene?

DW: Yes. What the body did 400 million years ago is develop this amoeba-like structure, the

macrophage. The macrophage is a white blood cell that’s in our body that looks around for

things that are dangerous and devours them. We find them in a lot of these autoimmune diseases.

You take slides of the disease, and you see the macrophage with your tissue inside of it and

vacuoles and pieces of myelin. So, it’s eating us. It’s an inflammation, we call it.

What’s causing this macrophage that mostly does good for the human body? What causes it to do

harm? It has on its outer membrane a site specifically for formaldehyde-modified protein.

Because 400 million years ago, nature decided that this was a dangerous phenomenon, and

whenever a formaldehyde molecule escape from the normal mechanism and it modified a

protein, that protein was no longer any good.

Here you go; this is what starts this process. You modify one of your proteins with

formaldehyde, and here comes the macrophage and devours it. We use this to make vaccines. It’s

a proprietary method that every vaccine company knows of. They just modify the virus or the

bacterial protein or whatever with formaldehyde – just a little bit, just a touch. And then they

inject it into the body as a vaccine, and then there is 10 to 100 times greater chance of producing

antibodies against it.

DM: It’s an adjuvant process.

DW: Yes, exactly. Would you want that happen to the inside of your body to your protein?

Wouldn’t that be a mechanism to set your protein up for a true autoimmune reaction? That’s I

believe what’s going on here. Number one, we’re destroying the protein that’s been modified. In

the case of MS, it would be myelin basic protein, which would attract formaldehyde. My chapter

on multiple sclerosis…

DM: It’s fascinating.

DW: It’s free on the website.

DM: When I first became aware of your material, as I suspect most people would be – the

thought is since formaldehyde is so toxic you would think…

I was thinking back at my own experience spending a whole year in an anatomy lab in medical

school, dissecting a cadaver. My question to you was: isn’t this even more toxic than methyl

alcohol? But it turns out it isn’t, because we have the mechanism to detoxify, as you just

mentioned, formaldehyde externally, unless it’s in massive concentrations. So that it never gets

into the body. But the methyl alcohol’s stealth; it’s almost like a Trojan horse. It slips by, goes

past the blood brain barrier…

DW: Right past the blood brain barrier.

DM: The blood brain barrier does not stop methyl alcohol. It just slips right through because of

its size primarily, I would imagine.

DW: And it’s inert.

DM: And it’s inert. So, it just goes right through and there it finds alcohol dehydrogenase and

you got formaldehyde. You have destruction of myelin basic protein, which is one of the triggers

for MS. We know it’s diagnostically and pathognomonically that if you have this myelin basic

protein destruction around the nerves, that’s sort of pathognomonic for MS.

DW: And it’s a perivascular disease. In the old days, the people who discovered the disease,

Charcot and those gentlemen, Dobson, they looked at it and they said, “This is a toxic

substance,” or “This is a substance oozing from the vessel lining.” They looked, they looked they

couldn’t find.

All they knew is that methanol is a perfectly safe molecule, safer than ethanol. They didn’t know

formaldehyde existed because it wasn’t discovered yet. They had all this working against them,

and then finally, we got to the point where every brain from a cadaver is dumped in a potion of

formaldehyde and then studied. That’s fascinating.

[----- 50:00 -----]

The fact that it’s perivascular – they can’t figure this out. There are axons going this way and this

way, and here is a vessel. They’re affected just when they get close to the vessel. It’s as if

formaldehyde is oozing out of that vessel and slowly but surely destroying all the basic protein.

And that’s what it’s doing.

DM: Why don’t we just step it back a bit to make it simplistic to help people understand the

reasons why aspartame might be causing these types of diseases. Why don’t you review some of

the primary symptoms of methyl alcohol poisoning (methanol poisoning), the signs of aspartame

reactions, and the signs of MS. I think once people find the similarities, the lights start to go off.

DW: Exactly. I’m going to set them into categories, because it’s better to look at them in

categories. We know that methyl alcohol is known to be a demyelinating agent. We don’t know

why. In general, it’s accepted as a demyelinating agent. You have the symptoms associated with

the demyelination, and they’re identical between multiple sclerosis and methanol poisoning and

people who consume aspartame. If you look at the study that the Food and Drug Administration

did just looking at anecdotal reports, they’re all identical.

Beyond that (and this is even more interesting and more important) is one thing that we know

that formaldehyde does and does better – or let’s say worse perhaps than anything else – is it will

stop the production of ATP by the mitochondria. It will damage the mitochondria. Formaldehyde

will basically turn off or temporarily turn off the enzymes that cause the production of ATP.

There is a whole bunch of symptoms associated with this that are similar especially with multiple

sclerosis. These are amazing and unusual visual phenomena that occur. There is a whole layer of

alcohol dehydrogenase. We call it retinase that’s associated with the retina that is responsible for

helping produce vision. There is a whole layer of that enzyme. It’s called by a different name in

the retina.

If you’re consuming methanol – methanol is known to turn you blind drunk. It comes from

people who consume methanol. An amazing thing about the blind drunkenness is in 75% of the

cases you get recovery. How can you produce blindness and then recovery if you’re not turning

off mitochondria that are required for the visual effect – so immensely required for the visual

effect in the retina, and cut it down and all of a sudden not only you go blind, but you’ll go blind

slowly. First, your color vision will go. The colors that require more ATP than the others will go

first.

Basically, what you’re doing is causing a reduction in ATP in that particular organ, layering it

and then eventually allowing – if not too much damage has been done… Like I say, 20% of

people that are methanol poisoned will go blind forever. But if some of the mitochondria is still

alive, they’ll come back over a period of months or weeks and you’ll get your vision back.

The same exact thing happens in multiple sclerosis – unexplainable. It has nothing to do with

demyelination. Where does that come from? This is a phenomenon of ATP. People with methyl

alcohol poisoning, of course, have all those symptoms, all the strange bizarre visual symptoms –

strange vision, strange color disappearances, and stuff like this. And they can come back from it.

You don’t see that in anything else besides methanol poisoning and multiple sclerosis. That’s

really fascinating.

DM: I don’t know for certain, but I’ve heard and have been told that many pilot associations

forbid pilots from consuming diet drinks for this very reason.

DW: I’ve heard that, too, Joe. I can’t prove that.

DM: But it would seem to make sense.

DW: Yeah.

DM: Because the last thing you want is for your pilot to have a seizure [inaudible 54:40].

DW: MIT showed pretty clear with some of their work that there is a possible association with

seizures. We’re seeing more and more, and finally aspartame is being uncovered as a potential

cause for things that we never thought it could possibly have any problems with.

My bent has always been, I’ve always been concerned with the methyl alcohol because of its

unique properties and for the fact that it’s more poisonous to humans and it can’t be tested. All

the animal tests on aspartame that has been done are useless tests. There is a way of testing

methyl alcohol in animals, but it’s tedious. You have to saturate that animal with methyl alcohol,

saturate the peroxisomes with methyl alcohol, and then just hope.

DM: It’s one of the reasons it got to this point, because the models they are using to test safety

just don’t work for humans. It’s a central point of the message.

I’m wondering if this ATP or mitochondrial toxicity with a limited production of the ATP, if

there is an antidote. This is a decrease that we see that’s typically associated with aging. It starts

in the mid-20s or so. One of the reasons why we’re such a strong promoter of the use of

ubiquinol as a supplement is that our body doesn’t make enough. The major function of

ubiquinol is to improve mitochondrial production of ATP. It’s one of its major benefits. Do you

know if it has been looked at at all with respect to methanol and formaldehyde toxicity?

DW: I’m sure none of this has been looked at the way it should be looked at.

DM: Does it make sense?

DW: It makes sense to me. The important thing is, you’re talking about… When people ask me,

“How do I undo the damage done by methanol?” You can’t undo the damage done by methanol.

You can stop the consumption of it and let the body heal itself. The fast things that will heal are

the most obvious symptomology, the peristalsis, the demyelinating things, because myelin grows

back. The mitochondrial thing sometimes takes months.

DM: But it may be speeded up with ubiquinol.

DW: It could be easily. I just can’t wait to stimulate people to start doing research in this area,

because it’s so exciting. The fact that methanol is – it’s not just aspartame. It’s very hard. The

hardest thing is the canned fruits and vegetables, and they’re buying it. The hardest thing is for

people to give up tomato sauce.

DM: Before we go there, I want to thank you first of all for all the work you’ve done over your

career. You’re basically in retired mode now. You’re not doing active research. It’s the time to

pass the torch to these young researchers. Hopefully, some of them will see this, get motivated,

and actually do the documentation we need to further confirm this.

In the meantime, we started previously to talk about the foods. Why don’t you expand on the

foods? Because if someone believes this is true – and as I said, there is virtually no cost – there is

no harm, there is no damage to apply this information. There may be some small refinements

with the canned foods, which is important and is just going to move you towards a healthier diet

anyway. Why don’t you expand on it? You mentioned black currants and started to talk about

tomato sauce.

DW: Just in case you don’t have time for all this, let me just say that free of charge on my

website, the Monte Diet, WhileScienceSleeps.com. Just go there and download a PDF file. It’s

four or five pages that will explain what I’m going to explain right now, but in much more detail.

People who are really serious can just look at that. I say this whole thing is a doable thing.

DM: Highly recommended if you have any autoimmune disease like MS.

DW: Definitely.

DM: There is also Crohn’s disease. There is rheumatoid arthritis.

DW: Some of them I can’t…

DM: But it’s the same process. Fundamentally it’s an autoimmune process. There is a clear,

strong suggestion and scientific support that methanol might play an important role in this

toxicity, or at least in the etiology of the causes.

DW: Exactly.

DM: It doesn’t make sense not to use it as a tool.

DW: Exactly. Like I said it’s so easy. If your autoimmune disease is associated, if there is a

negative association with cigarette smoking and it’s found to be responding to the U-shaped

curve, then it’s probably associated with methyl alcohol.

DM: So, the first part is stop smoking.

DW: You have to.

DM: Who can argue with you on that one?

DW: Don’t live with somebody who is smoking.

DM: Secondhand smoke is also a problem.

DW: Secondhand smoke can be just as bad. So the food, what’s the food? Probably the only

food that is may be older than canning is smoked foods. I say in the book – I’ll give you some

flexibility here. You can’t go crazy about this. You can have a taste of smoked salmon every

now and then. It’s no big deal. I’m aiming this sort of at people from Scotland, where they have

smoked food at every meal, where they have canned preserves, where they have the highest

incidence of multiple sclerosis in the entire world.

The way that they smoke food in Europe in those traditional methods – it’s called hot smoked

method, where they’re producing smoke in one chamber and all that smoke is condensing on the

food. You can open up some of those smoking chambers and see liquid dripping off the fish or

the meat. That’s methyl alcohol. I’m sure that’s why these areas have such extremely high levels

of multiple sclerosis.

[----- 1:00:00 -----]

DM: Some other people would speculate, because it’s pretty well-established the connection

between sunlight and vitamin D. It’s also a big issue. If they have a northern climate like that,

they’re not going to have a lot of opportunity to get naturally occurring vitamin D through

exposure of the skin to the sun. I’m sure they connect to something. That’s probably a

fascinating…

I’ve just interviewed Dr. Stephanie Seneff from MIT. She has some phenomenal theories on why

this may be. Actually, that vitamin D itself orally may not provide the benefit against

autoimmune disease. It really has to be from the sun. It has to do with the sulfate and the

cholesterol sulfate and vitamin D sulfate, and how they form an intrinsic and important role in

protecting against these components. It actually may be responsible for mediating this effect.

DW: You want to hear an interesting story, which I’ll tell you? This is in that same area. The

Shetland Islands has the highest incidence of MS next to Scotland. There is a little group of

islands called the Faroe Islands. They are at the same area. Faroe Islands are notorious in the

multiple sclerosis literature because this group of islands is populated by the same people –

Scottish islands, Shetland Islands – the same genetic background. They’re all basically Vikings

that came down and populated these areas.

Yet there is a highest incidence of MS in the world in Scotland and Shetland just about, and the

Faroe Islands for years never had one case. They had done unusually careful studies constantly

going on of the diseases in their population. All of a sudden, the British troops got to these

islands and they started getting multiple sclerosis. They were speculating there was a sexually

associated disease and all these sort of things.

Nobody looked at the food supply, except one guy, Locke, about 20 years later. He looked at the

food supply. He didn’t know about methyl alcohol and all this, but he noticed one thing – this is

really fascinating. Scotland and Shetland – in fact, Shetland Islands, they have a way of smoking

fish. They love smoked fish. They smoke all their fish. They also use peat to smoke their fish.

Peat has got three times as much methanol in it in the smoke.

The Faroe Islands have no trees, so they never smoked fish. They air-dried all their fish. He

wanted to look at that and said, “Isn’t that amazing?” They’re air drying their fish and these

people are smoking fish – to see the difference in methyl alcohol.

What happened when the British came over… What did the British bring over? They noticed

also the areas where the methyl alcohol was in the Faroe Islands, because they did such a

detailed study of it – areas where the troops were. What did the troops bring with them? Of

course, cigarettes, the canned preserves, that kind of thing, which would have been of enormous

pleasure to these island people. Nobody has ever really looked at that and quantitated it, when

they could have quantitated early on.

The doctors that were there said it can’t be a toxic thing, because when the troops left the disease

lingered. But the same scientists said, “But look, they have changed their food habits.” They’re

importing now some of the things that the troops brought with them. They are importing

preserves. They are importing cigarettes. Those kinds of things. That’s the fascinating thing.

The smoking thing is important, and the way it’s smoked and all. I would not worry if I was

consuming bacon in the United States because we use so little smoke with that. But traditionally,

smoked food. Be careful of canned fruits and vegetables.

DM: Again, canning – not necessarily a metal can. It could be a glass or the Tetra Pak. It’s just a

colloquial term for preserving food in a container.

DW: Let’s look at this way. Maybe this is a better way for it. Think of the natural way. In the

book, I say I wouldn’t trust fresh fruits juice unless I was making it myself or I was watching

somebody make it. You brought up the question, you make your own fruit juice…

DM: Well not fruit juice, vegetable juice. There is a big difference there – green vegetable juice.

We put a lime in there, because the fruit juice is loaded with fructose and when you liberate it

from pectin it’s a big issue.

DW: Good for you.

DM: Just because of the hassle factor, it may take an hour to juice, clean up, prepare and then get

everything and wash it. It may be a half-hour, but it still takes some time. Sometimes I like to do

it in bulk. But when we do that, we vacuum pack it immediately, so there is no air. It shouldn’t

be an issue for the methanol.

DW: That would actually take any residual methanol. It would just come right out of the

vacuum. It’s amazing.

DM: We vacuum pack it, and then we immediately refrigerate it. We lower the temperature at 39

degrees Fahrenheit.

DW: And that’s a perfect way to do it. That’s more natural.

DM: That’s probably good for a few days with minimal liberation of methanol.

DW: If you want to keep it a little bit longer, you could freeze it. Frozen fruits and vegetables,

no problem.

DM: Because there is not enough thermodynamic energy in the environment to liberate that

bond.

DW: Exactly. You just reduce it down. And it does, it takes a while. You don’t know how long

juice has been in Tetra Pak. This whole increase in multiple sclerosis and these other diseases

I’ve shown in the book really started a little bit before aspartame, but that’s when we started

giving these companies an out for their old juice concentrates. People thought juice is good.

Remember, they started back before even aspartame – they started putting 10% juice, and then

pretty soon it was all juice. They’re putting them in prison. They keeping it at room temperature;

the pectin stays there. It liberates and it stays in that container, and that’s the subtle cause. It

wasn’t until aspartame came along where we were actually adding considerable amounts of

methanol four to 10 times, 20 times more methanol than you would find in any liquid that you

could consume and adding that to [inaudible 1:06:11].

DM: That is a good point that you bring up. You have these naturally occurring, raw, organic

fruit juice that’s stored at room temperature. It has about 1/20th

the amount of methanol that’s

normally bound to the pectin that’s liberated as the equivalent amount of diet soda (aspartame)?

DW: Yes.

DM: In much smaller amount.

DW: It’s not smaller but it’s still there. This means a lot, too. I think the people of this world that

are most sensitive to methyl alcohol are people who exhibit symptoms of multiple sclerosis. To

them, when I lecture to them, everything is forbidden – no Tetra Pak juice, nothing.

DM: So, take it to the extreme.

DW: Yeah, you to take it to the extreme.

DM: Really, it seems to me this is a significant public health issue. I would just hope some

researchers get out and do the hard work and document this, so we can change our food policy.

We are allowing toxic levels of a toxin that’s not really appreciated as a toxin. It’s not even

assayed for.

DW: And it’s downplayed because of the tremendous amount of lobbying and the huge amount

of money from these ridiculous organizations. What the heck! I get mad when I see lobbying

groups that are just made to do harm. I mean, the Methanol Institute is just shameful.

DM: Unfortunately, it is one of the negative side effects of a free market capitalistic society.

They are allowed to persist. It’s just under the guise of freedom. Ideally, if something is known

to be a toxin… One of the other roles of government is to protect the public.

DW: The Food and Drug Administration has a clear mandate. They could step in right now and

do what has to be done. The first thing that has to be done, the worst source of methanol, by far,

is aspartame. In the book, I show clear associations with increases in these diseases, including

liver cancer, over that period of time. It’s unbelievable.

But that’s just the icing on the cake. It’s the science that’s key – the science that shows the

mechanism that this could possibly be happening. And then you go into nature and life and take a

look at… We’re just very, very lucky to have the numbers that I have from aspartame

consumption in the United States, where we’re able to link those two things together as I have.

It’s just horrifying.

DM: As a really true expert in aspartame toxicity, I’m wondering… Because we’re all – at least I

do, I’m particularly interested in the mechanism. You pretty carefully described the methanol

issue. I’m wondering if you compared it to the others – the dipeptide. We got these other two

amino acids. Is it your speculation that nearly all the toxicity from aspartame consumption is

related to methanol?

DW: Yeah, except for the issue with PKU, multiple allele, partial allele. Those people have

problems with the amino acids. I do believe that, Joe, because I think…

DM: The other argument is that – I mean, there is no direct toxicity from amino acids by

themselves. I’m not a big fan of single amino acid supplementation. I don’t recommend it. If

you’re going to take an amino acid, take it as part of a food. You’re getting these amino acids

that are in very high concentrations, especially if you take a lot of them, and it tends to disturb

some very important ratios. These ratios get disturbed, and that can also trigger the symptoms.

But with respect to – that’s easily reversible. They’re not shutting off DNA. They’re not causing

permanent methylation of these proteins and causing enzymes to stop working.

[----- 1:10:00 -----]

That is a more serious issue. It would seem fair from your assessment that most toxicity is from

methanol.

DW: Yeah, I believe so. I don’t want to take anything away from the people who have spent

their lives looking at these amino acids, because I think there are some important issues there.

But I think as far as the toxicity, the poisoning – well, we know methanol is a poison. We’ve

known it for years. It’s there. Every molecule of aspartame always in the human body produces a

molecule of methanol. There is no way to stop it.

DM: There is just no justification to ever drink diet soda or consume aspartame. I wrote a book

called Sweet Deception on the whole issue of these sweeteners.

DW: I’ve read that.

DM: My conclusion is that aspartame is clearly the most toxic. It’s the top of the list.

DW: That’s why I’m here.

DM: Have you looked at , which is one of the newer alternatives? I guess that would be an

interesting sub-question of aspartame toxicity.

DW: I shouldn’t even comment on it. I haven’t studied it that well, Joe.

DM: But it’s probably the same issue. Is it the phenylalanine?

DW: It has the methyl alcohol.

DM: If it has phenylalanine with methyl alcohol, it’s going to be liberated.

DW: It’s going to be liberated. The only saving grace with it – I don’t want to encourage

anybody consume any kind of artificial sweetener. But the only saving grace is you need less.

That’s the key. We’re using a lot of methyl alcohol to make these carbonated beverages sweet by

using aspartame. This is the danger now. The danger is now. The danger wasn’t too many years

ago. The danger is now, because now aspartame is so inexpensive. Ajinomoto makes it so

cheaply…

DM: That is the new company that owns the patent? I guess it’s out of patent, isn’t it?

DW: It’s out of patent. Ajinomoto was there from the beginning…

DM: But they’re the primary manufacturer and they’re in Japan?

DW: Yes. They are the ones that give me the most trouble. If Ajinomoto is listening, I would

love to have a debate with any of their scientists, public or private, and just convince them of

what they’re doing is harmful. Basically, they were involved from the very beginning. They

helped G.D. Searle how they could make it inexpensively. Now they’re making it so cheaply.

Basically, it’s cheaper to sweeten carbonated beverages with aspartame than it is sugar…

DM: Even high-fructose corn syrup?

DW: Even high-fructose corn syrup.

DM: Which is a lot cheaper than sugar to begin with.

DW: Exactly. That’s why they’re pushing it. Especially in New Zealand, they’re trying to

change the laws, so that when a citizen goes to a burger bar in New Zealand and asks for a Coke,

they can automatically give them a diet soda. They have to ask specifically for classic blah, blah,

blah, whatever it happens to be, because the companies are pushing it.

In the United States, it’s particularly important, because in the United States we have sugar that’s

more expensive. So, it’s five times – they’re making five times the amount of money by selling

the Diet. You used to see occasionally carbonated beverages that were bragging about not

containing aspartame, and now they’re…

DM: That’s disappeared. [inaudible 1:13:22] of my book.

DW: Yes.

DM: There was this transition. Because there was a lot of concern about aspartame, but they’ve

been very effective at addressing that concern, and now people aren’t aware of it. It’s pervasive.

I’m known for my work on helping people understand the toxicity from fructose and high-

fructose corn syrup. It’s a problem not so much because it’s much different from sugar – high-

fructose corn syrup only is 55% fructose, and sugar is 50%. It’s not a big difference. The primary

concern was that it was so cheap it was being put in all these different foods. But aspartame is

even cheaper and it’s even more pervasive, especially these flavored waters.

I’ve noticed, if you go to a grocery store – everyone knows drinking water is healthy and good

and wants to drink water. They’re concerned about the fluoride and the chloride and the

disinfection byproducts, so they’re starting to get bottled water. Well, let’s get water taste a little

better. Almost all those flavored waters, they have artificial sweeteners in there and typically

aspartame. They don’t say this in big labels. Typically, in my experience, it’s in font that is about

2 point font. You almost need a magnifying glass to read.

DW: It’s horrifying.

DM: It’s legal. It’s there, but they’re not going to tell you about it. You have to do your

homework. You have to be very careful.

DW: I haven’t found a gum – I’m not talking about sugar-free gum – I haven’t found a gum in

the United States of America that does not have aspartame in it.

DM: That is a profound statement. I’m not a big fan of chewing gum anyway, because of

artificially stimulating digestion unnecessarily. But that is a powerful statement. If you’re

chewing gum be sure and read that label, and get a magnifying glass, of course, because you

won’t be able to see it without it.

DW: They’ve got it all in now because it prolongs the sweetness. I have not found one gum – I

don’t chew gum at all, but people ask me.

DM: So, this is in your Monte Diet, staying out of the chewing gum?

DW: I put it: stay away from gums. The new one I did says that all chewing gums in the United

States contain aspartame.

DM: A really important point. There is so much great information here. We have to tendency to

go off with these tangents. They’re important tangents, but they’re tangents nevertheless. Let’s

go back, I started talking about the foods that are high in methyl alcohol. If you can expand on

that and give people an alert on why they may want to reconsider their position on consuming

these foods.

DW: The good news is it’s a very short list and very easy. Any kind of imprisoned fruit and

vegetable that’s not fresh – the juice of that – there you go. Stay away from any kind of spoiled –

by spoiled I mean strawberries that are too soft and looking a little weak. Don’t make them into

juice because you would think it would be a good way to do it. It would be loaded with methyl

alcohol. Cut off rotten…

DM: That is a very important point. It sort of makes common sense to do that, but some people

don’t. You would think just superficially that there is not a big issue with the bacteria, but who

would have known that it’s those bacteria that actually cause the toxicity through methyl

alcohol?

DW: Exactly.

DM: So, be really assiduous at removing any decayed parts from your vegetables.

DW: Definitely.

DM: That doesn’t necessarily go for cheeses, which don’t have obviously. But cheeses that tend

to…

DW: Not at all.

DM: It’s not a big issue.

DW: I had a big debate. It was funny – a guy who is a food scientist who is working for the

NutraSweet company – we would years and years ago got into a debate. I respected the guy who

is an expert in cheese. He said, next you’re going to want to take cheese off the market. This was

an interview that was live. He said, “Cheese has methanol.” I said, “You got me there. I’ve never

heard of it.” That was the end of the interview. I went back to my laboratory – he gave me the

reference and I looked it up and yes, two metric tons of cheddar cheese would have the

equivalent of the methanol content of one can of diet soda.

DM: Most people won’t be eating two metric tons in their lifetime.

DW: Two metric tons, you’ll have other problems.

DM: [Laughs]

DW: Plant juice should be fresh. That’s what make it wonderful and great not only because of

the fact that it doesn’t have methanol, but because you have all these bacteria that are going to be

beneficial for you as well. I think that’s really good. If you put it in a refrigerator for a couple of

days that’s fine. Freeze it is fine for a month or so. Freeze it for as long as you want. That’s not a

problem.

Smoked foods, we’ve discussed that. The gums, any kind of diet product, and some unusual

liqueurs. I only mentioned it in the book because again, there are just a handful of foods, it’s so

easy to know. But some of these slivovitzes and some of these – I call them cold liqueurs.

In Europe, they’re very frugal. They have fruit trees. Some fruit lands on the ground they can’t

sell it as fruit. They collect all that fruit. It’s got spoiling bacteria. They throw it into a vat. At the

end of the season that vat is processed into slivovitz, into schnapps, into that kind of thing.

Really, traditional of these are the worst.

Some of them are so high in methyl alcohol they can’t even be imported into the United States.

They’re up to 2% methyl alcohol. This is something you got to be careful of, because it’s just a

bad technique. Again, these countries are the same countries that have a high incidence of

multiple sclerosis and have for eons.

DM: It’s actually another point as to why commercial fruit juices are a problem, because you

don’t know what type of fruits they are juicing.

DW: I know. I did some consulting.

DM: A lot of it could be spoiled and full of methanol.

DW: I won’t tell the name of the company because I was consulting with them, but I was doing a

project with the juicing. All I saw coming in was mostly with holes in it sometimes half the size

of the fruit. They go through it and they process it, and then they put it through a [inaudible

1:19:52] filter like a swimming pool to get all the discoloration and that sort of thing out of it.

DM: But it certainly doesn’t get the methanol out.

[----- 1:20:00 -----]

DW: Nothing.

DM: Would an RO (reverse osmosis) filter get methanol out?

DW: No.

DM: It would pass right through an RO filter?

DW: It’s too small. It’s smaller than water.

DM: That’s right. If water is going to get through, methanol will.

DW: That’s what’s so horrifying – I mean, having a chemical that can turn into formaldehyde. It

can get in any place in your body in 20 minutes.

DM: That’s a profound statement.

DW: Or the fetus in 20 minutes. The placenta has no alcohol dehydrogenase, but the fetus

develops it, especially in the brain. Of course, you know formaldehyde – no way. It might get

into the blood, and immediately it attaches to the albumin, and then the macrophages

immediately devour that albumin it causes the formaldehyde to modify.

DM: Are there any other foods, or is that pretty much tied up?

DW: Honestly, isn’t that amazing? It’s not hard.

DM: I know we had talked about tomato sauce, which you typically buy in a can. Most people

don’t take tomatoes and make tomato sauce out of them. And it’s loaded with methanol,

absolutely loaded with it.

DW: Absolutely loaded with it.

DM: But why isn’t it a problem for most people?

DW: Because the people who make it in traditional ways, they bubble it and broil it and simmer

it for a couple of hours, and the first thing that comes out it’s mixed with water in the steam, but

it’s the methanol that is removed. That’s what I recommend. It’s just fine. You can have tomato

sauce. Don’t just heat it up; take it out of the jar and heat it up, because then you’re…

DM: You actually have to go through the preparation, because some of these… I don’t use them,

but there are pre-prepared sauces that you could literally just warm it up and probably put in your

microwave and put it right over your pasta. How could you think of a more toxic meal – pasta

and tomato sauce? But anyway, a lot of people do that. If you understand the biology and the

chemistry of it, you can make some wise choices to limit your exposure to these toxins.

DW: Right. Because when you’re cooking it yourself – when you’re cooking tomatoes and

you’re simmering – the methanol is just all leaving. They’ve proven that. It makes sense because

it’s got a lower boiling point even than ethyl alcohol.

DM: I think we’ve covered the major points.

DW: Beautiful. It’s a great interview.

DM: Are there any other items that you would like to mention or highlight?

DW: There are so many, but it will take time.

DM: Go ahead.

DW: I just want to say a few words to people with multiple sclerosis.

DM: Sure.

DW: I’m not going into all the diseases independently, individually, or whatever.

DM: You do it in your book.

DW: I do in the book. I go into great detail. I want to talk with people MS or people who know

somebody with multiple sclerosis. That case has, I think, actually been proven for me. There was

actually research done that looked at the parts of the brain just outside of the plaque areas and

they searched for changes, and they found changes. They didn’t know why the changes had

occurred, but the two changes that occurred were extremely important. This was done about

seven or eight years ago.

The two changes that occurred was one, an increase of methylation and an amino acid that is

known to basically store formaldehyde and to be changeable by formaldehyde. They found that,

and they found a tremendous decrease in – I will call it phosphorylation, but it’s the same

mechanism that would be used to producing ATP. Those are the most important and really the

only major changes they found in that tissue.

If I were to design a study to see if methyl alcohol were to cause that damage, that’s exactly the

study I would have designed. I would have done it exactly that way, and I would have looked for

those exact changes. That’s what you have to look for. You cannot find formaldehyde in the

human body after it’s been even injected in the human body. It disappears. You’ve got to look

for the changes that it causes – the shadow of formaldehyde. That is the shadow of

formaldehyde. They have already found it in people with multiple sclerosis.

I say that disease has been solved. I know I’m brazen saying that. I’m sure enough to say it. I’m

sure enough of the fact that the recommendations I’m making to change your diet is so safe that

you’re risking your life by not making those changes.

Make those changes if you have multiple sclerosis. I’ve done it in New Zealand. I’ve done it

with Cori Brackett. I’ve done it with people who have multiple sclerosis. I’m not saying a lot of

people, but everyone who has tried it has definitely seen an amazing improvement. If you don’t

have any improvement, email me through my site and tell me what you’re eating. I’ll take a look

at your diet, because I think it’s going to work.

DM: That’s a kind offer. I would add to that – and it’s something you already know – expose as

much of your skin to sunshine or a safe tanning bed if it’s in the middle of winter.

DW: Definitely.

DM: You need that energy into your system.

DW: To rebuild the myelin.

DM: And probably for a variety of other things. It’s the combination of the two. Of course,

eating a healthy diet – I’ve got a whole nutrition program that goes into that and exercise. But

really, the key especially for these serious autoimmune diseases like MS, which is probably the

most serious and can be deadly…. It kills so many people, if not cripples them for life. It’s just a

really sad and tragic disease. It just doesn’t make sense not to try the simple basics.

I was just reviewing an article that we’re publishing soon – the top 10 drugs in the U.S., and

number 10 or number 9 is Remicade, which is an autoimmune drug commonly used to treat these

autoimmune diseases, which is just absolutely devastating.

DW: Horrifying.

DM: This drug should never be used for anyone. There is just no reason for it. It’s just done out

of sheer ignorance and greed for a company to treat the symptoms and not go and treat the

underlying cause of the disease, as you could so simply with this recommendation. It’s not really

going to cause that much to do. It’s just food change.

DW: It will probably save you money.

DM: Yeah, probably save you money and certainly improve your health – if not only from the

autoimmune diseases, but from the other chronic degenerative diseases that we have. What

you’re advocating is not really any different from most any common-sense nutritionist.

DW: Yeah, exactly. It’s just a matter of stop treating your own tissue like the pharmaceutical

companies treat the tissue they want to produce the antibodies to. Just keep that formaldehyde

away from sensitive areas and see what happens.

DM: Well and more specifically, we’re not going to be consuming formaldehyde. Actually, I

just want an extension of your analogy. I don’t know what the lethal dose of formaldehyde as

you would, but if someone was to consume that – say, if I had right here and I was going to

consume it… If had a person next to me, stick a needle into my arm, continuously draw blood

samples every 15 minutes, they would never find it.

DW: Never.

DM: They would never find it, because it’s just dissipated through the system the body has – the

defense mechanisms.

DW: It just changes a protein by one carbon, and you can’t tell the change until this new method

came up for doing it. When they first used that method to study the brain, they found it.

Phenomenal. Because one carbon changes – it’s not how many carbons are in a protein molecule.

It’s like nothing. It’s amazing.

DM: I want you thank you for everyone watching this – for all the dedication, the effort, the

research. As I said, really one of the major purposes of this site was to find people like you who

have really dedicated their entire professional lives to understanding a small piece of the puzzle

but has such profound implications. It’s almost irrational to not apply this information in a

proactive way, to apply the precautionary principle.

DW: I want to thank you because really, there is no place else for me to go. I’ve published in the

scientific literature. It’s bouncing off. Joe, your concern about people is flabbergasting to me. I

really appreciate the opportunity to present this.

DM: It’s a great synergy to be able to connect to researchers like yourself and have the

opportunity to share it with a large number of people and really make a difference.

Ultimately, we’re all going to die. No one is going to leave this world alive. When you’re on

your deathbed – I mean, if you had that opportunity some people die really acutely in a severe

accident or a gunshot or something – where there is some moments and you’re on your deathbed,

you’re certainly going to want to know that you’ve made a difference and helped people. I mean,

I would think.

That is, to me, a foundational difference. It really provides me the chance to know that we are

making a difference and really helping people improve their health and really enjoy life at deep

basis and contribute to themselves and their family and really continue to process.

DW: I think you’ve done a great job. Any way I can help, call me.

DM: Thank you.

DW: Thanks.

[END]