Column exaggerated some aspects of Coke
While I appreciate the fact that Brendan Bouffard drew attention to the exponentially increasing amounts of food additives in his column, "Tasty food additives actually harmful, toxic chemicals," (SN 10/16), I wonder how much research Bouffard actually put into his column before sending it to the press as a scare tactic filled with unrecognizable terms for product ingredients. In his list of supposedly toxic and harmful ingredients from a can of Diet Coke, he mentions riboflavin and thiamine mononitrate, which may sound scientific and scary, but are actually chemical names for the dietary essential vitamins B2 and B1, respectively. He does make a good point about the possible effects of the artificial sweetener aspartame; however, he fails to note that headaches and other adverse effects from consuming aspartame do not occur for everyone.