FDA Approves More Powerful Sugar Substitute

guttentag writes: "The FDA has approved a new sugar substitute from the people who brought you NutraSweet. It's 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sugar and unlike NutraSweet (aspartame), Neotame apparently doesn't give rats cancer and is safe for people with phenylkeotonuria."

Comments

The time felt right for a new sweetener.

[Deagol]

First saccharine (Sweet-n-Low), then aspartame (NutraSweet, expired 1992), now currently suctralose (Splenda). I'm sure there's more. Industry will crank out a new calorie-free sweetener every time they can get a new patent.

The industry is a crazy one.

I personally use stevia -- a non-patentable, naturally-occuring no-calorie sweetener. Great stuff, if you're into the artificial sweetener thing. We even grow some at home, though we've yet to get a reasonable yield.

I'm no big conspiracy buff, but I've read that big corporate interests (our beloved Monsanto, maybe?) paid off the FDA to disallow stevia to be marketed as a sweetener, paving the way for profits on the patented lab-grown chemicals that we injest in our diet soft drinks.

This paper is a good reference.

Note, that I do have a huge box of pink saccharine packets I bought from Costco (a US price club). As Diet Coke once said, "Just for the taste of it!" I can't stand aspartame, stevia is to pricey to use everywhere.

My point? Um... I don't remember. However, if you read up a bit, the sweetener industry is an interesting one. Plus I couldn't not plug stevia. :)

Re:The time felt right for a new sweetener.

[Deagol]

Good article. When I was researching stevia about a year ago, I didn't find any negative press. Certainly something to keep an eye on. Thanks.

The article says the FDA was petitioned 3 times for use of stevia as a sweetener, and rejected each time. I have to wonder how many timed the other big ones (saccharine, aspartame, & sucralose) had to petition. Funny how aspartame was never recalled after the many negative reactions it caused in people (or I seem to recall a big fuss about it, anyway).

Science aside, I'm still inclined to believe that big monied interests have a lot to do with the holdup. I mean, there's a lot of proven harmful products out there (cigarette, for example) that haven't gone away yet.

Re:The time felt right for a new sweetener.

[sl3xd]

The drug companies want the maintenance drug, the patients want the cure.

Sure the patients may want the cure. However, there's almost never a real 'cure' to most ailments. There's rarely any such thing as a 'magic bullet' for such a thing. On this point, pretty much everybody agrees, from the loudest herbal/homeopathic advocate to the most conservative scientist.

Antibiotics (and many infectious diseases) are the closest thing to a case for the existence 'magic bullet'. And we still get sick, don't we?

There's no getting around this fact. Most health problems are a matter of treatment, because a real cure is utterly impossible. You can't cure old age; we can merely relieve some of its symptoms. We can't cure joint and/or muscle problems. You can't 'cure' chemical depression; the person's brain just can't maintain the right chemistry on its own. Treatment (or as you put it, maintenance) is required

Which suits health care professionals just fine. All want your repeated business. From herbalists, to acupuncturists, to doctors, and pharmaceutical companies.

I used to work for a company that markets 'nutritional supplements,' including herbals. I worked in the lab. The company spends millions on research every year, into ways to maintain or improve health. One thing they researched vigorously: If herbs had the properties its advocates claimed.

In nearly every case, there were no particularly unique compounds, organic or inorganic. In clinical studies, the result was no better than a placebo. The exceptions are very conditional at best (ie. slight improvement in memory of a small percentage of alhzeimer's patients (and only among alhzeimers patients); the claim was it substantially improves memory for all)

Drug companies do the same; an astounding number of drugs are biological in origin, they haven't forgotten that. Aspirin (willow bark tea), penicilin (mold), opiates, and coca derived drugs among them. They're still finding benefits to aspirin. And just because it's bilogical in origin doesn't mean it's not patentable. (You can patent the use of this chemical, found in (komodo dragon saliva, cow feces, this plant... whatever) for the treatment of (whatever ails you, so long as you can prove it is safe and effective to your government's equivalent of the US's FDA)

So it's not that herbal solutions aren't being looked at seriously, or that there isn't funding. It's just that in nearly every case, the actual facts of an herbs properties do not back up the claims of its advocates. For that matter, many herbs touted as 'good' are in fact rather dangerous. (I even remember reading about the healing properties of Hemlock).

If an herb has good properties, we study it, and find out how it works. In nearly every case, it's easiest (and cheapest and safest for everyone) to isolate the compound(s) responsible, and synthesise them. (Which can then be patented)

The effects of artifical sweeteners.

[Jakosky]

There is a large site dedicated to exposing the toxicity of aspartame, with hundreds of pages of documentation.

From the Neotame pages:

"Neotame has similar structure to aspartame -- except that, from it's structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. Given all of the suffering being caused by Monsanto's aspartame, the prudent course would be to start out with the assumption that it may cause toxic damage or cancer from long-term exposure and conduct many thorough, long-term, and independent human studies to see the effects."

Sugar has 16 calories per teaspoon, by the way. Not enough to warrant cancer and neurological damage.

Re:The effects of artifical sweeteners.

[Jakosky]

Yes, we all die sometime, but this isn't about death, this is about the rest of your life.

I'd rather experience the searing pain of a quick heart attack than have my life drawn out like a cancer patient's over many years, finally culminating in several months of extreme agony only aided by a slow morphine drip leaving me unintelligable to visiting family.

And long before the beginning of the end, there are many more quality of life issues. Say I have carpal tunnel, a common geek issue, and I've been eating Neotame or Aspartame or some other neurological damager, will the combination prevent my hand and fingers from healing? Will the lingering pain and numbness be mine for life? Why? So I could have fewer calories?

For some rediculous reason, people figure that life is life and death is death. Look around you. Not everyone ages the same way. How do you want to grow old?

By the way, this isn't simply genetics. By comparing cultures throughout the world, genetics is considered far less important than 1) diet 2) activity 3) outlook (including religion).

Re:Actually

[tswinzig]

but some experts believe

Uhhh, would these be the "experts" at holisticmed.com?

How do you know they're experts?

I'll take the research of proven scientists at places like MIT over some crackpots running a website with who knows what credentials to make any of the claims that are made.

lesson learned early in life

[frovingslosh]

Back as a little kid I had the required chemistry set. There was a warning in the book that came with it: Never ever eat anything that you make with the chemistry set. Did no one else learn this important lesson as a child?

Right handed sugar?

[jungd]

What ever happened to right-handed sugar?
(or do I have is backward - is regular sugar left or right handed?)

But what does it taste like?

[Drishmung]

Sweet things don't just taste sweet. Sucrose, glucose, fructose, lactose, etc all taste sweet (to varying degrees), but they all taste different too.

Aspartamine may be sweet, but it also has its own distinctive taste---which I happen to loath.

The article says it is similar to aspartamine so it may have a similar taste, or it may taste quite different.

Fortunately I don't need to restrict the amount of sugar in my diet, so this is no big deal for me personally.

I am reminded of a quote (probably misremembered) from Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions

She consumed a beverage which proudly proclaimed it contained no goodness whatsoever.

Sugar causes LOTS of cancer (indirectly)

[texchanchan]

Why do we not market sugar as "cancer-free sweetener?"

Because sugar does indirectly cause cancer. Fat is a carcinogen. Not just the grease you eat, but the flab you carry around, that your body makes out of refined sugar, or any sugar (including fructose) if you eat more than you burn.*

Reference
Reference "Early studies noted the association of obesity and kidney cancer among women; however, more recent studies have also found an increased risk among overweight men."

How fat can be a carcinogen:

• Your body fat doesn't just sit there. It makes estrogen-like hormones. Even in guys. The more of these you have circulating, the more likely your prostate (or your breasts--yes, males too) will develop a tumor.
• It correlates with colon cancer. Cause unknown.
• Fat-soluble anything gets stored in your fat. If you have lots of fat, any fat-soluble poisons (natural or man-made) that you consume have a place to stay. Less fat, less room for stored fat-soluble molecules.

Long article on diet as a factor in cancer.
Interesting related transcript of a meeting about a weight-loss drug.
*"Once the ... monosaccharides [get] into the blood circulatory system they can pass directly into the liver, where fructose and galactose are converted into glucose. ...Excess glucose will be stored as glycogen mainly in liver and muscle cells or in form of metabolized fat in adipocytes." here and plenty more sources.