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

No, please. No Aspartame debate on /.

[rf600r]

I hope this post doesn't cause a "wear you tinfoil hats cuz aliens use aspartame to control your brains" discussion. Read this."

Re:No, please. No Aspartame debate on /.

[PD]

That's odd. When I consume aspertame, it improves my mental function and alertness, and my digestion is much improved. I think it's great stuff, and I even prefer the taste of it.

It's not so much a question of cancer.

[orthogonal]

It's a question of what you've evolved to ingest safely.

If this sugar substitute is sucessful, it will be found in large quantities in a large number of foods. So you won't end up ingesting a little; in all likelyhood, (especially if you're an American) you'll ingest a lot.

Your body (is built by a genome that) has had at minimum some six million years to become adapted to the natural sugars found in fruits.

It's had no chance to adapt to this substitute.

That it has encountered the basic elements that make up Neotame isn't really relevent. You'll die without sufficient sodium chloride (table salt), but more than 1 part per million of straight chloride will harm you (OSHA permissible exposure limit).

Some physicians even raise questions about the health effects of corn syrup, given that it is added in great quantities to almost all processed foods sold in the U.S. It's not that corn syrup is bad in and of itself, it's a question of what the effects are when one ingests so much more than the body could even have become adapted to in nature.

We have no data about long-term use of Neotame; if you want to provide that data with your body, go ahead. I'll stick with sugar, in moderate quantities.

Re:13,000 times sweeter

[sam_handelman]

There are three ways.

1) You take two liters of water, and add fifty grams of sugar to one liter, and fifty grams of neotame to the other (actually, I think they'd start out with less than that, but bear with me) you give people glasses and ask them which is sweeter? Then, you "lower the dose" of neotame until it's a wash (half of your sample says the sugar water is sweeter, half says the neotame.)

2) You could directly measure the rate at which sweet-taste cells fire (signal the brain) when exposed to a given concentration of the stuff, compared with a set amount (1 Molar, say) of sugar. If 1/13,000 M of Neotame gives the same response as 1M sugar, it's 13,000 times sweeter than sugar. I don't know enough about this technically to know exactly what they'd do, but they'd probably remove the taste cells from the rat and measure the response directly/electrically.

3) You could purify the extracellular domain of the sugar receptors in your taste-bud cells. Then, you'd measure the binding affinity for the compound to the receptor. Assuming every binding event gives an equal amount of sweetness, if Neotame has 13,000 times the binding constant of Sugar, it is 13,000 times sweeter (you need 1/13,000 as much to get a given amount of sweetneses.)

Now, my big problem with nutrasweet is the god damned aftertaste, which is foul. If this replacement doesn't taste metallic (whatever you want to call it), I'll drink it by the gallon.

But Mother Nature...

[2g3-598hX]

...is a cruel bitch. There are many natural substances out there which are bad for you.

Artifical != bad && natural != good

Consider this: Many plants don't actual like being eaten. So they evolve to be toxic. Many animals don't like being eaten either. So they evolve to be toxic. At least this sweetener hasn't been evolved for millions of years to be bad for you.

So humans evolved to eat fruit. But recently (20,000 years ago) we adapted to eat grains, something we had never ever done before. And we did it, no sweat.

We are opportunistic omnivores (like bears) that are meant to eat whatever we can - vegetable, animal, mineral. Our systems have evolved to be robust in dealing with toxins. Don't underestimate the body's natural anti-toxin systems: some coyotes simply CANNOT be poisoned... they must be baited with meat with a autofiring projectile syringe in it. (They vomit any poison).

And in all these lab tests they give rats relatively huge quantities of the given drug. ...but just imagine the rats they tested this on..."God please, just give us something SAVOURY!!!"

Re:But Mother Nature...

[bsane]

some coyotes simply CANNOT be poisoned... they must be baited with meat with a autofiring projectile syringe in it.

That sounds more like something a coyote would use to catch a roadrunner. Except he would have to use birdseed to bait it.

Re:Lucky lab rats...

[WolfWithoutAClause]

Obviously they needed to dilute it by a factor of 13000...its almost homeopathy.

Homeopathy would take something bitter, then dilute it down. They'd then claim that the more dilute you make it, the sweeter it gets. Uh Huh. And if you buy that I've got a bridge to sell you.

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.

[g4dget]

Stevia has not been shown to be safe either. Take a look at the CSPI web pages on Stevia. Note that the same folks are not all that hot on Aspartame either.

There is a much simpler way of satisfying a craving for sugar: just cut back on it. After a short while, your taste buds will adjust and a little sugar will taste very sweet.

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.

[g4dget]

Science aside, I'm still inclined to believe that big monied interests have a lot to do with the holdup.

If it only were a simple as corruption. Rather, it's the way things work around here: herbs don't make much money relative to patented chemicals. That means that people don't have much money for scientific trials involving herbs. Furthermore, it's the drug and chemical companies that (directly or indirectly) train applied chemists and biologists, and they ultimately set the standards; it's not that they want to be biased, it's just that they can't imagine any other way of doing business.

The solution? Increased government funding for drug and herbal research--we can't rely on the market to fix this. The profit motive in medicine doesn't coincide with good patient care: a patented maintenance drug for a common chronic illness is much more interesting financially than a non-patentable cure. The drug companies want the maintenance drug, the patients want the cure.

Re:The time felt right for a new sweetener.

[sl3xd]

I mean, there's a lot of proven harmful products out there (cigarette, for example) that haven't gone away yet.

Logic doesn't have much to do with things that have been part of a culture for centuries. Tobacco is one of them. Alcohol is another.

Alcohol is so dangerous: The statistics of crime (espescially murder and rape) commited under the influence of alcohol are staggering. Ditto for accident rates. Alcohol is dangerous to an individual, and to the public.

At one point in time, the US did the 'logical' thing and ban alcohol completely by banning the substance in its constitution. (And for anybody not familiar with american politics, amending the constitution is not an easy or trivial thing to do.

However, while it was the 'logical' thing to do, the consumption of alcohol was (and still is) so ingrained into American culture that its people simply rebelled wholesale against it. Alcohol production simply went underground. Eventually, another amendment was added to repeal the ban on alcohol, having decided that making a law can't change a culture.

The harmful effects of tobacco weren't proven until relatively recently; and having learned a lesson from banning alcohol (along with experience gained from law enforcement with other substances, like cocaine, opiates, marijuana, methanphetamines, etc...) Congress is unlikely to try to outlaw tobacco, in spite of its harmful properties (both public and private).

So while the government can't stop the use of 'cultural' drugs/substances, it can (with reasonable success) keep substances that have not come into common use from becoming popular, and harming the public.

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)

Re:The time felt right for a new sweetener.

[sl3xd]

To 'cure' an ailment, you first have to treat the cause of the disease instead of the symptoms.

Again, refer to my earlier statements. Diseases are about the only health problem for which a cure can exist. But diseases just a slice of the entire 'health problem' pie. There is far more to health care (and pharmaceuticals) than ridding a body of an infectious disease.

they had decided to "patent instead of publish". In the end nothing useful was accomplished because the research results were secret, and those suffering from the disease could not afford commercially synthesized drugs.

Um... patents are published. In fact, that's one of the main reasons we have patents -- to force publication (in a public arena) of a good idea.

Besides... to grow any herb in quantaties that are useful is often far more expensive (if it's possible at all) than the synthesized drug.

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.

sugar is bad, too

[g4dget]

Consuming refined sugar, corn syrup, etc. is clearly bad: it causes wild swings in blood sugar, tooth decay, and other problems. Sugars we would consume traditionally were mostly those that came from fruits and the digestion of starches. Those are generally released fairly slowly.

The best thing to do is not to consume any artificial sweeterners at all, and to cut back on sugar. Sugar in processed foods has numbed our taste buds; once you cut back, you'll find that a lot less tastes just as sweet. And for a sweet treat, try fruits.

Re:Actually

[Monkelectric]

Ummm, apparently you've never worked in a research facility. I worked in one for two years, and let me tell you, if someone paid us to prove the moon was made of green cheese we could have done it and wouldn't have thought twice. *ANYTIME* you see a "university study" a "medical trial" or the words "research indicates" ask *WHO PAID FOR THE RESEARCH*, because thats who it will support. This is science for sale my friend.

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?

Re:lesson learned early in life

[solferino]

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?

nicely expressed - this of course also includes sugar which a highly refined substance extracted from sugar cane and not a food

in my understanding th chemical refinement of white sugar from sugar cane requires about th same level of processing as refining cocaine from coca leaves does

thus sugar can easily be seen as a drug - one that we hook our children on from an early age

ever tried kicking th sugar habit completely? - i can tell you from experience that it's not easy - but also from my experience well worth doing

Re:lesson learned early in life

[BillTheKatt]

Be sure to remember that when you pull on your polyester clothes, use your anti-asthma inhaler and are given an IV through a plastic tube.

I laugh about all the people complaining about "non-natural" stuff here. We live a heck of a lot longer than cavemen, despite the fact that they were 100% "natural". Nature does not equal perfection.

Re:lesson learned early in life

[solferino]

Sugar is a carbohydrate, pure and simple.

tell me something i don't already know - and you are helping to make my point with yr words pure and simple

foods are not pure and simple substances - they are exceedingly complex complexes of a vast panoply of chemical composites

- drugs on th other hand are almost by definition exceedingly refined, pure, homogenous substances - and thus i contend that sugar is more correctly thought of as a drug not a food

Your body RUNS on sugar. ALL starches (potatoes, grains, you name it) have to be converted to sugar before your body can use them.

again i am aware of this fact - however conversion of foods inside th body through a balanced metabolic process into more simple substances is th evolutionary path we have followed - consuming substances that have been refined and simplified outside of th body is a recent development and not, i would argue, a healthy one

Maybe it's time to stop letting people graduate from high school without demonstrating basic scientific literacy.

this comment requires no reply beyond remarking that it smacks of both elitism and fascism

Re:Actually

[ConceptJunkie]

This is the same site that has a story of the development of Neotame. They claim a scientist with Army developing a new nerve gas supposedly spilled some on his hand, and since it smelled sweet, he tasted it and discovered Neotame. Now, I know truth can be stranger than fiction, but this sounds like total FUD to me.

Doesn't cause cancer in rats, eh?

[iankerickson]

My rats are extremely excited.

At last, I can put out a cold bowl of Diet Coke for them to lap up and not worry that their 4 year life-span will be cut short by a malignant cancer.

I'm waiting for...

[Dr. Cody]

...the FDA to approve this up-and-coming stimulant which is 13K times stronger than Caffeine. However, the approval process will take 8000 years.

you might think that, but you would be wrong

[g4dget]

Fructose has a glycemic index of 22, sucrose of 64, and glucose of 100. Many fruits are close to fructose. The reason is that there is an active transport for glucose, while fructose gets absorbed by diffusion. The presence of fiber (in fruit), minerals, fat, and protein also affects the glycemic index.

Re:13,000 times sweeter

[PacoTaco]

but they'd probably remove the taste cells from the rat

Ah, the glamorous life of the lab assistant.

$%$##@ing chemists

[Chris Canfield]

Why do we not market sugar as "cancer-free sweetener?" Most sugar-free sweeteners are A: much less tasty than sugar and B: hideous chemical combinations designed to be unprocessable by your body. When I put something my VCR isn't designed to handle into the little slot in front, it generally voids the warantee. Why are we surprised when, say, Olestra / Olean gums up our little internal sewage systems?

It says quite a bit about this culture that we'd rather be dead than fat, and we'd rather get cancer than think about what we are eating.

Sugar only rots teeth if you eat it pure with a gum base and a coloring (AKA candy) and then don't clean them. Coke can dissolve a tooth overnight, a feat that sugar water can't replicate. How is Diet Coke supposed to protect your pearly whites? Even then viable replacements exist for people's teeth. I really don't know why everyone comes down on sugar these days (except for it's abusability as a cheap addition to many foods). It's natural, healthy in normal doses, and glucose / fructose is the basic ingredient for glycolysis, which is the body's ATP (a form of stored energy) production cycle. You can get fat from sugar because you are producing more energy than your body needs. In effect, your body will utilize the sugar given, and this is seen as bad. Nutrasweet isn't causing cancer in rats because it is too useful for them.

Sorry to go on a rant, but it just p!$$es me off the kind of irresponsibly researched junk chemistry that is pushed upon the worlds population as "healthy." There is NOTHING healthy about Nutrasweet, Saccarine, Neotame, or the other laboratory sweeteners developed and patented with profit in mind. Many "healthy" and "diet" drinks consist of nothing but carbonated water, aspartame, and "natural flavors" (which consist of nothing but trace amounts of compounds developed from a base class of living ingredients but whose final output bares no resemblance to the source material). Maybe there should be an administration of some sort that would regulate companies producing the things we ingest... like food and... drugs? Geeze, I still have nights spent in the smallest room in the house thanks to the random unlabeled proliferation of Olestra into the foods we eat. Thanks FDA!

I would be proud to burn a few karma here if anyone knows how to mod a comment down as "bitter"

-Chris

Can't resist...

[cheezehead]

This reminds me of the joke: "only in America do people order a double cheeseburger with large fries and a Diet Coke".
Wouldn't it be wiser to cut caloric intake in other areas than sugar? Or drink fruit juice, or water for that matter...

Re:Lucky lab rats...

[sl3xd]

Oh, I buy that completely.

Just because it's misleading doesn't make it false.

It does taste sweeter when its more dilute.

Such is the case where marketers can get around such nasty things like 'lying' and 'false advertising.' They just tell the truth in a way that is so misleading that it gives an impression opposite of the truth.

Right handed sugar?

[jungd]

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

Re:Right handed sugar?

[chainsaw1]

i didn't see Splenda so...

Body makes left-handed enantiomers (sp?). right handed enantiomers tend to be the side effects and bad stuff since it is difficult/impossible to separate them out.

I think they make columns to separate out pharmaceutical enantiomers at:

http://www.astecusa.com

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.

Iterative research fixes that

[texchanchan]

Sure, people can be self-serving cheating liars. But nobody here should need to be reminded: The whole point of science is that there are a lot of people checking each other's results. It doesn't mean they get everything right. It does mean that, over time, their combined model more and more closely approximates reality.

When someone points out how science was wrong about something, which it often has been, the biggest fact of all is almost invisible: We wouldn't know they were wrong unless some other scientist got it right.

Sweet v. Bitter

[forevermore]

Actually, the opposite of bitter is salty. Sour is the opposite of sweet. (trust me, I'm marrying a pastry chef) If you don't believe me, just try it. Add salt to something bitter (like grapefruit), the bitter goes away and you can taste the other flavors (like "sweet").

It's supposedly heat-stable

[Animats]

This new stuff is supposed to be heat-stable, which is a big win. Aspartame is not; twenty minutes in a hot drink will break it down. So will putting a soft drink can in warm storage for a month or two.

This has potential for baked goods.

Re: Sugar Substitute

[0x0d0a]

It also doesn't taste exactly like sugar (once diluted). It has a flavor of its own, which will have to be taken into account. I could see people prefering it to sugar, but you can't just take a cup of coffee or a pie and toss this in and expect it to taste the same as if there were sugar in it.

corn syrup

[oliverthered]

I've spent most of my life living off of 'fresh' food.
An now 20 odd years on processed food makes me physicly ill, corn syrup being one of the worst offenders.

Sweetners just make me more thirsty (and it's hard finding drinks without sweetners in now adays)

And look on the ingredients next time you buy a loaf of bread, you'll find soya, just after fairy dust. SFAIK Alison Organic Wholemeal bread is the only shrink-wrapped bread in the UK without soya.

Re:Actually

[Monkelectric]

http://www.vislab.ucr.edu http://www.cris.ucr.edu (same facility, two names) thank you very much