Posted by
timothy
on from the new-improved-just-like-the-last-one dept.
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."
It's not so much a question of cancer.
by
orthogonal
·
· Score: 4, Informative
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
by
sam_handelman
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
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.
-- The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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.
--
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"
The time felt right for a new sweetener.
by
Deagol
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
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.
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.:)
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:But Mother Nature...
by
bsane
·
· Score: 5, Funny
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.
$%$##@ing chemists
by
Chris+Canfield
·
· Score: 5, Informative
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
-- This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.
Slashdot Mirror
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.
Opinions on the Twiddler2 hand-held keyboard?
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.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"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. :)
Method of processing duck feet
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.
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
This Sig is a mnemonic device designed to allow you to recognize this author in the future.