Life After Aspartame

[Tim Campbell]

 Life After Aspartame

http://www.mercola.com/2005/oct/20/life_after_aspartame.htm
Life After Aspartame
By Pat Thomas

This article first appeared in the September 2005 issue of The
Ecologist, Volume 35, No.7.

Aspartame should never have reached the marketplace. But even if the
authorities were to remove it from sale tomorrow, how much faith
should consumers place in the other artificial sweeteners on the market?

Life After Aspartame

There is not a single artificial sweetener on the market that can
claim, beyond all reasonable doubt, to be safe for humans to consume.
Saccharin, cyclamate and acesulfame-K have all been show to cause
cancer in animals. Even the family of relatively benign sweeteners
known as polyols, such as sorbitol and mannitol, can cause gastric
upset if eaten in quantity.

NutraSweet believes that its new aspartame-based sweetener, Neotame,
is 'revolutionary'; but, seemingly, it is only a more stable version
of aspartame. This leaves the market wide open for sucralose.

Sucralose, sold commercially as Splenda, was discovered in 1976 by
researchers working for British sugar refiner Tate & Lyle. Four years
later, Tate & Lyle joined forces with Johnson & Johnson to develop and
commercialize sucralose under the auspices of a new company, McNeil
Specialty Products (now called McNeil Nutritionals).

Sucralose has been approved by more than 60 regulatory bodies
throughout the world, and is now in more than 3,000 products
worldwide. In the United States, Coca-Cola has developed a new diet
drink sweetened with Splenda, and other major soft drink manufacturers
are expected to follow suit.

Splenda is advertised as being 'made from sugar, so it tastes like
sugar' -- a claim that is currently the subject of a heated legal
challenge in the United States. While it is true that sugar, or
sucrose, is one of the starting materials for sucralose, its chemical
structure is significantly different from that of sucrose.

In a complex chemical process, the sucrose is processed with, among
other things, phosgene (a chemical-warfare agent used during WWI, now
a common intermediary in the production of plastics, pesticides and
dyes), and three atoms of chlorine are selectively substituted for
three hydroxyl (hydrogen and oxygen) groups naturally attached to the
sugar molecule.

This process produces
1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-beta-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-alpha-D-galacto\

pyranoside
(also known as trichlorogalactosucrose or sucralose), a new chemical
substance that Tate & Lyle calls a 'water-soluble chlorocarbohydrate.'

Accepting Tate & Lyle's classification of sucralose as a
chlorocarbohydrate at face value raises reasonable concerns about its
suitability as a food additive. Chlorinated carbohydrates belong to a
class of chemicals known as chlorocarbons.

This class of chemicals includes a number of notorious human and
environmental poisons, including:

* Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
* Aliphatic chlorinated carbohydrates
* Aromatic chlorinated carbohydrates such as DDT
* Organochlorine pesticides such as aldrin and dieldrin
* Aromatic chlorinated ethers such as polychlorinated dioxins
(PCDD) and polychlorinated dibenzofurans (PCDF)

Most of the synthetic chlorinated compounds that we ingest, such as
the pesticide residues in our food and water, bio-accumulate slowly in
the body; and many cause developmental problems in the womb or are
carcinogenic. How do we know that sucralose is any different?

Tate & Lyle insists that sucralose passes through the body virtually
intact, and that the tight molecular bond between the chlorine atoms
and the sugar molecule results in a very stable and versatile product
that is not metabolized in the body for calories.

This doesn't mean, however, that sucralose is not metabolized in the
body at all, and critics like HJ Roberts argue that, during storage
and in the body, sucralose breaks down into, among other things, 1,6
dichlorofructose, a chlorinated compound that has not been adequately
tested in humans.

Tate & Lyle maintains that sucralose and its breakdown products have
been extensively tested and proven safe for human consumption. The
company notes that in seeking approval from the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), McNeil Specialty Products submitted more than
110 studies that attested to the safety of sucralose.

But Can Consumers Trust This Research Data?

The vast majority of studies submitted to the FDA were unpublished
animal and laboratory studies performed by Tate & Lyle itself, and
therefore liable to charges of potentially unacceptable bias.

Only five involved human subjects, and these were short-term, often
single-dose, studies that clearly could not adequately reflect the
expected real-world usage of sucralose.

After questions were raised by the FDA about the safety of sucralose
for diabetics, and prior to approval, a further five human studies
were eventually submitted. On April 1, 1998 the FDA approved sucralose
for limited uses; one year later it approved it as a general-purpose
sweetener.

Some questions about sucralose's safety, arising from the data
submitted to the FDA, remain unanswered. These studies included
unsettling findings about animals, which, when exposed to high doses
of sucralose, experienced:

* Shrunken thymus and spleen
* Enlarged liver and kidneys
* Reduced growth rate in adults and newborns

In the FDA's 'final-rule' report, several of the studies submitted by
McNeil were found to have 'inconclusive' results or were
'insufficient' to draw firm conclusions from them. These included:

* A test that examined the clastogenic activity (ability to break
chromosomes apart) of sucralose, and a test that looked for
chromosomal aberrations in human lymphocytes exposed to sucralose
* A series of three animal genotoxicity studies
* Laboratory studies using lymphoma tissue from mice, which showed
that sucralose was 'weakly mutagenic' (capable of causing cellular
mutations)

Clastogenic, genotoxic and mutagenic substances are all potential risk
factors in the development of cancer.

In addition to these, three studies that looked at very specific
'anti-fertility' effects of sucralose and its breakdown products,
especially with regard to sperm production, were also deemed
insufficient; this is particularly worrying since other
'chlorosugars,' such as 6-chloroglucose, are currently being studied
as anti-spermatogenic drugs.

Furthermore, the administration observed that McNeil had failed to
explain satisfactorily a reduction in body weight seen in animals fed
sucralose and that 'additional study data were needed to resolve this
issue.' Ironically for a product that 'tastes like sugar,' McNeil
argued that weight loss was due to the 'reduced palatability of
sucralose-containing diets.'

FDA reviewers also found that at mid to high doses there was a trend
toward 'decreasing white blood cell and lymphocyte counts with
increasing dose levels of sucralose.'

This was dismissed as having no 'statistical significance' by the FDA;
in healthy animals and humans this may be so, but what happens when
already immune-compromised individuals ingest sucralose?

Tate & Lyle says that any lingering concerns about sucralose are
unfounded and that only a small amount, 15-20 percent, of sucralose is
absorbed and broken down in the human gut. The rest passes through the
body unmetabolized and is excreted in urine and feces. This in itself
provokes important questions.

* What happens to sucralose that is flushed down the toilet? Does
it remain stable or react with other substances (for instance, the
chlorine used in water-treatment plants, or microbial life) to form
new compounds?
* Is sucralose or any resulting chemical compound it may form safe
for the environment? Is it harmful to aquatic life or wild animals?
* Will sucralose begin to appear in our water supply, in the way
that certain drugs have, silently increasing our exposure to it? And
would that increased exposure be safe?

Publish and Be Sued

In the face of emerging public criticism, lawyers for Tate & Lyle are
already gearing up for a battle. According to attorney James Turner, a
key player in the aspartame drama, 'there's going to be a huge fight
about Splenda in the next few months... [Tate & Lyle's] lawyers are
already on the case trying to shut everybody up.'

It's a tactic that worked well for Monsanto, which certainly used
legal pressure against anyone who criticized NutraSweet.

Recently, the publisher of the local newspaper the Brighton Argus
considered it prudent to publish an apology composed by Tate & Lyle
(or their lawyers) or face a legal action for defamation and loss of
sales after printing an article suggesting that sucralose was harmful
to humans.

Tate & Lyle's first high-profile victim, however, was mercola.com --
one of the world's most visited Internet health sites. Run by Dr.
Joseph Mercola, the site has been a vocal critic of sucralose for
years. Instead of carrying freely available information on sucralose
that might stimulate spirited public debate, it now carries the
following message: 'Attorneys acting on behalf of the manufacturers of
sucralose, Tate & Lyle Plc, based in London, England, have requested
that the information contained on this page not be made available to
internet users in England.'

At this point, concerned consumers should be asking themselves several
questions. Does the story of sucralose sound familiar? If sucralose is
safe beyond any reasonable doubt, why is there such a fervent need to
suppress any criticism of it?

Finally, whom do such tactics really serve? Do they serve the consumer
and the principles of choice, information, safety and redress? Or do
they serve the corporate machine and its need to keep generating
profits without taking responsibility for the human cost of doing so?

Ecologist Online September 8, 2005

Dr. Mercola's Comment:

If you are reading this you now you are not in the UK, as I am forced
to block all my comments regarding Splenda from the UK. Tate & Lyle
has assured me they will sue me if I do not. This is largely related
to the liberal libel laws in the UK. What is perfectly legal in the
United States is not in the UK, as freedom of speech is severely
restricted over there.

Many have been fooled by Splenda's deceptive advertising practices.
But the truth of the matter is, saying Splenda is 'made from sugar so
it tastes like sugar' is like saying gasoline is 'made from plant
matter so it tastes like brocolli.'

By the time sugar has gone through the elaborate chemical processing,
treatment, and alteration required to turn it into sucralose, it has
become a far, far different substance.

Tate & Lyle don't want you to know this. They've been doing their best
to keep me from telling you the truth. As this article mentioned,
there are millions of people in England who are not allowed to read
the factual information about Splenda presented here.

But Tate & Lyle has not gotten away with it completely. If you're
reading this, you know that they can't hide the truth everywhere. And
numerous lawsuits have been started against them as a result of their
dubious business and advertising practices.

Make no mistake -- Splenda is not natural. It is not healthy. It is
not good for you. It is dangerous. If you have any doubts about this,
I urge you to read my page of testimonials about the effects of Splenda.