Artificial Sweeteners: A Century of Profit, Politics, and Denial. Monday, September 15, 7 pm EDT on Zoom

[David Levine]

Artificial Sweeteners: A Century of Profit, Politics, and Denial

A Virtual Conversation with 
Gerald Posner

Monday, September 15, 7 pm EDT on Zoom

Science Writers in New York is excited to have as our guest author and award-winning investigative journalist Gerald Posner (@geraldposner) to talk about the failure to regulate artificial sweeteners, which is a threat to our health. 

Gerald will talk to SWINY chair David Levine (@dlloydlevine) about the latest news that erythritol, a popular artificial sweetener, is linked with brain cell damage, and adds to a long and disturbing history of U.S. inaction in the face of science. Gerald notes that the FDA has a miserable record of yielding to industry pressure—first with saccharin, then with aspartame—and has left millions of consumers effectively unconsented participants in a decades-long health experiment and says “The pattern is now repeating: alarming science, corporate denial, and regulatory inaction.”

Gerald will discuss the strange history of saccharin, the first artificial sweetener, discovered accidentally in 1879 by a Johns Hopkins chemist experimenting with coal tar derivatives. Three hundred times sweeter than sugar and far cheaper, saccharin quickly gained popularity—and Monsanto, founded in 1901, sold nothing but saccharin in its early days. 

In 1981, while saccharin still bore a cancer warning, the FDA approved aspartame—another sweetener discovered by accident. It had faced a 15-year delay due to early studies linking it to brain tumors. But food manufacturers, eager to escape saccharin’s baggage, pressed hard. Within a year, aspartame replaced more than a billion pounds of sugar in the American diet and became the base of Diet Coke.

The food industry continued its push to clear saccharin’s name, pouring millions into studies designed to “prove” that humans metabolize saccharin differently than rats. Eventually, the FDA lifted the cancer warning label. Saccharin was no longer officially considered a carcinogen.

According to Gerald, “consumers worldwide are the subjects, ingesting tons of sweeteners in thousands of products. The latest new warning about brain damage from another widely used sweetener suggests we may only be seeing the tip of the iceberg. The same political playbook used to save saccharin is still in circulation. The difference now? The stakes are higher—and we may already be too late.”

About Gerald Posner

Gerald Posner is the author of 13 acclaimed books, including New York Times nonfiction bestsellers Case Closed, Why America Slept and God’s Bankers. He is a contributor to Forbes. Gerald was a finalist for the Pulitzer in History.

“A merciless pit bull of an investigator” concluded the Chicago Tribune. The New York Times said his book PHARMA was “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients…[it] reads like a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers.” 

Garry Wills calls Gerald “a superb investigative reporter” and the Los Angeles Times says he is “a classic-style investigative journalist.” “Painstakingly honest journalism,” concluded The New York Times. “Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts,” reported the Chicago Tribune. “Meticulous research,” Newsday. John Martin, former national correspondent for ABC News says, “Posner is one of the most successful investigators I have encountered in 30 years of journalism.”

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When:
Monday, September 15, 7 pm EDT

Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wCiXnaaqRO-RSVi8teIaqg