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By CLAIRE SUDDATH Claire Suddath Tue Oct 20, 3:20 pm ET
Too much sugar will make you fat, but too much artificial sweetener will ... do
what exactly? Kill you? Make you thinner? Or have absolutely no effect at all?
This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration's
decision to ban cyclamate, the first artificial sweetener prohibited in the
U.S., and yet scientists still haven't reached a consensus about how safe (or
harmful) artificial sweeteners may be. Shouldn't we have figured this out by
now? (See the top 10 bad beverage ideas.)
The first artificial sweetener, saccharin, was discovered in 1879 when
Constantin Fahlberg, a Johns Hopkins University scientist working on coal-tar
derivatives, noticed a substance on his hands and arms that tasted sweet. No
one knows why Fahlberg decided to lick an unknown substance off his body, but
it's a good thing he did. Despite an early attempt to ban the substance in 1911
- skeptical scientists said it was an "adulterant" that changed the makeup of
food - saccharin grew in popularity, and was used to sweeten foods during sugar
rationings in World Wars I and II. Though it is about 300 times sweeter than
sugar and has zero calories, saccharin leaves an unpleasant metallic
aftertaste. So when cyclamate came on the market in 1951, food and beverage
companies jumped at the chance to sweeten their products with something that
tasted more natural. By 1968, Americans were consuming more than 17 million
pounds of the calorie-free substance a year in snack foods, canned fruit and
soft drinks like Tab and Diet Pepsi. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)
But in the late 1960s, studies began linking cyclamate to cancer. One noted
that chicken embryos injected with the chemical developed extreme deformities,
leading scientists to wonder if unborn humans could be similarly damaged by
their cola-drinking mothers. Another study linked the sweetener to malignant
bladder tumors in rats. Because a 1958 congressional amendment required the FDA
to ban any food additive shown to cause cancer in humans or animals, on Oct.
18, 1969, the government ordered cyclamate removed from all food products. (See
the 10 worst fast-food meals.)
Saccharin became mired in controversy in 1977, when a study indicated that the
substance might contribute to cancer in rats. An FDA move to ban the chemical
failed, though products containing saccharin were required to carry warning
labels. In 2000, the chemical was officially removed from the Federal
Government's list of suspected carcinogens. (Read TIME's 1974 article on
cyclamate and saccharin.)
In 1981, the synthetic compound aspartame was approved for use, and it
capitalized on saccharin's bad publicity by becoming the leading additive in
diet colas. In 1995 and 1996, misinformation about aspartame that linked the
chemical to everything from multiple sclerosis to Gulf War syndrome was widely
disseminated on the Internet. While aspartame does adversely effect some people
- including those who are unable to metabolize the amino acid phenylalanine -
it has been tested more than 200 times, and each test has confirmed that your
Diet Coke is safe to drink. Nor have any health risks been detected in more
than 100 clinical tests of sucralose, a chemically altered sugar molecule found
in food, drinks, chewing gum and Splenda.
The fear-mongering and misinformation plaguing the faux-sweetener market seems
to be rooted in a common misconception. No evidence indicates that sweeteners
cause obesity; people with weight problems simply tend to eat more of it. While
recent studies have suggested a possible link between artificial sweeteners and
obesity, a direct link between additives and weight gain has yet to be found.
The general consensus in the scientific community is that saccharin, aspartame
and sucralose are harmless when consumed in moderation. And while cyclamate is
still banned in the U.S., many other countries still allow it; it can even be
found in the Canadian version of Sweet'n Low. Low-calorie additives won't make
you thinner or curb your appetite. But they help unsweetened food taste better
without harming you. And that's sweet enough.