In the saccharin study, researchers fed high doses of the noncaloric substance (equivalent to human consumption of 1,000 packets of Sweet’n Low a day) to more than 700 rats and 100 mice. The rats did develop malignant bladder tumors, reported chief investigator Dr. Samuel Cohen, chairman of pathology and microbiology at the University of Nebraska in Omaha. The mice, however, did not, and Cohen believes the reason is his discovery that the saccharin formed a specific reaction with a rat urine protein not present in mice–or in humans.
Cohen’s findings have implications for sweeteners beyond saccharin. “It looks like a good study,” says George Pauli, head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s novel-ingredients branch. “It raises the whole question of how to draw conclusions from carcinogenicity testing.”
A petroleum derivative discovered in 1879, saccharin reigned supreme until cyclamate, another no-calorie sweetener, reached the market in 1951. Cyclamate was withdrawn in 1970 after studies linked it to bladder cancer in rats. When similar Canadian studies in 1977 indicted saccharin as well, a public uproar persuaded Congress to impose warning labels instead of a ban. Today the NutraSweet Co.’s aspartame, a low-calorie amino-acid compound introduced in 1981, dominates 75 percent of the sweetener market, but its patent runs out this December. Because aspartame destabilizes at high temperatures and can’t be used in baked goods, the manufacturer has applied for FDA approval of a “heat-protected” version.
Other companies are vying for slices of the lucrative fake-sugar pie. Already Hoechst Celanese has asked the FDA to approve expanded uses for its Sunette, now licensed as a tabletop sweetener (Sweet One) and an ingredient in chewing gum and dry beverage mixes. Abbott Laboratories, which originally made cyclamate, petitioned the FDA for reapproval in 1982. Says the FDA’s Pauli: “We have to make a decision on cyclamate before we get back to saccharin.”
Two companies have already sought FDA approval for products they hope will become the sweeteners of tomorrow: Johnson & Johnson’s sucralose, derived from sucrose (ordinary table sugar) but 600 times as sweet, and Pfizer’s alitame, an amino-acid compound with a shelf life two to four times longer than aspartame’s. NutraSweet Co. is developing Sweetener 2000, a substance 10,000 times as sweet as sugar but with zero calorie. Thaumatin, a genetically engineered substance that replicates a protein found in the berries of certain West African plants, is already used as a sweetener in Israel, Japan and Britain. Researchers are also working with the so-called L-sugars, molecular mirror images of sucrose with no calories.
Meanwhile, Americans are scooping up almost 20 pounds a year per capita of the three FDA-approved sugar substitutes-up from only six pounds in 1975. No matter that most studies suggest these products don’t help people lose weight. After all, what the dieter really craves, as much a’s that piece of chocolate cake, is a sense of virtue.
