And So Now, Guess Who Is Being Hyped as “The Natural” Choice?

I’ve been writing articles for the last week about sugar, and how detrimental it is to your health.

I started off by telling you about the downside of sugar, and then how toxic high fructose corn syrup is. From there, I discussed artificial sweeteners, telling you about the dangers of all five of the artificial sweeteners that have been approved by the FDA: saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, acesulfame K, and neotame.

And so, where does that leave us? Well, believe it or not, the good old sugar industry sees an opening. They realize that if they portray themselves as the natural option, they can convince people that they are the healthy choice.

Why, what a public service they are providing! They are advising people to get away from using the poisonous artificial sweeteners, and instead return back to the fold by sticking with the real thing.

From the tomato sauce on a Pizza Hut pie called “The Natural,” to the just-released soda Pepsi Natural, some of the biggest players in the American food business have started, in the last few months, replacing high-fructose corn syrup with old-fashioned sugar, and promoting the fact that by doing that, they are giving people a healthy choice.

Blamed for hyperactivity in children and studied as an addictive substance, sugar has had its share of image problems. But the widespread criticism of high-fructose corn syrup — the first lady, Michelle Obama, has said she will not give her children products made with it — has made sugar look good by comparison.

Most scientists do not share the perception. Though research is still under way, many nutrition and obesity experts say sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are equally bad in excess. But, as is often the case with competing food claims, the battle is as much about marketing as it is about science.

But with sugar newly ascendant, the makers of corn syrup are fighting back. Last fall, the Corn Refiners Association mounted a multimillion-dollar defense, making sure that an advertisement linking to the association’s Web site pops up when someone types “sugar” or “high-fructose corn syrup” into some search engines.

In one television advertisement, a mother pours fruit punch into a cup while another scolds her because the punch contains high-fructose corn syrup. When pressed to explain why it is so bad, the complaining mother is portrayed as a speechless fool.

Audrae Erickson, president of the Corn Refiners Association, said consumers were being duped.

“When they discover they are being misled into thinking these new products are healthier, that’s the interesting angle,” Ms. Erickson said in an interview.

Meanwhile, the American Medical Association says that when it comes to obesity, there is no difference between the syrup and sugar.

Dr. Robert H. Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist at the University of California, San Francisco Children’s Hospital, said: “The argument about which is better for you, sucrose or HFCS, is garbage. Both are equally bad for your health.”

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A Look at Artificial Sweeteners, Part 5

There are 5 artificial sweeteners, and I’ve told you about 4 of them in the last few articles. Those 4 are: saccharine, aspartame, sucralose, and acesulfame K.

Each of these has the potential to adversely affect your health.

Today I’ll tell you about the last of the 5 artificial sweeteners. This one is called Neotame.

Neotame is the new kid on the block. Approved in 2002 by the FDA,  it is a new version of aspartame, and is manufactured by Monsanto, who manufactures Nutrasweet, a version of aspartame.

With all the bad publicity Nutrasweet/aspartame has gotten, Monsanto’s hope with Neotame is that a new version of aspartame can help Monsanto maintain market share in the artificial sweetener business.

Neotame is chemically related to aspartame and is much sweeter than aspartame, with a potency of approximately 7,000 to 13,000 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar).

It is 30 times sweeter than aspartame, so only a tiny amount is needed. Since the FDA does not require

labels to include ingredients that comprise less than one percent of the product, neotame can be used in foods without having to be listed on the label.

It can also be camouflaged under “natural flavors,” so when you see that phrase listed on the label, you may want to give serious consideration to whether you want to buy that product.

Neotame entered the market much more discreetly than the other nonnutritive sweeteners. While the Web site for neotame claims that there are over 100 scientific studies to support its safety, they are not readily available to the public, as there have not been any legitimate, independent, long-term human studies on neotame.

Critics say neotame is even more toxic than aspartame. Neotame has a similar structure to aspartame — except that, from its structure, it appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks.

Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid.

Given all of the suffering being caused by Monsanto’s aspartame, the prudent course would be to start out with the assumption that it may cause toxic damage or cancer from long-term exposure and conduct many thorough, long-term, and independent human studies to see the effects.

The studies on the safety of Neotame are sketchy at best. Consumer groups have called for independent research (not studies funded by the manufacturer) to evaluate its effects. They allege that Monsanto’s studies on humans lasted only one day.

They accuse Monsanto of hiring a close business partner to conduct studies on the sweetener. The critics also say that it was discovered the researchers were hiding reaction-causing chemicals in the drinks given to control groups.

The non-profit group, Truth in Labeling, gained access to some of the neotame studies. They write, “At the time of our review of Monsanto’s application, three human studies on the safety of neotame were presented. The studies had few subjects, all of whom were employees of the company. Some of the subjects reported headaches after ingesting neotame, but the researchers concluded that the headaches were not related to neotame ingestion. Not mentioned in the studies was the fact that migraine headache is, by far, the most commonly reported adverse reaction to aspartame in the files of the FDA.”

H.J. Roberts, MD, who has studied the effects of aspartame for many years, writes: “The fundamental issue is that neotame, a synthetic variation of aspartame, requires extensive evaluation before the FDA should accept a superficial opinion about its purported safety based largely on limited short-term data involving potentially flawed protocols that were almost totally funded by corporate contracts.”

Even Monsanto’s own pre-approval studies of neotame revealed adverse reactions. Unfortunately, Monsanto only conducted a few one-day studies in humans rather than encouraging independent researchers to obtain NIH funding to conduct long-term human studies on the effects of neotame.

And so, that concludes the information not only about Neotame, but artificial sweeteners in general. I hope by reading all these articles that you realize that all of these artificial sweeteners are very dangerous to your health.

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