Sing Along With Sugar

I’ve been writing about sugar and all its variations for the last few weeks now, and today is the last of the series on it.

To close out, I leave you with a video I made set to some bubblegum music – how pertinent to sugar, eh?

So get ready to sing and clap your hands, all in honor of sugar.

Do you love sugar? I hate to break the bad news to you, but sugar doesn’t love you back, no matter what the song may tell you.

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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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A Look at Artificial Sweeteners, Part 4

The theme of the past week’s articles has been sugar. I’ve told you about the downside of sugar in general, and then I discussed how toxic high fructose corn syrup is.

The last few days I’ve shone the spotlight on artificial sweeteners, first talking about saccharine, then aspartame, and then sucralose.

Sugar is bad enough for you, but as you may have garnered from the articles on artificial sweeteners, the fake stuff is even worse.

I’m not done talking about the artificial sweeteners, though, because there’s two more. Remember, overall there are five artificial sweeteners that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have approved, and so far I have covered three of them.

Today I will discuss Acesulfame K.

Acesulfame K, sold commercially as Sunette or Sweet One, was approved by the FDA in 1988 as a sugar substitute in packet or tablet form, in chewing gum, dry mixes for beverages, instant coffee and tea, gelatin desserts, puddings and nondairy creamers. The manufacturer has asked the FDA to approve acesulfame K for soft drinks and baked goods, and the FDA is currently studying it.

Most people are not even aware that this is a nonnutritive sweetener being used in their food and beverages. It is listed in the ingredients on the food label as acesulfame K, acesulfame potassium, Ace-K, or Sunett. It is 200 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar) and is often used as a flavor-enhancer or to preserve the sweetness of sweet foods.

In carbonated drinks, it is almost always used in conjunction with another sweetener, such as aspartame

or sucralose. It is also used as a sweetener in pharmaceutical products, especially chewable and liquid medications, where it can make the active ingredients more palatable.

Like saccharin, it has a slightly bitter aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. Kraft Foods has patented the use of sodium ferulate to mask acesulfame’s aftertaste.

Compared to aspartame and saccharin, acesulfame K is even worse. The additive is inadequately tested, as the FDA based its approval on tests of acesulfame K that fell short of the FDA’s own standards. But even those tests indicate that the additive causes cancer in animals, which means it may increase cancer risk in humans.

Acesulfame K breaks down into Acetoacetamide, which has been shown to affect the thyroid in rats, rabbits, and dogs. Administration of 1% and 5% acetoacetamide in the diet for three months caused benign thyroid tumors in rats. The rapid appearance of tumors raises serious questions about the chemical’s carcinogenic potency.

Acesulfame K does contain the carcinogen methylene chloride. Long-term exposure to methylene chloride can cause headaches, depression, nausea, mental confusion, liver effects, kidney effects, visual disturbances, and cancer in humans. There has been a great deal of opposition to the use of acesulfame K without further testing, but at this time, the FDA has not required that these tests be done.

Dr. Sidney Wolfe, Director of the Public Citizen Health Research Group, and a former member of the NCI Carcinogenicity Clearinghouse has said about acesulfame K:

“It is clear that questions arising in earlier — extremely inadequate — studies about the additive’s cancer-causing properties have not been resolved…. Given the likelihood that millions of Americans would be exposed to acesulfame were the additive to be approved for beverage use, the questions about its carcinogenicity must be resolved before a scientifically supportable regulatory decision can be made.”

So there you have it about another one of the artificial sweeteners. But there’s still one more to discuss, and I’ll be back tomorrow with a look at the last of the five FDA approved artificial sweeteners.

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