Artificial sweetener debate
The scientific study and government approval of various artifical sweeteners including cyclamate, saccharin, and aspartame have been a topic of much debate and disagreement.
Cyclamate Controversy
In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration banned the sale of cyclamate in 1970 after lab tests indicated that large amounts of cyclamates caused bladder cancer in rats (a disease which rats are particularly susceptible to, also caused by drinking sugar water). The findings of these studies have been challenged and some companies are petitioning to have cyclamates reapproved. Cyclamate is still used as sweeteners in many other parts of the world and it is approved in over 55 countries.
Saccharin Controversy
There have been worries about the safety of saccharin since its introduction. United States President Theodore Roosevelt, on the safety of saccharin, said "Anyone who thinks saccharin is dangerous is an idiot". Fear about saccharin increased when a 1960 study showed that high levels of saccharin may cause bladder cancer in lab rats. In 1977, Canada banned saccharin due to animal research. The FDA in the United States considered banning saccharin in 1977, but after a moratorium was placed on the ban to study the safety of saccharin, the ban was withdrawn in 1991. Likewise, in 2000, the United States repealed a law requiring saccharin products to carry health warning labels.
Aspartame Controversy
Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by James M. Schlatter at the G.D. Searle company (later purchased by Monsanto). Initial safety testing suggested that aspartame caused brain tumors in rats; as a result, the additive was held up in the United States for many years in the Food and Drug Administration's approval process. In 1980, the FDA convened a Public Board of Inquiry (PBOI) consisting of independent advisors charged with examining the purported relationship between aspartame and brain cancer. The PBOI concluded that aspartame did not cause brain damage, but recommended against approving aspartame at that time, citing unanswered questions about cancer in laboratory rats. In 1981, FDA Commissioner Arthur Hull Hayes, newly appointed by President Ronald Reagan, approved aspartame as a food additive, citing data from a Japanese study that had not been available to the members of the PBOI.
Since the FDA approved aspartame for consumption, some researchers have suggested that a rise in brain tumor rates in the United States may be at least partially related to the increasing availability and consumption of aspartame. , However, more recent research has failed to find any link between aspartame and cancer or other health problems. ,
One of the many hypotheses about the causes of Gulf war syndrome is that soldiers, after drinking gallons of aspartame-laced soft drinks in the extreme heat, accumulated toxic doses of methanol, formaldehyde, diketopiperazine and formic acid from the breakdown of the sweetener into its component molecules. However, the symptoms do not greatly resemble those of classic methanol poisoning, and the body, in its normal metabolism, produces methanol in quantities comparable or greater than would be ingested via aspartame, so this theory does not have wide support.
