Sweetly worked

Sweetly worked

a low-calorie sugar substitute, neotame, is awaiting clearance from the Union ministry of health and family welfare (mohfw) to enter India. The Coca Cola Company and NutraSweet Company, which holds the patent for neotame, have written to mohfw seeking approval for the sweetener. Little is known about how safe the product is that Coca Cola wants to use in its soft drinks. Neotame is derived from aspartame, another sweetener produced by NutraSweet, which is suspected to have adverse health effects. Neotame is being used in the us after it got approval of Food and Drug Administration (fda) in 1997.

In response to the application, the Central Committee for Food Standards (ccfs) of mohfw asked the Industrial Toxicology Research Centre (itrc), Lucknow, to study the health effects of neotame and other sweeteners being used in India: aspartame, acesulfame-k, sucralose and saccharine. While saccharine has been around for several decades, mohfw approved the use of sucralose in carbonated soft drinks and aspartame and acesulfame-k in food products such as mithai (sweets), on June 25, 2004. The use of aspartame and acesulfame-k in soft drinks had been approved in 1997.
Taken to court Artificial sweeteners originated in the west, where natural sugar is expensive (see box: Common sugar...). But these chemicals have always been suspect. Take the case of aspartame. On September 15, 2004, Joe Bellon, a lawyer, slapped a us $350,000,000 lawsuit on NutraSweet, American Diabetes Association (ada) and Monsanto Company amongst others. Bellon filed the case in California alleging the accused were deliberately manufacturing, marketing and promoting "toxic aspartame" despite the various health problems it can cause such as arthritis, asthma, brain cancer, diarrhoea, hypertension, memory loss and vision loss. The ada was blamed for endorsing aspartame, knowing it could worsen diabetes. Monsanto was the previous owner of NutraSweet. It was also the original patent holder for saccharin. By 2000, it sold off all its interests in sweeteners for over us $1,000 million.
Dubious past Aspartame was discovered in 1965 by g d Searle and Company of the us . For its first safety test in 1970 at the University of Wisconsin, seven infant monkeys were given the chemical with milk -- one died and five had seizures, alleged Bellon. Regardless, the company filed for fda approval, which it got in 1974 for limited use in dry food. But before the chemical came into the market, John Olney, professor of psychiatry and neuropathology at Washington University, among others, filed a formal objection stating aspartame could cause brain damage. fda put its approval on hold and formed a task force in 1975 that found that the experiments were done badly and the results manipulated, alleged Bellon.

In 1977, Donald Rumsfeld, now us secretary of defence (he held the same position from 1975-77, too), was hired as g d Searle's president to rescue the situation. When g d Searle reapplied to fda in January 1981, aspartame was granted approval. Two years later, the company got fda approval to use aspartame in soft drinks and children's vitamins. Monsanto took over g d Searle in 1985 and formed NutraSweet Company to sell aspartame. In 1996, Olney published research showing aspartame may cause brain tumour. By then, the chemical was being sold in several countries worldwide including India and China.

Another study also indicts aspartame. In May 1998, University of Barcelona researchers used aspartame labelled with a carbon-14 isotope and found poisonous methanol is released in the small intestine when aspartame encounters chymotrypsin, an enzyme. In liquids containing aspartame, methanol forms at temperatures above 86f. It is converted to formaldehyde, which changes to formic acid that can induce vomiting, diarrhoea and even death. Almost 90 per cent of aspartame is made of two amino acids -- phenylalanine and aspartic acid -- which occur in conjunction with other amino acids in foodstuff. But when unaccompanied by other amino acids, as in this sweetener, they turn neurotoxic, the study claimed.

Researchers also say it is unlikely that sweeteners would help the diabetics or the obese. A study by the Ingestive Behavior Research Center, Purdue University, published in July 2004, suggests the body's ability to regulate food intake and body weight may be weakened by low-calorie sweeteners, which impair natural relationship between taste and calories. When an artificial sweetener replaces sugar, the body can no longer use its sense of taste to gauge calories and can be fooled into thinking a product containing sugar has no calories, thus making people overeat.

But scientific data has been ignored because sweeteners are big business. Their world consumption is estimated at 7.5 million tonnes sugar sweetness equivalent, representing about 6 per cent of global sweetener consumption (including sugar). Among artificial sweeteners, saccharin (71 per cent of global share) and aspartame (23 per cent share) are mainly used. The us is the world's biggest consumer of low-calorie sweeteners, accounting for 33 per cent of global consumption. Aspartame has a 70 per cent shareof the us market and saccharin the remaining 30 per cent.

Isn't it the case that the industry is moving away from older non-patented sweeteners to newer ones for greater profits? Neotame has been priced more expensively than aspartame. And NutraSweet is now saying neotame is "safer" than aspartame. Is this just a market strategy? In a similar case, while considering pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline's (gsk) application for using aspartame in a sports drink recently, itrc had quipped: when saccharin is available abundantly in India, why should a more expensive, imported sweetener be used?

Indian industry hit
Sweeteners are proving a bitter pill for the Indian sugar industry. "Artificial sweeteners are not in the interest of the Indian sugar industry. The sugar industry has a special place in the rural economy, considering the 50,000 cane farmers and their families, 450 factories employing 0.5 million direct labourers and transporters needed for 200 million tonnes of sugarcane and 20 million tonnes of sugar," says M N Rao, secretary, Indian Sugar Mills Association, Delhi.

Import of new sweeteners is also leading to less demand for domestic saccharin. These sweeteners lack saccharin's metallic aftertaste and so are being preferred. Saccharin's taste can be masked with newer sweeteners. While this is done elsewhere, in India mixing is not allowed under the Prevention of Food Adulteration rules. "When we objected to the introduction of aspartame at a ccfs meeting, we were told that we have vested interest in promoting saccharin. On the other hand, the newer sweeteners are promoted by the food industry itself. We were asked to carry out studies to show the safety of saccharin. We cannot afford to get these studies carried out," says J C Kathrani, former president of the All India Saccharin Manufacturers Association, Mumbai.

It has been alleged that big industry often commissions public laboratories such as National Institute of Nutrition in Hyderabad and itrc, to carry out safety studies -- these are the very people who come to ccfs meetings with the onus of clearing the chemicals.

"The issue (whether sweeteners should be used or not) should be resolved by people's verdict - after all, diet carbonated drinks did not work in the country," says Vijay Sardana, executive director, Center for International Trade in Agriculture and Agrobased Industries. But first, it is essential that the contents are mentioned on the labels of products; consumer activists can then ensure that the information is passed on even to the poor and illiterate. "The substances can be given provisional clearance. If the scientific community comes up with data to show that they are unsafe, they can be easily recalled," adds Sardana. R L Bijlani, head of the department of physiology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi feels most sweeteners are quite harmless, but he does agree that in a country like India, where a large part of the population is undernourished and sugar is a source of energy, low-calorie sweeteners might be cheating the body.

Increased use
Meanwhile, with the June 2004 mohfw notification allowing wider use of artificial sweeteners, the industry is seeking permission to use them in newer products. For instance, Hindustan Lever wants to use sweeteners in tea and coffee bases and frozen desserts.

With sweeteners now allowed even in mithai, measuring their levels becomes difficult. This raises questions about setting limits for the Acceptable Daily Intake of these chemicals that the human body can cope with. "These chemicals should not be promoted as healthy alternatives to sugar," says Rao.

itrc is yet to initiate the study on the health effects of sweeteners. A lot depends on it, for industry's influence on laboratories is legion. 12jav.net12jav.net