Aspartame Paper

Independent Study: Are Artificial Sweeteners Really So Sweet?

Orlena Roe

You are quite literally what you eat. The foods you put in your body are broken down into minerals that are used to rebuild damaged tissues and fuel your everyday life. With that view, it might seem somewhat important to selective with what of which you choose to build yourself. Now as easy as that sounds, in our modern world we are bombarded with more food choices than we realize; organic or not organic, all-natural versus organic or even sugar free versus sweetened gum. The point is, in today's world it's a challenge to eat unprocessed food. You would think that because we have the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) we could assume that the processed foods we do eat are safe. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Many of the artificial additives have been proven to maliciously impact mammals but for various reasons, they're still acceptable to be put in food products. It is up to you, the consumer to both choose healthy choices for yourself and speak up against the dangerous additives.
Food additives are just what they sound like; they are added to food to enhance or contribute a certain flavor. There are many types of food additives ranging from natural things such as salt ranging to manmade additives like monosodium glutamate (MSG).Not all food additives are 'bad' so to say, but most of the artificial additives are not great for your body. Some are much milder than others which are extremely harmful like aspartame or saccharin. Due to the condition of the FDA at this point in time, it is difficult to determine if all of the legalized food products are really healthy and safe to eat. Because of this, it is the individuals' job to seek information on their own. The mission of this paper is to summarize dangerous food additives and help the reader become more aware of what she or he is consuming.
To really get a grasp of the artificial sweeteners, it’s important to understand some terminology. Amino acids are the building blocks for the proteins that make up our bodies. The type of amino acids and their sequence determines which protein is made. Proteins are used to provide the living being with energy. “…proteins contain within their amino acid sequences the necessary information to determine how that protein will fold into a three dimensional structure, and the stability of the resulting structure” (Biology Project). There are 20 amino acids and of those 20, the human body is only able to make 10 of them. The other 10 must be obtained from outside sources like food and without them; the result is “degradation in the body’s protein.” The 10 amino acids the body can produced are called non-essential amino acids, and then 10 that must be obtained from food are the essential amino acids (Biology Project).

It is also important to understand the position of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) because they are the people who determine if food additives are safe for the public or not. I interviewed Bill, a gentleman who’d previously worked with the FDA on various accounts. According to him, “The FDA is understaffed and underpaid although they know what’s right. They swing from too little to too much oversight of the studies with which they’re presented.” It’s very clear from him that the predominantly government funded FDA is a chaotic place because of the overworked and underpaid staff. Unfortunately, that means the FDA isn’t able to truly protect the public health. Bill also let me know that the FDA doesn’t second guess the scientist’s information. However, if there are major gaps or discrepancies in the information, they’ll question if a mistake was made. He also explained that product applications were enormous and that for one product to be approved, massive amounts of studies and paperwork had to be looked at. Considering the stressful environment of the FDA, it does a pretty good job. However, that isn’t good enough. The FDA isn’t the “bad guy”. It seems from Bill, that people who are employed there work very frustrating jobs but they also work hard. Even so, as the FDA they should be funded so that they can function more efficiently and actually protect the public from the things they are consuming.

The real problems lie in the information collected by the companies who own the artificial sweeteners and additives. Bill told me that often times companies like Monsanto (owner of the artificial sweetener saccharin) would get “third party” opinions about the safety of their product. The “third party” would consist of scientists and teams performing studies, supposedly not linked to the company at all so that the company would be gathering safety information from a neutral source. The problem is that those “third party” sources were still paid by the companies so they aren’t really from an unbiased position. A good example of this is the Comments on Toxicology:A Journal of Critical Discussion and Current Literature.This is a scientific report from the late ‘80s I got to help me with this project. The first twenty pages consists of information and studies convincing the reader that aspartame is incredibly safe. There is even one section deflecting all criticism of the sweetener. “Anecdotal reports of adverse health experiences (e.g., headaches, dizziness, seizures, skin rashes, and nausea) attributed to aspartame consumption have been reviewed extensively by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA)…The usefulness of adverse experiences data, however, is limited by various biases that affect reporting. When anecdotal medical complaint data are interpreted, numerous confounding factors, such as underlying medical conditions, medications, and other product ingredients, must be considered” (Toxology 271). It’s interesting how this report immediately yet defensively dismisses the aspartame criticism as uneducated research. What’s even more interesting is that when I flipped to the last page of the report to see the authors, they were Dr. Harriet H. Butchko and Dr. Frank N. Kotsonis of the Preclinical and Clinical Research for the NutraSweet Company. (NutraSweet is one of the companies that own aspartame.) It’s not a coincidence that the report didn’t even slightly acknowledge that there may be side affects of aspartame, and that the ones who wrote it were part of the company that owned aspartame.

Aspartame is one of the most hazardous food additives out there. It was discovered in 1965 by James Schlatter, a scientist from the G.D. Searle & Company. He was doing some experiments with amino acids to find an ulcer drug, but when he licked his finger, he found that the substance was sweet. That substance is what we now call aspartame (Mercola 38) (Hull). Aspartame is legalized by the FDA to be used in gums, gelatins and soft drinks. You also might know it under its marketing names of EQUAL © or NutraSweet © or those little yellow low calorie sweetener packets in the coffee shop.
The history of aspartame’s approval is a rather devious one. The first safety studies seemed to have disappeared. “Senior FDA scientists and consultants vigorously protested approving the release of aspartame product. Their objections were related to the following:
-Disturbing findings in animal studies (especially the frequency of brain tumors)
-Seemingly flawed experimental data
-The absence of extensive pre-marketing trials on humans using actual products containing aspartame over prolonged periods” (Mercola 38) (*Master File for FDA Hearing). A safety study done by Dr. Waismon of G.D. Searle & Company showed that of seven monkeys who were fed an aspartame and milk solution, one died and the other five had “grand mal seizures”. Another study by Dr. John Olney showed that the aspartic acid in aspartame damaged the brains of baby mice (Mercola 39) and because of that it wasn’t legalized(Food Safety).