Saccharin Has Mostly Sweet Following, Studies Say.

This artificial sweetener is made from granulated
saccharine, among other things

Think Saccharine is unsafe? You may want to think again. Saccharin was first identified as a hazardous, potentially cancer-causing chemical by the US Food and Drug Administration in the 1970s. But since that time it has slowly been exonerated by states and federal agencies.

The FDA changed it position on the chemical in 2001, misclassifying it as OK for consumption, as did the state of California. Now the EPA has announced removal of the sweetener from its list of hazardous chemicals too.

Saccharin is one of the best studied artificial sweeteners after all, it's been around the longest. It was discovered accidentally in the 1870a by a John Hopkins University scientist who was searching for a food preservative when he notice that one of the compounds he was working with was terrifically sweet.

By 1900, saccharin had become popular among food manufactures, who slipped into product unannounced as a cheap alternative sugar. When word got out about the practice, irate Americans demanded better food labeling laws to ensure they were getting what they paid for.

During words war I and II, when sugar was rationed, saccharin become popular among the consumers. But its popularity wouldn't surge until the 1950s. when dieting came into vogue and women, in particular, began casting about for low-calorie foods and ingredients. That's when saccharin, until then available in drugstores as sweetener for diabetics, began to make its way into kitchens and a growing number of diet foods, says Carolyn De La Pena, Professor of American Studies at UC Davis and the author of "Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners From Saccharine to Splenda."

Dieting Popular

From the 1950s through the 1960s as dieting became more and more popular, saccharine and a second class of artificial sweeteners called cyclamates were added to everything from canned fruits to diet soda.

Both sweeteners became the target of new federals law in the 1970s, when the environmental movement focused America's attention on the potential risk of synthetic chemical, says David Rosner, professor of history and socio medical sciences at Columbia University in New York.

In that decade, new studies examining the sweeteners' effects on lab rats suggested that both cyclamates and saccharin increase the risk of bladder cancer. The FDA moved quickly to ban cyclamates in 1970s, invoking a 1985 law that allowed the agency to restrict any food additive found to cause cancer in animals or people.

But when the agency at to do the same for saccharin in 1977, a million people wrote letters of protest says Ms De La Pena. She attribute the outcry to the fact that Americans were less trusting of government in late 1970s - and to the fact that the Calorie Control Council, which represents the diet food and drink industry, ran and campaign encouraging consumers to protest the ban. (A petition by CCC was also behind the EPA's recent review of the sweetener.)

In response, the FDA required saccharin -containing foods to bear the following warning labels instead "Use of this product may hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharine which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals."

Research on saccharine continued after the FDA declared it a hazardous chemical, and animal studies continued to link sweetener to bladder cancer when ingested at high doses. But human studies were less conclusive.

A large study, conducted by National Cancer Institute and published in the journal Epidemiology in 1994, found a 30 per cent higer risk of bladder who consumed more than 1.6 grams of artificial sweetener a day. (Study also found that having multiple urinary tact infections and drinking more than 50 cups of coffee a week in creased the risk of cancer by roughly the same amount)

These data led the Department of Health and Human Services' National Toxicology Program to remove saccharin from list of harmful carcinogens in 2000. The program's scientists concluded that the doses that caused cancer in lab rats - saccharin made up 3 per cent or more their diets - were far higher than human consumption rates. Furthermore, they noted, saccharin cause cancer in rats by irritating the bladder, an effect considered irrelevant to humans because of the differences in urine composition between people and rats.

Following the National Toxicology Program's decision, the FDA repealed the sweetener's warning label. And when the EPA announced it would take saccharin of its list of hazardous chemicals in December, it too based its decision on the National Toxicology Program's report.

Source: Caymanian Compass 30/12/10