In the fairy tale of sweet poisons, the third stepsister aspartame has joined genotoxic sucralose and saccharin as possible carcinogens. This ongoing sweet war confirms the suspicion that capitalism is an extremely unreliable guardian of our health.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) as the World Health Organization’s cancer research arm, is all set to categorize the ubiquitous artificial sweetener aspartame as ‘possibly carcinogenic to humans’ this month according to a Reuters report. This has come as a response to a 100,000 people observational study not using random controlled trials by a French group.
IARC’s statements, however, address hazard, not risk, putting it in the low 2b category that includes aloe vera and pickles. The risk is said to be a factor of exposure and hence only a high quantum of consumption warrants this risk factor, according to the Food Standards Agency, which thinks that under permissible levels, consumption is safe.
Aspartame has been one of the most investigated compounds over many decades ever since it was discovered in 1965. Ironically, one of its largest producers is Tokyo-based company Ajinomoto, which also made the other controversial compound ajinomoto or MSG, which was viewed as a harmful additive to foods. This non-nutritive table-top sweetener has a history of being supported by lobbyists like Donald Rumsfeld, who have batted for its inclusion as a benign substance for human health and consumption when he was part of Searle, an aspartame manufacturer.
Aspartame, which is chemically a methyl ester of the aspartic acid phenylalanine dipeptide, artificially manufactured from two amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, is popular in diet colas and baked goods across the world since it is 500 times sweeter than sugar. It is particularly the darling of the diet and fitness crowd as well as the large number of diabetics who cannot have sugar because of glucose intolerance. Aspartame comes in for bad press because it metabolises into methanol at 50 mg per litre of beverage which is only a third of that of fruit juices. Methanol as a carcinogen has been the battle cry of all researchers, but the wild outcry of dedicated diet beverage drinkers seems to suggest that it is not such a potent carcinogen at the altar of taste. On the other hand, other sweeteners are not broken down at all. To this the pro-carcinogen lobby counters that the more than 100 research papers seem to have been funded by sweetener companies or had research by employees of such companies. According to the aspartame-hungry lobby in the US, studies show that a 70 kg man would have to drink an impossibly high 19-36 cans of diet Coke to fall into the cancer curve.
The problem is that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took almost 50 years to declare the harmful effects of heart-unfriendly trans fats and ban them thanks to the relentless hounding by a professor from the University of Illinois. In fact, the food industry consistently blocked all the science on trans fats for decades to promote them for their low cost.
Every ban or promotion in the contemporary corporate universe is a collusion between Big Food, Big Pharma and Big Healthcare. Junk food fuels both these industries with the rates of cancer and metabolic diseases reaching alarming levels. As an aide memoire let us not forget margarine was touted as healthy for us all, with the innocuous Dalda and Rath vanaspati considered absolutely kosher at one time.
Saccharin was launched as a medicine for diabetics, side-effects be damned. The evil sweet affair also includes sugar alcohols like erythritol and maltitol which create a variety of side effects like nausea, palpitations and dizziness and also increase sugar levels for some but are used with impunity by chocolate and baked goods manufacturers.
Many food scientists are coming around to the view that anything artificial is potentially carcinogenic. While others say that aspartame cancer risk is just one more ill-advised piece of communication from WHO. However, this never-ending epidemic of overconsumption fuelled by slick advertising and greed for revenues is becoming the slow march to hell for us.
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