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INTRODUCTION Carl Pfaffmann Chairman My role and the mechanics of the Forum were well-set by Dr. Kasha yesterday, so that it is not necessary for me to repeat the general instructions. In addressing the Forum, please identify yourself and your institution. I will identify myself a bit further. I am, and have been for many years, a researcher in the sense of taste, particularly in the psycho- physiology of taste. Because of this, I cannot resist the opportunity of making several remarks. Implicit behind the discussions of these two days is the notion that a very strong, basic, biological drive or mechanism is involved in appetite and feeding, and that the sense of taste, particularly the mechanisms that make it possible to perceive sweetness, have some un- usual property in that connection. I entirely concur with that point of view. Dr. Beidler's very fine introduction indicated something of its nature; various speakers from the podium and the audience have kept coming back to that concept. What is it that makes sweetness so pleasant? If you stop to think for a moment, it is a very fundamental question about which we have no firm knowledge. More broadly, we could ask: What makes any sensation that is pleasant a pleasurable one, and what is it that makes an un- pleasant or aversive stimulus that way? These are fundamental questions that can be applied not only to taste stimuli, but to a variety of other stimuli that surround us and that motivate behavior. I would like to make an addition along the line of Dr. Beidler's presentation, one that we happen to be working on in our own labora- tory. This is the nature of the brain processes that are triggered off by stimuli such as sweet once its specific set of receptors is acti- vated. I am very proud that a young man in my laboratory has made an l2l
l22 important advance on this problem. In tracing the pathways from the brain to the tongue, to the medulla, to the midbrain, through to the thalamus and to the cortex, he found that the classical, thalamo- cortical projection system was only part of the story. In the pons there is a branch point in the taste system that previously had not been recognized, or not very widely recognized, although there were spots here and there of evidence. This branch point gives rise to a second taste pathway, passing into the ventral part of the brain, and then forward into the limbic system. This latter system is the large fundamental and basic rudiment of the nervous system, controlling much of motivation, emotional behavior, and the experiences associated therewith. So it seems now that we can add --at least as far as brain anatomy and physiology are concerned -- the first indications of how taste in- formation not only stimulates a sensation, but how it also activates mechanisms of appetite. The limbic system and hypothalamus is the part of the brain that largely controls appetite. Now we can begin to say that there is a neural pathway and neural mechanism that lies behind the craving or the desire for sweet. When you have that kind of funda- mental evidence, it changes the question of whether or not we are pandering to man's craving for the sweet and lovely from a moral issue to a psychobiological inquiry. We have to deal with a basic, biologi- cal mechanism that is being tapped. This is not the first time, nor is this era the first in which sugar has been considered an evil agent. This is well-depicted in a cartoon appearing in the public media in l79l that was entitled "The Antisaccha- rites" (Figure l). The man on the left is saying, "O delicious! deli- cious!" And the lady is saying to those present, "O my dear creatures, do but taste it! You can't think how nice it is without sugar, and then consider how much work you'll save the poor Blackamoors by leaving off the use of it!" The antisaccharist movement, of course, was acti- vated by the objections to the slavery that accompanied most of the agricultural activities in growing sugarcane, particularly in the British colonies in the West Indies. "And above all," the lady goes on to say, "remember how much expense it will save your poor papa. O it is a charming, cooling drink." The expressions on the faces of the other members of the family indicate that they are not enthusiastic about that proposition. This old cartoon, which I first encountered in Noel Deerr's History of Sugar, published in l949 by Chapman 5 Hall of London, seems to be a particularly appropriate introduction to the Forum's various considera- tions of saccharin.
ASTISACCHARRITES, - or - JOHN BULL ind ln» Famdy WTO off d* i* of SUGAR - - ::. *.t»*i.(j*^*f~6^* J&t>^lMiwMr.*â¢."&, *>f» FIGURE l The Antisaccharites. l23
SACCHARlN
