Sweeteners Issues and Uncertainties (1975) / Chapter Skim
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OTHER SWEETENERS
OTHER SWEETENERS
Pages 177-214
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From page 177... ...
3. For the simply overweight people who wish to achieve a more normal weight, artificial sweeteners contribute to effective restriction in caloric intake.
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From page 178... ...
This is one-fiftieth of the generally accepted safe daily intake in l969, which gives generous allowance even for the inordinate user. Our current position is that the allowable daily intake could be 2.5, still giving an adequate safety factor.
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From page 179... ...
Further, the effects on testicular weight occur only in the presence of a 30 percent reduction in total body weight, and everything we heard today and yesterday says that this necessary precondition is not obtained in man. Additionally, a safety factor considerably less than l00-fold can be accepted when there is so obvious a warning sign as 30 percent weight reduction, as away from an unobservable effect.
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From page 180... ...
The question of what items in the food supply (such as foods, beverage, or tabletop use) are allowed must be answered by considering the probable intake resulting from uses in different kinds of foods, the benefits to the various consumers, and the daily total intake found safe.
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From page 181... ...
The reason is, in my opinion, and I can document it, that one series of tests was responsible for wrongly taking cyclamate off the market and upon a recommendation of the National Academy of Sciences that was then accepted by the Food and Drug Administration. I will commit a further crime.
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From page 182... ...
For normal body function, phenylalanine, like any other essential nutrient, must be provided preformed in the food. Methyl esters are common constituents of plant products, especially of substances that impart flavors in fruits and vegetables, juices, and liquors.
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From page 183... ...
8 H2N -- C -- C-N -- C -- C -- 01 CH2 CH0 C = O r VH f -- CH. L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester (molecular weight 294.3)
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From page 184... ...
In a solution at pH 4, that is about the acidity of root beer, stored at room temperature, 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees centigrade, 20 percent of the sweetness of aspartame would be lost after 4-l/2 months. In Table l are summarized some observations on the time for loss of 20 percent of sweetness in relation to the temperature of storage.
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From page 185... ...
The formation of carbon dioxide, the end product of oxidation of each of these substances in the body, followed essentially the same time course, whether the amino acids or the methanol were administered individually or whether they were administered in aspartame. Since aspartame is metabolized in the body in the same way as amino acids, unlike saccharin and cyclamates, it is a nutritive substance.
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From page 186... ...
Adverse effects have long been known to occur in animals consuming excessive amounts of several essential amino acids, among them phenylalanine. Some of these tests are continuing.
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From page 187... ...
This amount of aspartame would represent about 5 percent of the average daily intake of phenylalanine, and less than that of the average intake of aspartic acid. Some individuals will, in all probability, consume more than the estimated intake, and a few undoubtedly will consume much more.
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From page 188... ...
37 Gin (3 oz) -- 90 In summary, aspartame is an odorless, crystalline compound made up of substances that occur naturally in foods.
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From page 189... ...
These two compounds, in fact, belong to a family of neuroexcitatory toxins or excitotoxic amino acids, as we have come to designate them. All of the members of this family of excitotoxins (Figure l)
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From page 190... ...
Some of these molecules are more potent than either glutamic or aspartic acids in exciting and destroying nerve cells. For example, tf-methyl-DL-aspartic acid, although differing only slightly from aspartic acid in molecular structure, is l00 times more powerful in excitotoxic activity (3)
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From page 191... ...
that it was a premature action since the combined toxicity of aspartame with glutamate or other excitotoxic amino acids had not been studied nor had the neurotoxicity of aspartame itself been tested appropriately on immature animals even though immature humans appeared to be a major consumer target projected for it. FDA has taken these objections under consideration and has expressed its intent to convene a public board of inquiry to review the matter sometime in the near future.
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From page 192... ...
l92 4-l/2 oz (l30 g) jar of such baby food provided a 6 kg infant with 0.l3 g of added MSG/kg of body weight.
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From page 193... ...
We can administer most of the amino acids in similar ways and produce severe toxicity. We can administer lactose, which is milk sugar that is consumed by children all the time, to rats and produce severe cataracts.
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From page 194... ...
OLNEY: Yes, but it takes quite some time for the protein to be digested, and the aspartic and glutamic acids ingested as protein are going to be dribbled into the bloodstream over several hours, period of time. Actually, this represents a minor safety factor working in aspartame's favor.
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From page 195... ...
HARPER: There have been studies on absorption of amino acids in man, using a double lumen tube. These show, as in the rodent, that glutamic and aspartic acids are the most slowly absorbed of all the amino acids and that their concentrations in plasma do not rise in response to a load as readily as do most other amino acids (5)
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From page 196... ...
Incidentally, most humans find l-percent sucrose insipid, or even offensive. The suggestion has been made that taste buds must be kept in fighting trim to respond to sweets, that is, a continuous exposure to sweets is necessary to maintain the drive for them.
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From page 197... ...
Apparently, having soda pop and candy bars continuously through life is not necessary to keep a sweet tooth functioning. The taste receptors will work and respond at any age to the initial exposure to a sweet stimulation.
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From page 198... ...
As we get older, the number of taste buds goes down. A study by Arey (5)
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From page 199... ...
The testing procedure we use requires about 30 to 45 minutes per individual. In addition to the threshold testing, we employed some practical tests with commercial products prepared with
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From page 200... ...
Therefore, oral stimulation with a sweetener can influence circulating hormones. If you pop a candy in your mouth, you know that saliva is secreted.
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From page 201... ...
, nothing will happen. However, if a little sucrose is placed on their tongues, the volume of pancreatic flow goes up and the protein content of the secretions increases.
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From page 202... ...
in our laboratory isolated the active material of this sweet jelly, and one pound of the pure material was equivalent in sweetness to approximately a ton of sugar. On a molecular basis, it is 80,000 times as sweet as sucrose; that is, it is intensely sweet compared to sucrose.
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From page 203... ...
Our scientists are isolating taste cells in a test tube and studying how a sweet material acts on the surface to produce a sweet sensation. Perhaps the people in the sugar industry here will take issue, but sucrose and the simple sugars are really relatively poor sweeteners.
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From page 204... ...
CHOATE: Dr. Kare, I notice you brought up the reactions to varying increments of sucrose in a rather bland mix as people change by age and by race.
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From page 205... ...
When a baby pig is removed from its mother and placed on commercial starter, it is made appealing so that the food intake will be maintained at the normal level. If you place a baby, or a young animal, in a strange environment, food intake drops off.
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From page 206... ...
The decision as to whether or not you add sugar should consider the physiological functions served by taste stimulation. HAUSMAN: It seemed to me that you were saying that foods have to be highly appealing in order to be eaten, and I think that people eat because they are hungry, and that they do not eat highly sweetened foods.
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From page 207... ...
In order to have successful food products, there are certain sensory and functional properties that sweeteners must fulfill. A variety of sweeteners, in my estimation, is the best approach to this problem.
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From page 208... ...
After a few years of working on miracle fruit, we had problems at International Minerals and Chemical Corporation. In an attempt to solve some of these problems, I found some sweet berries and went back into the laboratory to put them in water to filter the material, and found the extract to be exceedingly sweet, similar to a saccharin solution.
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From page 209... ...
The one thing this Forum seems to agree on is that there are many products containing sugar, particularly the between-meal snacks and the sticky type of sucrose-containing products, that contribute to dental caries. We found that we could develop these very confection products by using the miracle fruit
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From page 210... ...
The whole project came to a halt in September of l974, when we received a letter from the FDA, telling us that this material was now regarded as a food additive, and that since there was no legal food additive order outstanding, the product was to be removed from the market immediately. We were to notify FDA within a specified number of days that we had complied with this regulatory letter.
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From page 211... ...
Over the last decade the courts have said that the term generally recognized as safe means that there is controlled scientific evidence in the literature equal to the evidence required to be submitted to FDA in a food additive petition. It should come as no surprise to you that the FDA requires you to prove by controlled scientific evidence that your product is safe before you market it on any widespread basis, and I find it quite extraordinary for you to complain when FDA was just enforcing the law.
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From page 213... ...
FUTURE OPTlONS: Natural and Artificial Sweeteners
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