Sweeteners Issues and Uncertainties (1975) / Chapter Skim
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Pages 215-230
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From page 215... ...
Wodicka ANITA JOHNSON I would like to make some general comments on themes that have run through the proceedings today. The comments are entitled "Consumer Principles for Food Additive Decisions." I am employed by Public Citizen Health Research Group, an organization affiliated with Ralph Nader that is supported by many individual, small donations.
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From page 216... ...
In fact, Congressman Fountain's subcommittee later showed that there was serious basis to question whether DES really made meat any cheaper, since the committee found that beef-raising requires a great deal more feed when DES is used than when it is not. Similarly, a recent article in the Washington Post by Marian Burros pointed out that the cost of saccharin-sweetened soft drinks was keeping pace with the rising cost of sugar-sweetened soft drinks, so that in essence the saccharin drinks were giving the food industry the extra profit that it was losing from sugar drinks.
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From page 217... ...
Dr. Van Houweling, the current director of the Bureau of Animal Drugs, stated at the Food and Drug Law Institute several months ago that the benefits and the risks should be "balanced by businessmen through their trade associations." Certainly the NAS Food Protection Committee should not be in the business of balancing benefits and risks.
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From page 218... ...
In the Japanese study, while there were not bladder tumors and the Food Protection Committee was correct that it did not show increased bladder tumors, there was a dramatic excess of overall tumor incidence in animals fed saccharin. In the Canadian study, it is true there were no bladder tumors.
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From page 219... ...
As Dr. Shubik stated at the National Cancer Advisory Committee last week, the old idea that viruses cause cancer has pretty much gone down the tubes.
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From page 220... ...
The possible conclusion is that we should eat neither sugar nor the sweeteners, which is to say that you are going to have to eliminate or remove an entire category within our food supply. Here, then, is this question: Has this Forum at this point defined a clear and present danger, if you please, to the safety, to the health, to the welfare of the people?
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From page 221... ...
There have been some few instances of animal experimentation that are, at most, equivocal, especially since one can read the NAS report and come to a conclusion that there is no danger. I daresay that if I were to ask the members of this audience what their reaction is to the scientific response to the present knowledge of these matters, I think we would all come away feeling that on the whole the scientific evidence indicates that there is not that much danger, except in rare cases.
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From page 222... ...
At what point is it justified for the government to come in, to restrict the freedom either of science, of commerce, or for that matter, of any individual? The scientific evidence regarding smoking is so definitive and so decisive by comparison to what is, to my knowledge, available with respect to saccharin or cyclamate that one wonders how, with such minimal inference, such a significant decision can be made with respect to these sweeteners, whereas with respect to cigarettes, we are all aware of the enormous deleterious and tragic consequences of a product that is at the moment not banned.
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From page 223... ...
But the government tried 50 years ago to have prohibition, and all that happened was that illegal booze was made, the Mafia came in, and you got all sorts of nonsense. We know, for instance, that alcohol causes increased rates of carcinoma of the liver, carcinoma of the esophagus, carcinoma of the bowel.
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From page 224... ...
It no longer is a matter of taking one side of an equation alone and hoping that some informed scientific peer will make a decision on the basis of a scientific report. Our society depends upon different views being brought together in these kinds of matters, with the public ultimately deciding between them.
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From page 225... ...
Stumpf mentioned, namely, the validity of interpreting animal experiments of the kind that have been done in trying to judge the safety of these agents for the human, and the dose level that the human would be consuming is microscopic relative to the doses that were used in these tests. So that I am rather disturbed that the panel that developed this report insisted that many more animal studies had to be done in order to assure it is otherwise safe in the human diet to have saccharin.
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From page 226... ...
We cannot do experiments on saccharin to answer the question of the difference of how man might react to large doses versus how the animals respond; it is proper that we cannot do such human experiments, but it does mean that we have to use great judgment in interpreting the animal experiments. I think that the audience probably feels that this performance by the scientists in the community who have been looking at this is just another example of how the scientist obfuscates, drags his feet, and hesitates to make a decision.
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From page 227... ...
We have heard a number of presentations centering on this fact, which has stimulated the reaction with me -- and I see that Morley Kare got it too -that one segment of the body of opinion bearing on this sweetener issue undoubtedly is taking the position that sweetness is a pleasurable sensation; therefore, it is hedonistic; hedonism is wicked; therefore, we should take action against anything that is sweet. Some mention has been made about the Volstead Act and the Eighteenth Amendment, and I think that is enough of a commentary on that particular background and the indicated action.
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From page 228... ...
I might point out that technologically the labeling of added sugar would present some difficulties because many foods, such as canned fruit, are formulated not to a fixed recipe, but to a fixed product. In other words, it is the total sugar in the can from both the syrup and the fruit that is the target, and there is not a fixed percentage of sugar added.
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From page 229... ...
If Dr. Stumpf would stop and think of the futile exercises that many of us have been through trying to beg sponsors and advertisers, broadcasters, and the nutritionists and food technicians who work with the food industry to help them reform how they sell food to children in this country through private self-regulation, only to end up with practically nothing after eight years of endeavor, then
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From page 230... ...
250 he would know why so many of us now start to think about turning to government. On a final note, I hope that you will remember the remark of Mr.
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