Did you know that the Center For Science in the Public Interest STILL
considers saccharin "UNSAFE" ?
Please see:
http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.369/news_detail.asp
Why do people still rely on them for credible health information?
Jeff
May 24, 2004
CSPI Not Sweet on Sweeteners
By Jeff Stier, Esq.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest’s flagship publication,
Nutrition Action Health Letter is a prime fundraising tool for the
Food Police. On its face, it looks like a well-written and visually
appealing newsletter with health tips and recipes. But to the trained
eye, it’s not so pretty, at least from a scientific perspective.
Let’s break down just a few things from their May 2004 feature "Sweet
Nothings: Not All Sweeteners Are Equal." (Cute title. If only they
did such a "Splenda-d" job with their science.)
In their review of artificial sweeteners, they describe sugar alcohols
and aspartame as generally safe, which is good. And while they call
Acesulfame "inadequately tested," it is no surprise, since we know
CSPI subscribes to the precautionary principle .
But it was striking that they listed saccharin as "unsafe"!
After all, in 2000, the National Institutes of Health removed
saccharin from its "Report on Carcinogens." (See:
http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/may2000/niehs-15.htm .)
By now, we all should know that while long-term, high-dose experiments
on rats found that saccharin may cause bladder cancer in
second-generation male rats, the same does not apply to humans.
Surely, if saccharin made people sick, we’d know it from tracking
diabetics, a class of people who use more saccharin than the general
population. Yet diabetics have shown _no_ increased rate of bladder
cancer or any other types of cancer. Sachharin is safe.
So how does CSPI get to "unsafe"? Mainly through inflammatory
rhetoric. For instance, they write:
In 1997, the FDA tried to ban saccharin because animal studies showed
that it caused cancer of the bladder, uterus, ovaries, skin, and other
organs. Bowing to pressure from the diet-food industry and dieters,
Congress intervened to keep saccharin on the market, though with a
warning label. (At the time, saccharin was the only high-potency
sweetener.)
Well, cyclamates could have been an alternative, but the activists
had already pressured the FDA into banning them.
So, according to CSPI, Congress bowed to pressure from industry (and
dieters!) Never, according to CSPI, has a decision counter to CSPI
doctrine been made on its merits. Either you agree with CSPI or you
are bowing to pressure, or worse yet, you are "a paid liar for
industry."
They continue:
In the late 1990s the Calorie Control Council — which represents the
low-calorie food and beverage industry — convinced the FDA and the
National Institutes of Health that the main health concern about
saccharin was bladder cancer in male rats, but that people didn’t
develop bladder cancer through the same mechanism as the rats.
Again, it was the industry, according to CSPI, which persuaded the
apparently malleable scientists at both the Food and Drug
Administration and National Institutes of Health that humans don’t get
bladder cancer the same way rats do. Those FDA and NIH scientists
will fall for anything, suggests CSPI.
The untrained reader of CSPI’s newsletter is left to think that
saccharin is dangerous. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
But until we all start challenging CSPI, they’ll continue to get away
with it.
Isn’t it time we held them accountable?
For more "Isn’t it time we held them accountable?" articles, please
see: http://www.acsh.org/factsfears/newsID.368/news_detail.asp
For more on Saccharin, please see ACSH’s classic, Facts Versus Fears
:http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.154/pub_detail.asp
And if you want to know a bit more about "carcinogens," please see our
Holiday Dinner Menu:
http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.103/pub_detail.asp