The sugar substitute Sweet’N Low says on the back in the ingredients that it contains Sodium Cyclamate 34%. On the next line it notes “Cyclamate to be used only on the advice of a physician. So that means this “sugar” should only be used on the advice of a doctor. It’s prescription sweetener if you will.
The result if you eat this without asking your doctor? Sweet’N Low Disease. It’s real, and very, very serious. Ask your doctor.
So when you’re out having tea or coffee at a New Year’s Eve party, make sure not to add any Kraft Sweet’N Low without talking to your doctor first. Only two calories, with a prescription.
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Miss Cellania | 31-Dec-06 at 8:23 pm | Permalink
My kids asked me about this, and I told them you may as well go with the devil you know (sugar) as the devil you don’t (artificial sweeteners). Since they are pretty skinny naturally, I’m not concerned about calories. But I do remember when cyclamates were banned (before you were born). When they later tried to do that with saccharin, dieters rebelled until they backed down!
Cameron W | 31-Dec-06 at 9:31 pm | Permalink
Maybe it’s the luddite in me (old stuff is mostly just fine), but I would take sugar over a neurotoxin produced by Monsanto (Aspartame) or the ‘it’s-cancer-causing-no-it’s-not-ban-it-no-don’t’ wonder sweeteners cyclamate&saccharin.
Saccharine is known to cause bladder cancer. Aspartame is a neurotoxin and is associated with seizure activity.
Sugar is… yummy.
Saskboy1 | 01-Jan-07 at 1:17 am | Permalink
I haven’t tried Stevia yet, but it’s a natural sweetener that is popular in places where Monsanto doesn’t yet have a stranglehold I guess.
M@ | 01-Jan-07 at 12:19 pm | Permalink
Got a source supporting the aspartame is actually a poison? Because here are some counter-opinions:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
Cyclamates got a bad rap when a study linked them to bladder cancer in rats. However, the study has been disavowed by the conductor of the study himself, and its results have not been reproduced in numerous other studies.
Sweeteners are all just chemicals that are many times sweeter than sugar, so you can use far less of the substance, meaning you get fewer calories. There’s no mystery or magic about any of them. Why people seem so desperate to believe these rumours is beyond me.
Saskboy | 01-Jan-07 at 9:11 pm | Permalink
If aspartame doesn’t grow naturally, I’m more inclined to believe it’s yet another pseudo-safe food, no better than yellow food colouring tartrazine. There’s possibly a lot of hysterical hype against them, but I’d rather trust washed up hippies, over money grubbing corporations any day. Trusting corporations to give us safe products is why there is still so much smoking and Coca-Cola today.
M@ | 03-Jan-07 at 9:20 pm | Permalink
Well, maybe. But show me a single packaged food of any kind that doesn’t have a similarly psuedo-safe food. Why is it that sodium cyclamate is a potentially dangerous chemical, but rumours about sodium benzoate are non-existent?
I think it’s worth it, in today’s world, thinking about our standards of evidence as a consumer and citizen. Some rumours I heard are not a reliable or even useful source any more than Monsanto’s product brochures. (And — let’s be clear — I’m not calling anyone a washed-up hippie for their opinions, as the problem is in general society, not in a marginalized minority.) And ignorance — because, I suspect, everyone in this conversation (self included) knows nothing about cyclamates’ chemical makeup or properties — isn’t a good position to argue from either.
There’s a check on the corporate greed — bad PR and litigation (imperfect checks though they might be). Can you imagine what the damage to a company would be if a specific case of illness were traced to one of their products? Think about what happened to Tylenol in the 80s — and that wasn’t even because of direct malicious action by the company!
One of the problems is that the supposed effects of these “bad” foods and chemicals that are arbitrarily singled out tend to be vague in nature, and irreproducible in laboratory conditions. If someone could demonstrate that sodium cyclamate had this specific harmful effect, and that effect could be reproduced, I’d be concerned. If they could do so under controlled conditions, I’d stop using the product. But “chemicals make you sick!” is misguided at best.
Did you know that natural apple flavour is slightly toxic, and artificial apple flavour is not?
Anyhow… I’m not trying to Sean it up here. This is a healthy argument that I think all of us, as consumers, should be having.
Saskboy | 03-Jan-07 at 9:50 pm | Permalink
“Can you imagine what the damage to a company would be if a specific case of illness were traced to one of their products?”
Yes I can, and tobacco companies are currently so under-punished, that they still make a profit. The system’s corrective effect is minimal, as seen by the 20% of people who still smoke.
The biggest problem is that most people don’t have a choice about what food they buy, all of the options have one chemical concoction or another and most were probably invented within the last 100 years. Much of the packaging certainly was. With the advent of food refrigeration, came plenty of food changes, and I don’t think things will stabilize on anything exceedingly healthy for another hundred years or so when we understand these inventions better. Until then, I prefer to proceed with caution.