Aspartame Angst

For the past 25 years, scientists and public groups have been warring over the safety of the sweetener aspartame.

Photo courtesy of Katherine Nightingale Aspartame is commonly marketed as the sweetener Canderel.

The modern world seems full of foods and products that we should either avoid or ingest with enthusiasm. We should drink green tea and eat tomatoes for their antioxidants. Saturated fat, soft drinks and alcohol (unless it's red wine) are to be avoided. Every now and again a new foodstuff, additive or drug comes onto the market and thrusts us onto a battlefield of warring scientists, doctors and public groups. Results of safety tests are hotly contested, small doubts sensationalised into a big deal and a queue of sufferers comes forward to denounce the particular product that has failed them. Highlighting this is the case of aspartame, the artificial sweetener marketed as NutraSweet or Canderel, which has been the subject of such debate for 25 years. Is it a poison approved because of a suspicious conflict of interest or a harmless sugar replacement helping to reduce our calorie intake?

Aspartame is a protein sweetener that is used widely as a replacement for sugar in diet soft drinks and desserts. It was discovered accidentally by the scientist James M Schlatter in 1965. Schlatter was testing anti-gastric ulcer drugs with a tetrapeptide - a protein made up of four amino acids - that breaks down to an intermediate dipeptide. It was this dipeptide - aspartame - that Schlatter tasted when he later licked his finger. Aspartame was found to be 180 times sweeter than sugar at the same concentration and since the same sweetness can be achieved with far fewer calories, it is often marketed as the healthy choice.

Photo courtesy of Dr Eric Walters The chemical structure of aspartame.

But it wasn't until 1981 that aspartame was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This coincided with Ronald Reagan's inauguration as president and the appointment of his friend Arthur Hull Hayes as the head of the FDA. Many people considered this to be a conflict of interest and accused Hayes of ignoring scientists who were concerned that aspartame could cause cancer in rats.