The fourth FDA-approved non-nutritive sweetener is sucralose, chemically known as 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-BETA-D-fructofuranosyl-4-chloro-4-deoxy-alpha-D-galactopyranoside (www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_dangers.htm). Sucralose may have the strangest “accidental discovery” story of all. In 1976, a British sugar company by the name of Tate & Lyle was conducting experiments in collaboration with Queen Elizabeth College at the University of London, searching for ways to use sucrose as a chemical intermediate. Shashikant Phadnis, a foreign graduate student working on the project, misunderstood a request for “testing” of a chlorinated sugar as a request for “tasting,” leading to the discovery that many chlorinated sugars are hundreds or thousands of times sweeter than sucrose (www.finchcms.edu/cmc.biochem/walters/sweet/history.html).
Following this discovery, Tate & Lyle arranged with Johnson & Johnson, then the world’s largest health care company, to develop and test a new sweetener from chlorinated sugars. In 1980, Johnson & Johnson formed a subsidiary company by the name of McNeil Specialty Products for this purpose (www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_dangers.htm).
The product they created, at an impressive 600 times sweeter than sucrose, would be known as sucralose and marketed as Splenda.
Canada became the first nation to approve sucralose in 1991, (Ibid) soon to be followed by many more. Currently, more than 40 nations have given their approval to sucralose, although a number of European nations still have it under preliminary review.
(Alternative Sweeteners,Third Ed. Lyn O’Brien Nabors (Ed.)). The new product made a grand entrance into the US market with FDA approval in 1998. Even though this was not full FDA approval, to quote Splenda’s own website, the product was “approved for use in 15 food and beverage categories, the broadest initial approval ever given to a no-calorie sweetener.” It was only 16 months later in 1999 when the FDA finished the job and gave full approval for all sweetening purposes
(www.splenda.com/page.jhtml?id=splenda/pressctr/pressreleases.inc).
According to the Splenda website, “sucralose, is made from sugar through a patented, multi-step process that selectively replaces three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sugar molecule with three chlorine atoms. The result is an exceptionally stable sweetener that tastes like sugar, but without sugar’s calories. After consumption, sucralose passes through the body without being broken down.”(Ibid). Sucralose is also said to be diabetic-safe, as it does not increase blood sugar levels. However, some researchers dispute these claims.
While the Johnson & Johnson Corporation claims that they have hundreds of self-conducted studies demonstrating the product’s safety, sucralose has the fewest independent scientific tests to its credit of all non-nutritive sweeteners. Additionally, independent reviewers of Johnson & Johnson’s tests have found them to be inadequate and methodologically flawed. Flaws notwithstanding, several pre-approval tests still indicated potential toxicity, although this was written off by the company as insignificant. Similar to the situation with aspartame after it first entered the market, there are currently no independent, long-term studies on the effects of sucralose consumption.
Of the few human studies which have been conducted, one focusing on diabetics using sucralose showed “a statistically significant increase in glycosylated hemoglobin (Hba1C), which is a marker of long-term blood glucose levels and is used to assess glycemic control in diabetic patients.” The FDA itself has stated that “increases in glycosylation in hemoglobin imply lessening of control in diabetes.”(Ibid).
It is not only diabetics who need worry about the safety of sucralose. Research conducted with rats, mice and rabbits has shown that sucralose consumption can cause shrinking of the thymus gland (up to 40 percent shrinkage), enlargement of the liver and kidneys, atrophy of lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus, increased cecal weight, reduced bodily growth rate, decreased red blood cell count, hyperplasia of the pelvis, extension of gestational periods in pregnancy, decreased fetal body weights and placental weights, and diarrhea. According to the FDA’s “Final Rule” report on sucralose, it was considered to be “weakly mutagenic in a mouse lymphoma mutation assay.”(Ibid).
The reason for this host of side effects is not fully understood. Many detractors have raised concerns due to the fact that sucralose is a chlorinated molecule. Chlorinated molecules, which are used as the basis for pesticides such as DDT, tend to accumulate in body tissues. Johnson & Johnson maintains that sucralose passes through the digestive system without any absorption or metabolization, but the FDA’s own research has shown that 11 to 27 percent of sucralose is absorbed in humans, while the rest is excreted unchanged in the feces. Tests performed by the Japanese Food Sanitation Council have found that as much as 40 percent of ingested sucralose is absorbed. To further dispute the manufacturer’s claims, research indicates that about 20 to 30 percent of the absorbed sucralose is metabolized. Both the metabolites and unchanged absorbed sucralose are excreted in urine, but some absorbed sucralose has been found to concentrate in the liver, kidney and gastrointestinal tract (Ibid).
Not only does sucralose break down within the digestive system, but, as the FDA notes, “[it] may hydrolyze in some food products…[and] the resulting hydrolysis products may also be ingested by the consumer.” Prolonged storage, particularly at high temperatures and low pH, causes sucralose to break down into other chemicals, including 4-chloro-4-deoxy-galactose, 1,6-dichloro-1,6-dideoxy-fructose and 1,6-dichlorofructose, none of which has ever specifically been tested in terms of safety for human ingestion. Additionally, as the FDA again acknowledges, sucralose may contain up to 2 percent of various impurities, such as heavy metals, arsenic, triphenilphosphine oxide, methanol, chlorinated disaccharides and chlorinated monosaccharides. Even if these “impurities” are within existing manufacturing guidelines, they are still all potentially dangerous to human health (Ibid).
Sucralose production and consumption may also pose a threat to the environment in general. To quote from Dr. Joseph Mercola’s website (www.mercola.com/2000/dec/3/sucralose_dangers.htm): “Although sucralose is being flushed down toilets [after human excretion]…,what happens to it next is simply a matter for speculation. I know of no studies showing what happens to the chemical when the raw sewage is treated and then released back into the environment. Does it remain stabile or react with other substances to form new compounds? Is the sucralose or any resulting chemicals safe for the environment? How will this chemical affect aquatic life such as fish, as well as other animals? Will sucralose begin to appear in our water supplies, just as some drugs [such as antibiotics] are beginning to be found? . . . [Ultimately] the ecological impact of this new chemical being introduced into the environment is unknown.”
This additional consideration of environmental impact should also be applied to the other non-nutritive sweeteners, as well as all synthetic foods and additives. The burden of proving that such synthetic compounds are safe, from the process of their creation through the human digestive system and into our environment, should fall upon the purveyors of these chemicals.
While no formal lists currently exist to catalogue adverse reactions to sucralose consumption, Dr. Mercola provides several anecdotal incidents on his website. Clearly, sucralose consumption poses potential hazards which have not been sufficiently acknowledged or studied.
You must log in to post a comment.