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Cathy
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Sucralose Q&A Setting the Record Straight Part 2
In the June 2007 edition of the Integrated Supplements newsletter we began our question and answer discussion of the popular artificial sweetener sucralose.
Even as the sellers of sucralose-containing products have invested millions upon millions of dollars attempting to create an image for their product as a healthy alternative to sugar and other artificial sweeteners, many health-conscious consumers have begun to wonder: is this image warranted, or is it just another artificial creation?
And for as many questions as there are surrounding sucralose, honest answers remain difficult to come by. The supposedly reassuring answers proffered by the sucralose manufacturers are often overly simplistic, self-serving, and logically inconsistent half-truths lacking much in the way of scientific substantiation.
In exposing the full truth on the origin, chemical nature, and safety of the sweetener, we leave it up to our readers to assess the risks and decide for themselves whether sucralose will be the nutritional savior it is marketed as; or if, in the final analysis, the approval, promotion, and subsequent widespread consumption of sucralose will go down in history as one of the most insidiously effective propaganda campaigns ever launched.
We now present part two of our sucralose Q & A.
Q. Has the consumption of sucralose been associated with any side effects?
A. Despite the official pronouncements from the sucralose marketers attempting to assure us of the chemical's safety, the fact is that as sucralose has become more widely used within the food supply, an increasing number of people have begun to report side effects from its use. The most common complaints seem to include:
Skin disorders - rashes, welts, acne, and flaky, dry skin
Gastrointestinal disorders - stomach upset, acid reflux, cramping, worsening of irritable bowel symptoms
Respiratory disorders - wheezing, shortness of breath, Chest pain, Joint pain, Flu-like symptoms, Inflammation
Now, the important thing to recognize with this list is how generally mild these symptoms are. Symptoms such as these could have gone completely unrecognized in animal studies (ever hear a rat complain of heartburn?), and even if experienced by humans, they may not necessarily be recognized as side effects of sucralose consumption in particular.
This is why it's important to listen to our bodies and not just blindly trust the scientific and marketing "spin" disseminated by the sucralose makers - the fact is that the product probably isn't deadly like some people would have you believe, but it could very well be associated with side effects which could detract significantly from a person's "quality of life." And more importantly, relatively minor side effects like these may foreshadow more serious health complications with continued sucralose ingestion.
If we take the product marketing at face value, we would be led to believe that "no side effects are associated with the use of sucralose," but that statement just doesn't appear to be true any longer as the product has been "tested" by more and more people.
In fact, many of the reported side effects of sucralose use are, not surprisingly, indicative of low-level toxicity of such a foreign compound. All of the previously listed sucralose-related reactions are in line with the bodies physiological response to foreign substancess - it tries to rid itself of the offending invader through immune activation often causing inflammation, flu-like symptoms, pains, and gastrointestinal distress.
If the public is told that these symptoms couldn't possibly be caused by the "inert" substance, sucralose, they may never see the need to even attempt to eliminate this sweetener from their diet.
If sucralose is indeed associated with the aforementioned side-effects, it is fair to assume (for the health-conscious nutritional supplement consumer in particular) that sucralose offers all risk and no benefit. The use of this (or any) artificial sweetener simply isn't necessary. As we at Integrated Supplements have shown, it is entirely possible to create great-tasting, low-sugar nutritional supplements without the use of any artificial ingredients.
Q. Regarding the chlorine used in its production, the marketers of sucralose point out that all sorts of foods contain chlorine. Table salt, for example is sodium chloride, or sodium bound to a chloride ion. Is the chlorine in the sucralose molecule different from what is commonly found in food?
A. This argument from the sucralose manufacturers to allay the fears regarding the chlorine molecules in their product is among the most stunningly ignorant and blatantly illogical arguments I've seen in product promotion since . . . well, since aspartame.
The contention that the safety of a compound can even be implied by its constituent molecules, while ignoring molecular structure is complete and utter nonsense, and far from reducing public skepticism, such blatant and easily exposed dishonesty should make any intelligent person more suspicious of any company which can only make such a flimsy defense of its product. The fact that they see the need to perform such a complete whitewash makes me suspicious that maybe they're trying to hide how toxic their product actually is.
If the logic of their argument were correct, we could all be guzzling drain cleaner without consequence because, after all, lye, also known as sodium hydroxide, is merely sodium, oxygen and hydrogen - all very common components of food. But, obviously such logic is completely ridiculous and the safety of any compound, especially man-made, chlorine-containing chemicals posited as additions to our food supply, can only be assessed with rigorous testing and observation over many years.
One of the saddest byproducts of a declining educational system in this country is that, even after a high school or college education, most Americans don't possess the basic knowledge of the physical sciences or critical thinking skills necessary to defend themselves against the pseudo-scientific nonsense which pervades product advertising. If I were more conspiratorial, I would say that the purpose and result of modern education is to create docile and passive consumers, who merely do what large corporations want them to do.
Again, if you're trying to sell the American public a chlorocarbon as food, the truth can be bad for business, as can an educated and intellectually savvy customer.
The truth of the matter is that the effects of the chlorine found in sucralose, and the effects of chloride found in natural food are as different as night and day.
What the marketers of sucralose conveniently fail to mention when discussing their chlorinated compound is one of the most basic elements in any high school chemistry class - the difference between ionic and covalent bonds, and in particular the effects of the chlorine-carbon covalent bond as found in the sucralose molecule.
The "chlorine-containing" compound most commonly found in food is, not surprisingly, sodium chloride, or common table salt. The sodium in this compound is bound ionically to chloride, that is to say that as "opposites attract" the positively charged sodium donates an electron to negatively charged chlorine to form sodium chloride.
When sodium chloride, or common table salt, is dissolved in water, the molecule "splits" into charged ionic forms Na+ and Cl- which can both be used to fulfill many important metabolic functions just the way nature intended.
The chlorine-containing bond found in sucralose, however, is not an ionic bond, but a covalent bond - a bond in which electrons are not transferred from one molecule to another, but shared between molecules. The chlorine in sucralose isn't bound to sodium as it is in table salt, but to carbon, an element which always forms covalent bonds.
It is this same covalent carbon-chlorine bond that is found in pesticides, and also in some relatively less harmful components like cancer drugs, antibiotics or fungicides; but keep in mind that although all of these other compounds may not be as harmful as eating DDT, the common denominator behind all these drugs containing a carbon-chlorine bond is to poison life - or to kill something in one way or another.
Without getting into a ton of chemistry, the covalent chlorine-carbon bonds found in sucralose don't disassociate into usable compounds the way other food components like sodium chloride do. That's actually one of the main "selling points" of the sucralose marketers - the fact that our body doesn't know what the heck to do with the compound, and can't break it down. Therefore it has no calories.
But this official stance of the sucralose sellers ignores some very troubling possibilities. For example, the very fact that the carbon-chlorine bond is so resistant to breaking down is exactly what makes other chlorocarbons like pesticides a threat to the biologic machinery of living organisms and so persistent in the environment.
This bond simply isn't conducive to the metabolism of living organisms, and can act as a metabolic poison. The sucralose manufacturers seem to want to have it both ways, they want you to believe that the compound is completely foreign and unusable by the body for energy, and yet unlike every other chemical in its class, it doesn't cause the even the least bit of damage to living cells.
And what if sucralose does declorinate in the body? What if some of the bacteria in our gastrointestinal tract, for example, were able to break the chlorine-carbon bond? Would harmless chloride ions be produced similar to the digestion of table salt? It's not likely; many of the degradation products of sucralose, produced under high heat or acidic conditions, have been shown be even more toxic than sucralose itself.
Keeping all of these facts in mind, although it would be extremely fortuitous and profitable for the makers of sucralose, it is extremely unlikely that the only cells in our body which sucralose effects are our taste buds.
Q. The animal safety studies which were done with sucralose used huge dosages which no human would ever approach even on an all out sucralose binge. One study which showed the much touted thymus shrinkage in rats used 3000 mg/kg of body weight per day - this is equivalent to 20,000 packets of sucralose-based tabletop sweetener per day - for a 176 lb person for one month. Wouldn't these doses have shown clearly if sucralose were toxic or not?
A. Well, despite the wholesome and safe image the makers of sucralose are trying to create for their product, the fact is that although high doses were used, these studies did show toxicity - much of which mimicked the toxicity of other known chlorocarbons, but as the question relates specifically to dose, there are a few things to keep in mind.
Most people realize on some level that "more isn't necessarily better." when it comes to ingesting certain compounds. A bodybuilder who takes protein supplements, for example, can't "force" more muscle growth to occur just by ingesting insanely high amounts of protein. Why? Because there is a limit to how much protein could actually be absorbed, and utilized, any excess would just be wasted.
Similar to this concept, I would say in relation to the sucralose studies that "more isn't necessarily worse" either. Why? For the same reason: there is a limit to how much can actually be absorbed.
In fact, one of the major "selling points" of the sucralose manufacturers is how little sucralose is absorbed. Now what better way to reduce the relative absorption on a percentage basis than to administer huge amounts which overwhelm the body's ability to absorb the compound? In other words, the more sucralose you give past a certain amount, the less is going to be absorbed on a percentage basis. Obviously, if you overwhelm a person or animal's ability to absorb a compound, you can then spin the facts to make it seem like the compound is safe because it is "largely unabsorbed and excreted intact."
Now sucralose, if it acts like other chlorocarbons, is likely to exert negative effects over long periods of time even at low doses, instead of at high doses over short periods of time as was administered in the studies.
And it's important to realize that this lack of long-term research at any dose is exactly the problem with sucralose being in such wide use in the food supply. The animal and human studies submitted to the FDA for sucralose approval simply are not relevant to the type of effects this product is likely to have in the average user over years of use.
Q. Speaking of the absorption issue, studies show that the majority of ingested sucralose isn't even absorbed past the gastrointestinal tract, and is excreted unchanged. Doesn't this fact alone speak to the safety of sucralose?
A. There are two things to keep in mind when discussing the absorption of sucralose:
1) Sucralose may cause damage to the lining of the intestines without ever being absorbed or metabolized. Independent Japanese researchers have performed studies showing that sucralose caused genotoxic (DNA-damaging) changes in the tissues of several different organs in mice, including the gastrointestinal organs. This research raises the question: couldn't sucralose do damage to the gastrointestinal tract, and still be excreted unchanged? It's certainly a possibility, and if sucralose causes damage to the gastrointestinal organs in humans the way it does in mice, the mere fact that it may also be excreted unchanged should not in any way imply that the sweetener is a safe or inert substance.
2) There is no clear consensus as to how much sucralose is actually absorbed and/or metabolized in humans. Like many other physiological traits, the propensity of a person to absorb sucralose probably varies widely among different individuals. The extent of its possible metabolism once it is absorbed is also the subject of continuing debate.
Many commonly-used junk food additives like sodium nitrite (a preservative in processed meats), carrageenan a (thickener found mostly in dairy products, including nutritional supplements), and artificial colors have been shown to cause gastrointestinal damage as well. A large number of scientists are quick to indict these food additives as a major contributor to the increased incidence of colon cancer found in industrialized countries.
And judging from this independent research, it seems quite possible that sucralose may just be the most recent addition to a long line of toxic food additives which damage the delicate tissues of our intestines.
One of the most important yet often unrecognized factors in overall health is an individuals' level of gastrointestinal permeability. In simple terms gastrointestinal permeability is a measure of the integrity of the barrier between the gastrointestinal tract and the bloodstream - the higher one's level of gastrointestinal permeability, the more "junk" gets into the bloodstream from the intestines. Viruses, bad bacteria, undigested and/or putrefied foods, and food additives can all leak into the bloodstream taxing our already overworked liver, and causing a whirlwind of inflammation and immune disorders. Basically, from a health standpoint, all hell breaks loose in the presence of a "leaky gut."
And gastrointestinal permeability isn't something that's set at birth. Environmental factors like food additives, stress, hormones, bacteria, viruses, toxic chemicals, radiation, alchohol consumption, and even excessive exercise can play a huge role in increasing our gastrointestinal permeability. There are particular times when the gastrointestinal tract is especially prone to sub-optimal function. It is known that women, for example, when under the influence of estrogen during their menstrual cycle often experience periods of dramatically increased gastrointestinal permeability.
What does this have to do with sucralose? Well, sucralose, aside from the damage it may cause to the gastrointestinal tissue, is actually used clinically as a marker of gastrointestinal permeability. In a clinical setting, doctors will have a patient ingest a certain amount of sucralose and will measure the amount excreted in the urine as an indicator of gastrointestinal disorders. The more sucralose they find, the higher the level of permeability, and the worse off the patient is.
Now, the important thing to remember is that we ALL have a certain amount of gastrointestinal permeability which can vary from person to person based upon the many factors listed previously, so the fact is that some of the sucralose we ingest will be absorbed. The questions then become: how much is absorbed, and what can sucralose do after it's absorbed into our bloodstream? Is it fat soluble, and does it accumulate in our fat cells the way other organochlorines do? And can our body break it down into harmful metabolites?
And once again, the research which was submitted to the FDA for sucralose approval doesn't concur with what the sucralose sellers are telling their customers. The fact is that human studies have shown 11-27 percent absorption of sucralose, and up to 12 percent of this was not excreted intact even in healthy subjects. This means that sucralose was not only absorbed, but was either stored, or had dechlorinated in the human body or a combination of both. These effects represent some very troubling facts for marketers of sucralose, and are in direct contrast to the "official stance" that sucralose is poorly absorbed and excreted unchanged.
The makers of sucralose point to the compound's uniquely high solubility in water as evidence that it will simply be excreted from the body and not accumulate in fat cells the way most organochlorine chemicals do, but the fact is that sucralose may be at least slightly fat soluble and therefore may be prone to accumulate in fat cells.
How do we know? Well, the human and animal studies done on sucralose reveal that some of the recovered breakdown products of sucralose were glucuronide conjugates of sucralose. Glucuronidation is the process by which the liver attaches glucuronic acid to fat soluble compounds to detoxify them and make them water soluble for elimination in the urine and bile. If sucralose were as water soluble as its purveyors claim, there would be no need for the body to utilize this detoxification procedure.
And if sucralose does indeed accumulate in the body, it is certain that its image as a completely inert chemical which just passes through the body would surely be tarnished.
After decades of use as agricultural chemicals, it would be extremely difficult if not impossible to find an individual who doesn't possess a measurable level of organochlorine chemicals in his or her fat cells, and these stored chemicals have been shown beyond any doubt to impart a chronic toxic burden on the body.
Women with breast cancer, for example, have been found to harbor more organochlorine chemicals in fatty breast tissue than women without breast cancer, and increased levels of circulating organochlorines released from stored bodyfat have been found to negatively alter metabolic function in people following diet and exercise plans for fat loss.
Whether or not sucralose will have similar effects remains to be seen, but despite what many people have been led to believe, the bottom line is: studies have shown that sucralose may cause actual damage to intestinal cells, and that some sucralose is in fact, absorbed, metabolized, and possibly stored in our body. These effects greatly increase the chances that sucralose could be responsible for some unwelcome effects over time.
Q. Sucralose is heavily marketed as a helpful sugar substitute for diabetics. Doesn't sucralose at least offer a better alternative to sugar for these patients?
A. While it may be less acutely dangerous to diabetics than large amounts of sugar, the initial tests submitted to the FDA by its producers showed that sucralose use was associated with a statistically significant increase in glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c).
Glycosylation is the process which results when sugars and free radicals damage cellular proteins. Glycosylated hemoglobin is a biological marker of chronically elevated blood sugar, as sugar is known to cause glycosylation of the oxygen-carrying hemoglobin molecule. As any diabetic knows, an elevated level of glycosylated hemoglobin represents a lessening control of diabetes.
Subsequent tests submitted by sucralose producers failed to replicate this effect, but diabetics especially should exercise caution when using sucralose-containing products.
Diabetics should also realize that many products containing sucralose, including sweetener packets, and sugar-replacers for baking also contain varying and often significant amounts of refined carbohydrates. These refined carbohydrates are used as filler which, if taken in excess, can certainly be harmful.
But perhaps most important for the diabetic population to realize is the fact that sucralose, being 600 times sweeter than sugar, may exacerbate cravings for sweet and sugary foods. The complex interaction between our tastebuds, our stomach and our brain is a field of research which is in its infancy, but many researchers believe that artificial sweeteners may disrupt our brain's innate ability to regulate calories; they may actually trigger our brains to "seek out" the calories that are normally found in sweet foods. In animal studies, rats fed artificial sweeteners actually had an increased appetite and, given the chance, consumed more calories from sweets than those fed no artificial sweetener.
Similarly, and even more surprisingly, human studies have shown that individuals who drink diet soda are significantly more likely to become overweight or obese. Researchers from the University of Texas San Antonio tracked 1,177 people who were either normal weight or overweight (but not obese) to begin with and noted their consumption of regular and diet soft drinks over time. What they found was that people who drank diet soft drinks were significantly more likely to become overweight or obese even relative to those who drank sugar-sweetened soft drinks. From the researcher's press release:
"On average, for each diet soft drink our participants drank per day, they were 65 percent more likely to become overweight during the next seven to eight years, and 41 percent more likely to become obese." This quote was taken from Sharon Fowler, M.P.H., faculty associate in the division of clinical epidemiology in the University of Texas Health Science Center's department of medicine.
It's important to remember that the trend in the research was toward artificial sweetener consumers becoming overweight or obese throughout the course of the study, so the argument for selection bias - that already overweight or obese people are more likely to drink artificially sweetened soft drinks just doesn't add up.
And it's not only diabetics who should be aware of this research on artificial sweeteners. Even giving these compounds the benefit of every scientific doubt with regard to safety, there is one overwhelmingly obvious fact regarding artificial sweeteners that very few people seem to explicitly recognize, and that is:
They don't work.
Twenty million Americans are diabetic, and an additional 45 million are pre-diabetic. 65 percent of adults in the United States are overweight, and 30 percent are obese. Consumption of sugar AND artificial sweeteners are BOTH at an all time high, and here's some interesting food for thought - levels of overweight, obesity and diabetes have BOTH increased dramatically in the US in parallel with the introduction of artificial sweeteners into our food supply. Is this a coincidence, or are our brains and bodies being manipulated by these chemicals in ways no one previously suspected, turning us into insatiable feeding machines?
Just look around - the available evidence has already given us more than enough reason to conclude that these chemicals are abject failures in the task of helping us control our weight or calorie consumption.
Instead of replacing real sweeteners with fake ones, people, diabetics especially, would be well served to enjoy only low amounts of naturally sweet foods. Invariably, people find that the fewer sweets are in their diet, the more their craving for sweet food subsides.
Q. The general perception of sucralose is that of a "lesser-evil" among artificial sweeteners. Isn't sucralose at least safer than other artificial sweeteners like aspartame?
A. Possibly, but to say that sucralose is safer than aspartame is misleading. One could more accurately say that sucralose hasn't been found to produce as many harmful effects as aspartame - yet. With its approval for widespread use in the United States occurring in 1999, sucralose simply hasn't been in our food supply long enough to assess its long-term health effects and the necessary unbiased independent research simply hasn't been performed. (and as noted earlier, what little independent research has been performed on sucralose showed that the sweetener caused genotoxic changed in the DNA of the mouse gastrointestinal tract, however).
Aspartame, which is comprised of potentially excitotoxic amino acids is much more apt to produce short-term neurological side effects like migranes, seizures, and mood disturbances, which may make its toxicity more immediately apparent. Sucralose, if it acts like other organochlorines, may produce a cumulative and more subtle toxic effect over the course of years. For example, it is generally accepted that the effects of environmental carcinogens like organochlorines may take roughly twenty years to manifest.
Several recent studies from Italy have shown aspartame to cause cancer in rats. These studies, performed thirty years after the approval of aspartame by the FDA, should not only signal the death knell for aspartame, but should make the American consumer wary of any artificial sweetener such as sucralose which is deemed safe in the presence of such little independent research, and whose sellers feel the need to divert their customer's attention from the facts and implications of the scant research which has been performed.
After all, we were assured over and over again in the early days of aspartame how safe this compound was, and how it was made from "amino acids" which are already found in our food supply. People who posed legitimate concerns over aspartame's safety were labeled as alarmists or conspiracy theorists, people who noticed negative symptoms from aspartame ingestion were told that their symptoms were merely psychological, and now we're seeing the exact same tactics from manufacturers of sucralose.
The fact is that the long-term effects of sucralose could even be worse than those of aspartame because sucralose's effects could be much more subtle, slowly accumulating as a toxic burden in our body without its injurious nature ever being suspected.
With the knowledge we currently possess regarding the nature of sucralose it's very easy to imagine that thirty years from now research will have emerged confirming that our fears and suspicions are warranted, but until that time the sucralose-consuming public should consider themselves enrolled in one of the grandest-scale scientific experiments of all time.
Conclusion
As of the writing of this article, the makers of the most popular sucralose-containing product worldwide have just settled a lawsuit with the makers of a competing aspartame-containing product regarding the use of the slogan "made from sugar, so it tastes like sugar." Similar suits regarding the controversial slogan have also been filed by a group of California-based sugar growers alleging that sucralose manufacturers are attempting to make their product seem safer, or more natural than other artificial sweeteners; or perhaps similar to sugar, but without the calories.
While it remains to be seen as to whether the makers of the sucralose-containing product in the little yellow packets set out to intentionally mislead consumers, the fact is that many people consuming the sweetener are doing so with a false sense of security. The information set forth in this series of articles is not yet common knowledge, but should be known by anybody who is truly concerned with his or her health, and who is contemplating the use of this artificial sweetener.
As we've stated so many times before, only in seeing past marketing hype can informed and intelligent health decisions be made.
At Integrated Supplements, we feel that the use of sucralose in our nutritional products would expose our customers to an unnecessary risk, and we are proud to have made the use of sucralose obsolete in the supplement industry by creating the greatest-tasting, all natural, low-sugar products available. We invite every company in the nutritional supplement industry to follow suit.
After all, life is filled with enough risks - your nutritional supplement shouldn't be one of them.
References:
Y. Sasaki, S. Kawaguchi et al., "The Comet Assay with 8 Mouse Organs: Results with 39 Currently Used Food Additives," Mutation Research 519, nos. 1-2 (August 26, 2002):103-19.
FDA Final Rule for Sucralose http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~lrd/fr980403.html
B.A. John, S.G. Wood, and D.R. Hawkins, "The Pharmakokinetics and Metabolism of Sucralose in the Mouse," Food and Chemical Toxicology 38 (2000): S107-S110.
A. Roberts, A.G. Renwick, J Sims, and D.J. Snodin, "Sucralose Metabolism and Pharmakokinetics in Man," Food and Chemical Toxicology 38 (2000): S31-41.
Burkhard Bilger, "The Search for Sweet," New Yorker, May 22, 2006.
Study: Artificial Sweetener may disrupt body's ability to count calories Purdue News
1,6 -Dichloro-1,6-dideoxyfructose: Metabolism in the Rat Study E147. Department of Biochemistry, University College, Wales, UK, March 8 1988.
Pelletier C et al. "Associations between weight loss-induced changes in plasma organochlorine concentrations, serum T(3) concentration, and resting metabolic rate." Toxicological Sciences May; 67(1): 2002 46-51.
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