I am one of those who have always believed that sweeteners are worse than sugar – because I have been told that they cause cancer and are particularly dangerous.  I was surprised, when reading the book, “The Case Against Sugar” by Gary Taubes, that the reality may be a little bit more complicated.  

I guess one has to be basically suspicious of just about everything one reads these days and this is all apparently based on faulty science.  That is not to say that they are good for you, but the stories about the cancer and the stories about the new ban in certain countries are quite interesting to read.  In particular, the Sugar Association spent a lot of money in the 1960s to try and force the FDA in America to remove cyclamates and have them banned.  They hoped for this with saccharin as well and strangely enough what ultimately ended up happening, based on somewhat suspect science, is that cyclamates were banned in the USA but saccharin allowed and Canada banned saccharin and allowed cyclamates!  In other words, two countries next to each other both allow the one product that the other one bans and have banned the one that the other country allows.  It shows you how confusing the science must have been!  Apparently, the science was based on a report that basically indicated that male rats got bladder cancer when having cyclamates (or sweeteners).  The only catch is that not only are rats different to human beings, but the amount of cyclamates that the rats were given each day before the male rats developed the bladder cancer (no explanation as to why female rates had no issues) would be the equivalent of drinking 550 cans of sodas a day.  In other words, you would drink yourself to death long before you would actually get cancer and the “results” are based on rats “drinking” in theory an impossible number of soda cans.

The scientist who did the work for the International Sugar Research Foundation eventually went on to work for the Cigar Research Council where an internal memo described him as a “supreme scientific politician who have been successful in condemning cyclamates, on behalf of the Sugar Research, on somewhat shaky evidence which he had been able to conjure out of Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.”  The use of the words “conjure” as in creating magical tricks and “shaky scientific evidence”, etc as well as the high recommendation tells you exactly why the Cigar Council was so happy to have him on board after the damage he had done on behalf of the Sugar Research Foundation, to artificial sweeteners.  Interestingly enough, studies carried out in Japan, Germany, England and Netherlands all showed no harm from saccharin consumption.  

I guess when we read things like this, and I understand that this seems somewhat complicated and essentially boring for some people, although it should not be, we should remember that we have already seen all of this with the tobacco industry cases – a cover-up, the misleading, the involvement of doctors and members of the scientific community, paid for by the industries to try and defend their products, and we should remember all of that, when we read anything positive about things that truthfully our instincts would tell us cannot possibly be good for us.  The sugar industry has a history of even promoting sugar as a “food that children need”.