AminoSweet® – Get The Facts Straight From The Start

Aspartame. NutraSweet®. Canderel®. Pal Sweet Diet®. AminoSweet®. These are all names for aspartame.

There are articles circulating on the web about aspartame being renamed to AminoSweet. Let me give you the facts about AminoSweet’s history so you understand what’s really going on.

In a nutshell, aspartame is being renamed and replicated to be like the money-making 1982 American marketing campaign claiming that aspartame is all natural because it is made from basic amino acids.

Aspartame’s manufacturer, Ajinomoto Company, renamed aspartame to AminoSweet in 2009 in hopes of  increasing their declining sales.

Are YOU fooled? 

Ajinomoto’s Aspartame

American based G.D. Searle Pharmaceuticals first discovered aspartame in 1965.  Searle contracted Japan’s Ajinomoto Company, Inc. to manufacture and supply their “revolutionary” amino acid-based sweetener, and Ajinomoto perfected the industrial synthesis of aspartame.

Today, the Ajinomoto Company claims to be the world’s largest producer of aspartame, with a 40 percent global market share. Ajinomoto has operations in 23 countries and regions worldwide backed by over 100 manufacturing facilities. They employ over 24,000 people, and their yearly revenue averages $9.84 billion U.S.

The questionable safety of aspartame puts Japan’s Ajinomoto Company right in the middle of global consumer safety concerns.

The Ajinomoto Company states on their websites that they are the world’s “#1 Amino Acid Science Company.” Since 1908, they have been a world leader in the refining, blending, and pulverizing of amino acids.

They claim that they manufacture the world’s finest pharmaceutical grade amino acids; nevertheless, they also state that the two amino acids they use in aspartame are all natural.

Global scientific research has discovered that the amino acids found in aspartame are not natural, and scientific studies also confirm that aspartame causes brain lesions, cancer, such as leukemia and lymphoma, memory loss, fetal deformities, and weight gain.

From Searle To Monsanto To Japan

In 1985, Monsanto Chemical Company bought G.D. Searle Pharmaceuticals and created a separate subsidiary, The NutraSweet Company, for its aspartame business.

In 1992, Monsanto’s US patent on aspartame expired, and The NutraSweet Company lost their 20-year monopoly on aspartame.

Sales declined as competitors came onto the diet sweetener market, and concerns about aspartame health dangers were spreading worldwide over the global Internet. By March 2000, Monsanto decided to get out of the sweetener market and sold its sweetener business to J.W. Childs Equity Partners II, LP.

Since then, the company has competed for market share with other manufacturers, including Japan’s Ajinomoto Company, Inc. that acquired its aspartame business from Monsanto for $67 million US in 2000.

Ajinomoto’s international production and marketing network for aspartame increased further in May 2000 when two EU joint ventures became fully owned subsidiaries of Ajinomoto under the names Ajinomoto Switzerland A.G. and Ajinomoto Euro-Aspartame S.A.

December 6, 2004, Ajinomoto announced that it was investing JPY 6 billion ($58 million US) to expand its aspartame manufacturing plants in Yokkaichi, Japan and Gravelines, France. Expansion began at these two locations in early 2005 and was completed by March 2006.

Ajinomoto projected that it would remain the market leader in aspartame manufacturing, with a target goal of supplying more than half of the global aspartame market. They did not meet their expectations, however, and by 2009, Ajinomoto was researching new ways to improve aspartame’s market sales.

Renaming Aspartame

What did the manufacturer of one of the worlds most famous artificial sweeteners do?

They rebranded aspartame and the Japanese “Pal Sweet Diet®” as “AminoSweet®“, and replicated the 1982 American marketing campaign claiming that aspartame was all natural.

After all, Ajinomoto had now invested over $125 million US into aspartame, and they needed AminoSweet to successfully resurge.

As diet sweetener sales plummet in the US, it appears that the American suppliers are doing exactly the same thing.

Same song, second verse. Are YOU fooled?