We’ve all been told that saccharin causes cancer and to avoid it, yet it was never taken off the market. That’s odd, right? Well, there was a hidden motive for this misleading information. Starting in the 1960s, the sweetener industry changed, and not for the better.
Before NutraSweet/Equal® came on the market, the only artificial sweetener was saccharin, but this “diet sweetener” never made much money so it was sacrificed to make room for a new, more profitable sweetener, Monsanto’s aspartame.
Let’s Start With Coca Cola®
Saccharin got its start in 1902 when Monsanto Chemical Company launched its corporate reputation by manufacturing saccharin, the company’s very first product. From 1903 through 1905, their entire saccharin output was shipped to the exploding, new soft drink company in Georgia, USA The Coca-Cola Company®.
According to Monsanto’s company history, at Monsanto’s request, the U.S. government filed suit in 1917 over the safety of saccharin. Monsanto used the lawsuit as a benchmark for saccharin’s safety, and the suit was dismissed in 1925.
From the start, this gave saccharin much-needed government safety approval.
Then, curiously out of the blue in 1969, saccharin was suddenly questioned as a carcinogen. No reputable scientific proof was ever presented.
This was the beginning of the many corporate food and medical scams that we are witnessing today.
And interestingly, 1969 was also the year that GD Searle first applied for a patent on aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal).
But, Saccharin Never Caused Cancer
People were never told that in the infamous 1960s saccharin study showing that saccharin caused cancer, a very high-dose blend of cyclamate and saccharin was used in the animal studies, and the results actually linked cyclamate—not saccharin—to bladder cancer in rats.
During this study, the researchers fed sweetened water to laboratory mice that was equivalent to 800 cans of saccharin/cyclamate – fed every day from birth until death.
In an isolated study, one mouse developed bladder cancer, and bingo, the results were submitted to the FDA requesting a cancer warning be placed on all saccharin products. There was a hitch to this, though, and I’ll go into that later in this article.
And remember – this was the year that GD Searle first applied for the first patent approval for aspartame.
The following year in 1970, cyclamate was banned. No further corporate studies were performed on either cyclamate or saccharin.
Why didn’t saccharin’s Monsanto Chemical Company fight back concerning these bogus research results on a product they had already proven was safe?
Read on…
The Saccharin Scam
In the 1970s, a few years after the “saccharin/cancer” labeling scam was hatched, G.D. Searle & Co. (the original aspartame manufacturer) lost their first FDA patent approval for aspartame – why?
The multitude of independent research was showing so many lab results of multiple forms of cancer, drops in IQ, birth defects, and infertility from aspartame use, the FDA pulled the patent.
GD Searle also had plans to merge with Monsanto, the original saccharin manufacturer, and the loss of patent approval threw a monkey-wench into their plans.
So, they agreed to delay the saccharin cancer warning until they could push aspartame approval through the FDA.
After 10 years of effort to organize this corporate sale, NutraSweet and saccharin (its only competitor on the market at that time) were finally owned by the same company—Monsanto Chemical Company.
Ten years later in 1982 when the FDA approved aspartame for a second time, the cancer warnings were finally printed on the pink saccharin packets – the year that NutraSweet/Equal finally came onto the public market.
Saccharin’s manufacturer didn’t fight back because both saccharin and aspartame were now owned and marketed by the same company – Monsanto.
So, they delayed labeling saccharin as a carcinogen because they had been playing it safe. In the 1970s, neither GD Searle nor Monsanto weren’t confident that their plans would work – I have copies of the memos documenting their concerns that aspartame probably wouldn’t make it through the FDA independent safety studies.
If they could keep saccharin unlabeled as a carcinogen, they then, could keep saccharin on the market in case aspartame was rejected, even though saccharin wasn’t the big money-maker they projected aspartame to be.
Read in my books that in the 1960s, at the same time of the saccharin cancer study, they made a deal with the FDA to remove the cancer warning in the year 2000.
All this was pre-planned.
Jump To Today
In 2000, Monsanto sold The NutraSweet Company. In 2001, the cancer warning was removed from saccharin products.
Coincidence? I don’t think so.
Remember the deal was made in the 1960s.
Today, saccharin is now deemed safe for human consumption—once again.
After more than one hundred years of use, worldwide, there have only been six complaints against saccharin registered with the FDA. Yet, saccharin has been the most questioned chemical sweetener—the only sweetener labeled as a carcinogen.
It’s all backwards – it is a fact that aspartame has been proven for decades to be a carcinogen. I have these original research studies in Sweet Poison , and I have written extensively about saccharin in my book, Splenda®: Is It Safe Or Not?
It was proven decades ago that aspartame causes breast tumors, leukemia and lymphoma. Read Sweet Poison.
Safe To Use?
Extensive research using human populations established no association between saccharin and cancer. In fact, more than thirty human studies were performed before 2001, and all the studies supported saccharin’s safety at average human levels of consumption.
It stands to reason that they needed some sort of justification to remove the labels in 2001, even though they knew this from the beginning.
Cumberland Packing Corp., Brooklyn, New York, manufactured Sweet‘N Low® containing saccharin for over forty years. In 2002, over twenty years after the flawed cancer studies, Cumberland hailed the U.S. Congress for honoring the original moratorium agreement to lift the cancer warning and grant saccharin a clean bill of health.
“We were finally able to remove the cancer warning from all of our products, and that was a big deal,” Cumberland marketing director says. “We went so far as to replace the cancer warning with the Good Housekeeping Seal. We turned unfair negatives into an immediate positive.”
The search for real information concerning the safety of artificial sweeteners is a continuous battle that should have been stopped from the start. But, there is so much money involved in the artificial sweetener industry, after more than 60 years, consumers are still suffering at the hands of these marketing scams.
At least you can use the pink pack with a bit more confidence, especially if you have diabetes or blood sugar issues. If you research the history of the diet sweeteners, and start by reading my books, you’ll be able to make more intelligent, and accurate, decisions about what type of sweeteners you can use for better health.
What’s my advice?
Don’t use any added sweeteners. Eat as raw, natural, and organic as you can, and you’ll discover that you won’t need any extra sweetness.
If you must sweeten your food or drinks, the pink saccharin packet, the brown raw sugar, or the green stevia packets are the best choices to use.
Need some nutritional help?
If you are consuming the chemical sweeteners, contact me for more information.
The history about saccharin is in my book Splenda®: Is It Safe Or Not? and within the first book ever written about aspartame, Sweet Poison.
I’ve been touting this warning for a very long time … maybe the time has finally come to be heard!
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