Finger licking caused the discovery of sweeteners – 06/30/2023 – Equilibrium

The fascination with the sweet taste of sugar led humanity to brave the seas and wage wars, creating empires and forming an industry worth billions that lasts until today. With such a background, it is not surprising that, in an era of the cult of thinness and pandemic overweight, finding less caloric equivalents to sweeten has become the Holy Grail of the food industry. But, after all, how did sugar substitutes, the so-called sweeteners, appear?

The road to 2023, when the WHO (World Health Organization) recommended that products not be used for weight control and could still classify aspartame, the sweetener of so many soft drinks, as a possibly carcinogenic substance, was a long one.

From poor hygiene to child poisoning

The “sakara”, coarse sand created by the Indians from sugarcane juice, had already been refined and ceased to be a luxury reserved for kings when, in the 19th century, synthetic compounds with a sweet taste began to appear.

Saccharin, cyclamate and aspartame, the first three sweeteners, came from experiments that sought other results and were noticed thanks to the old human habits of not washing your hands properly, licking your fingers and putting contaminated objects in your mouth.

The first of these was discovered in 1879 by North American pharmacists Constantine Fahlberg and Ira Remsen. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University (USA), they were looking to produce new paints from petroleum derivatives when a boil boiled over. Upon eating without properly washing his hands, Fahlberg noticed a strange sweetness in his fingers.

It was benzoic acid sulfanilamide, a substance he later baptized as “saccharin” in honor of the term “saccharum”, which means sugar in Latin. The component was 200 to 300 times sweeter than the original sucrose, with the advantage of not being digested by the body and therefore not generating caloric gain. The product would be launched on the market just 18 years later, in 1897.

Cyclamate, in turn, appeared in 1937, when a US chemistry student named Michael Sveda put his cigarette down near a sulfamate compound. He was trying to discover a new medicine for fever, but invented a sweetened cigarette. The following year, the substance was marketed as “sodium cyclamate” and was about 30 times sweeter than sugar. It was used in soft drinks until it was banned because of the risk of causing cancer.

In 1965, pharmacist Jim Schlatter licked his finger while testing a medication for gastric ulcers, and then came aspartame, about 200 times sweeter than sugar. After that, between the 19th and 21st centuries, dozens of other substances of artificial and natural origin were registered, reaching flavors up to 7,000 times sweeter than sugar.

Among them is the “dulcina”. The substance, later identified as toxic, ended up poisoning children at the time. The product was widely used in the US and Europe during both world wars.

Industry

The market for food sweeteners in Brazil is segmented into sucrose, starch sweeteners and sugar alcohols, and high intensity sweeteners (HIS). In addition to the drops and bags to sweeten coffee, they are present in the application of various industrialized foods, such as dairy products, breads, beverages, sweets, soups, sauces and seasonings.

Therefore, in addition to closely monitoring how the legislation for sale and production in this market is written, companies in the area also invest in research that proves the safety of these products. One of the targets is to find flaws in the evidence about potential damage to health.

For part of scientists and medical societies, therefore, there is no scientific consensus on the problems that sweeteners can cause. They argue that clinical tests are often made from small samples, in animals or with doses higher than those consumed on a daily basis. They also say that the results should serve to create public policies, not personal guidance.

But, after all, what are the risks?

The classification of aspartame as “possibly carcinogenic”, which should be released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (Iarc, its acronym in English), an organ of the WHO, is considered vague by experts, as it does not specify the size of the risk. Aloe vera and diesel, for example, are in the same category.

Until 1981, WHO pointed out that it was safe to ingest up to 40 mg/kg per day. According to the FDA (American food and drug regulatory agency), the daily recommendation varies according to the compound. The limit for aspartame, a possible target of the new recommendation, is 50 mg/kg per day. Saccharin intake, on the other hand, is up to 15 mg/kg. The limit for sucralose is even lower, at 5 mg/kg.