The Sour Taste of a Sweetener Ban

Since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration took steps two weeks ago to ban it on questionable anticancer grounds, saccharin suddenly has more friends than an Irish bartender on St. Patrick's Day. Millions of skeptical Americans rushed to supermarkets last week to stock up on thousands of saccharin-sweetened products--diet soft drinks, canned fruits, desserts--before the FDA's ban goes into effect, which might happen on July 1. "We had our shelves almost cleaned off," said a Denver grocer, Ross McCotter. Said Houston Supermarket Owner John T. Butera: "A man called this morning and asked for 1,000 cases of Sweet'n Low. I told him I'd try."

Cleveland-based Sherwin-Williams Co., the sole U.S. producer of saccharin, at first considered closing its saccharin plant in Cincinnati after the ban was declared. Last week it decided to keep the plant open to meet demand. Currently, the plant is operating day and night to fill a sudden accumulation of orders--enough, says Plant Manager Kenneth H. Wilkinson, "to go another 30 days."

Changing Recipes. Bottlers sell $1.5 billion worth of diet soft drinks annually. That is 15% of the total U.S. soft-drink market, and has been the fastest growing segment, thanks to heavy advertising and a weight-conscious citizenry. The most popular labels: Tab (made by Coca-Cola), Diet Pepsi, Sugar Free 7Up and Dr Pepper, and Diet Rite Cola. Now producers may be forced to change their recipes, perhaps adding small amounts of sugar--and calories.

Industry suppliers are also responding. Paul McMackin, owner of a Dedham, Mass., equipment supply house, is not increasing his orders from National Can. He already has a stockpile of 4.3 million bottle caps imprinted "diet."

Most saccharin users think the FDA's action is silly, a gratuitous Government act reminiscent of the cyclamate ban more than seven years ago, which left saccharin as the only FDA-approved artificial sweetener. In recent Canadian tests, some rats that were fed enormous doses of saccharin developed bladder cancer. To take in an equivalent amount of saccharin, a human would have to drink at least 800 cans of diet soda every day. Under the law, however, the FDA had no choice: the so-called Delaney amendment of 1958 to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act forces it to ban any food additives that produce cancer in humans or laboratory animals, no matter what the dosage.

Even so, the decision did little to bolster faith in science or Government. Wrote Lexie Harrington to the Portland Oregonian: "The scientists subject these animals to massive megadoses of the substance in question, which would kill an elephant, and then triumphantly --almost gleefully--announce that they have discovered cancer or other ailments developing in the test victims." Representative Andrew Jacobs Jr., an Indiana Democrat, sarcastically introduced a bill that would allow sales of saccharin-sweetened products under the label, "Warning: the Canadians have determined that saccharin is dangerous to your rats' health."

Public Outrage. More seriously, at least half a dozen bills were introduced into the House last week either to override the ban on saccharin or, more generally, to amend the Delaney amendment so that the FDA can apply some sort of "reasonableness test" to the results of experiments like those on the saccharin-stuffed rats. There is little sentiment to repeal the Delaney amendment outright or to write detailed standards for the FDA to follow. Congressmen, says one Senate aide, dread being put in the position "of voting how much cancer is to be allowed in food." But public outrage against the saccharin ban is so vehement--in some congressional offices it accounted for two of every three letters and phone calls from constituents last week--as to make it likely that some exceptions to the Delaney amendment will be enacted. Representative Barbara Mikulski, a Baltimore Democrat and a dieter who has "just lost 50 pounds," says that the saccharin ban reminds her of Prohibition: "People will use the stuff anyway. I can envision speakeasies selling diet soda."

Long before then, industry will step up the search for saccharin alternatives. One clearly in sight, called Neo-DHC (neohesperidine dihydrochalcone--one trade name, SUKOR), has a lingering aftertaste with menthol overtones. It sweetens grapefruit juice or grapefruit-flavored soda; it is made from grapefruit and orange rinds. So far, it has had no adverse effect on rats or journalists who have sampled it.

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