The sweetener is about 30 times sweeter than sugar, yet it's been banned since 1969 in
the United States, even though it's legal in Europe and elsewhere.
And it tells a history about the culture of the FDA.
Will you try it?
Cheers.
All right.
So here is a German sweetener that I have obtained, and it contains the banned substance.
It's got some saccharin, but it also has sodium cyclamate.
But these cyclamates are banned in the United States of America.
“The announcement about artificial sweeteners adds cyclamate to tobacco, alcohol and the
list of other things that aren't good for you.”
“I'm presweetened without sugar.”
“That’s right, I usually put sucaryl or saccharin in my coffee and this morning for
the first time I haven't had it.”
Even today, difference Cyclamate show up in different sweeteners in soda, everything.
I want to tell this story in two parts.
The light side…the dark underbelly.
Because I think you need to understand both of them to know the truth about this sweetener.
“Those who count calories may have to go back to the tried and true but seldom used
method of willpower to keep their calories in check.”
So let's start with this straightforward narrative in which the FDA saves the day.
In 1937, a chemist named Michael Sveda is doing lab work and he accidentally licks his
fingers and he's like, “Whoa, my fingers taste oddly sweet.
Also, I'm a scientist.
Why was I licking my fingers?
But that's not the point.
I've invented cyclamates.”
“Sugar must be distributed as equitably as possible for household and industrial uses.”
Cut to the 1950s.
World War Two.
In a world where rationing is just a memory.
But after that sugar rationing, the public is more amenable to artificial chemicals and
sweeteners.
Cyclamates flood the market.
“Hey, it's time for Funny Face” They are the diet miracle in everything from
canned fruit to Funny Face Drink.
No bitter aftertaste, but super sweet.
Funny face, by the way, is kind of racist, but…
“Funny face drinks from Pillsbury— Pre sweetened without sugar.”
You know, I said this was going to be the happy section, so let's move on.
But even in this cyclamate boom, the government's watchful eye prevailed.
In 1958, they passed this food additives amendment, putting in rules.
The FDA can give Cyclamate a GRAS rating.
This is a rubber stamp that most people think something's okay.
Even if the drug company didn't explicitly prove it.
And this part is key.
The act includes a clear mandate called the Delaney clause, named after the heroic congressman
who proposed it.
James J. Delaney.
It says that no additive shall be deemed to be safe if it is found to induce cancer when
ingested by man or animal.
Here's how he put it: “We had a multitude of chemicals that came as a result of World
War Two.
We might say you had a revolution.”
And so with these protections, it's full steam ahead on quality products for the growing
low calorie market.
Dietetic Foods becomes an entire category.
And the profit estimates?
Let's just say they aren't on a diet.
That's a little cyclamate humor.
(Awkward sipping) So lots of people end up saying, no thanks,
no calories.
I sweetened with Sucaryl.
This is one of the big Cyclamate brand names.
It shows up in diet soda.
It changes the entire world in a couple of decades.
“Weight Watchers love diet Dr. Pepper.”
Turns out that canned fruit can be good for you.
“Cock O’ the walk has taken the sugar out and put the Sucaryl in.”
So Sucaryl, the big brand name for Cyclamate, that's made by Abbott Laboratories.
You can kind of see their name down here in the fine print.
But at the same time, some Americans are beginning to grow skeptical about chemicals being totally
unchecked.
Sometimes this is related to food.
Sometimes it's about other stuff entirely.
In 1960, a heroic FDA regulator bars a birth defect causing morning sickness drug, thalidomide,
from mainstream use in the United States.
She gets honored by JFK.
Meanwhile, books like Silent Spring, which targets DDT, increase that general scrutiny
on chemicals.
And don't get me wrong, this extends to food.
Like in October 1969, when a courageous, whistle-blowing FDA scientist Jacqueline Verrett goes on live
TV and says that there are problems with Cyclamate.
She is worried that they cause cancer and birth defects.
She goes on TV with normal and damaged chicken embryos.
She later says, "I've been so worried about cyclamate lately that I've been smoking more."
Shortly after that, Abbott Laboratories coughs up a study in which they say that Cyclamate
can cause cancer in rats.
Remember the Delaney clause?
It is activated.
Herb Ley, the new FDA commissioner, decides that even though cycling meats are a huge
business, he can't let them continue.
The evidence is clear.
Cyclamates are banned for use in food in 1969.
There's a little waffling, but then they're banned altogether in 1970 in the United States.
The process works, even though cyclamates are huge.
Immediately, new diet products are announced.
Diet, drink and soda producers start proudly advertising that they have no cyclamates.
Popular diet candies were also proud not to have it overweight.
“Try the AYDS reducing plan.
AYDS candy contains vitamins and minerals.
No drugs.
No cyclamates.”
AYDS could have had a huge PR problem, but totally avoided it.
Nice work.
“And once you've reduced, AYDS helps you control your weight.”
The world followed the lead of the United States.
In Canada, they dumped their cyclamate-filled ginger ale out and destroyed it.
The thinking was that the damage has already been done.
“Publicity given to the decision of the government in the United States was sufficient
to make Canadians think twice before buying anything containing cyclamate.”
But here's the thing: If the process worked, why is the United States an outlier in banning
Cyclamate?
Why was Ley fired shortly after and why did he later say that the “cyclamate issue”
was "what did me in"?
Why did the journal Nature slam the Cyclamate bandwagon?
So I want to present another explanation of why cyclamates were banned.
One in which the scientific story is almost entirely secondary to the political one.
Let's start at the beginning.
You can look at the Delaney clause and say, "Great, this is bulletproof."
Or you can say, this actually takes judgment out of the hands of the scientists at the
FDA.
It gives anyone opposing sweeteners a clear target.
This happened with cyclamates, as noted in 1967 by Upbeet, the Beet Sugar Growers magazine.
Yes, that is what it's called.
“Beet growers and companies have a vital interest in the outcome and their strategy.”
Well, they didn't have a lot in the tank.
They they liked saying that “sugar is energy.”
That was their that was their big thing.
“What are the little girls made of?
Sugar for energy.”
They started funding studies to say that artificial sweeteners were killer and that kind of got
the ball rolling.
Public pressure was even higher because Ralph Nader, the activist who famously killed the
dangerous Corvair car, he started this project called Nader's Raiders, where he'd send a
range of different activists and professionals to investigate agencies and industries.
And he had a force that was raiding the FDA.
“It's best to test before you sell to make sure that the side effects are not hazardous.
And we haven't been doing that with hundreds of food additives that are being consumed
everyday by millions of Americans.”
He ended up backing a whole book about how the FDA should have banned cyclamates sooner.
So in 1968, Happy Herb Lay was really panicked Herb Ley.
This guy was paranoid.
He was scared and he felt a lot of pressure from every single industry and that affected
his decisions.
Let me give you one anecdote.
Ley comes in one day and “they told me to shut all the doors.
Shut all the doors, and he had this thing to check for wiretaps.
So he was not only checking the phones, but he was going around checking the walls.”
The guy was going, Gene Hackman in The Conversation.
He was scared.
Moreover, the FDA's actual decision on Cyclamate didn't really rest with Ley, but with his
boss, Robert Finch, who attacked the FDA in public for not banning cyclamates.
This came after that demonstration by Jacqueline Verrett.
Finch was a Nixon buddy in the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.
This guy wasn't a scientist.
He was a political operative.
So Jacqueline Verrett went on TV and all the scientists were like, "This is kind of dumb."
The studies show doses 100 to 120 times greater than anyone could consume.
But regulators had to recommend the cyclamate ban because of the law.
Lots of people agree that evidence, like Verrett’s and some of the other studies just aren't
relevant.
Now, I'm not a scientist, so let me let me have this guy from the American Dental Association
explain it to you.
“The American Dental Association has asked the FDA to look at the cyclamate question
again and reevaluate its stance in the first place.”
“The evidence was based on animal studies and in these studies there were several hundred
times as much acclimates given to the animals per pound of body weight than would ever be
given to humans.”
You see, they want cyclamates back because they thought sugar was so bad for people's
teeth.
That doesn't matter.
Finch saw alarm bells.
“The law is very precise.
If, if you have solid evidence that a given additive or ingredient creates carcinoma,
cancer in humans or animals, then you have to take it off the market.”
You hear that?
The Delaney clause.
But the FDA let's Abbott's petition to reinstate cyclamates go unanswered, even though panels
are saying in 1975 and earlier that cyclamates are safe.
They have come back abroad after lots of evidence saying that they're okay.
Remember how Canadian companies made a flashy display of dumping out those trucks of ginger
ale?
Well, today in Canada, you can have cyclamates as a sweetener, but they are still banned
in the U.S.
So why bother telling this story?
Saccharin was mired in similar controversy, but it was fine.
Aspartame showed up.
Ultimately missing cyclamates in the United States…it's not that big a deal.
We have other artificial sweeteners.
But I think that this story told in these two parts, the first part that says follow
the science and the second part that says this is all politics, I think that both of
them are kind of true.
I also don't want to be too hard on the FDA here either.
I mean, it is a hard job, but this this stuff right here, it's not just a chemical equation.
It's a political equation too.
“Take cyclamates.
We have no evidence that they've ever produced cancer in humans, but they did happen in animals.
So that's why we had to take the action.”
All right, that is it for this one.
Thank you for watching.
If you haven't been here before, this is a personal channel where I post personal videos,
history videos, stuff like that.
I did feel a little like, you know, illicit eating this, even though I know that they
are totally fine and have been cleared in a bunch of other countries.
And that's kind of why I found the story interesting.
So yeah, I'm sure that a lot of people will have strong opinions about some of the chemical
elements and stuff like that, but I just really wanted to delve into the history and there's
a lot out there.
There's a lot of oral histories, there are a lot of books.
I've linked those in the description.
Also, the Patreon reaction video to this video is live.
It's up now and over there we kind of get to see a preview of different videos that
I'm working on.
I share these reaction videos and I'm looking to figure out more stuff to do over there
too.
So let me know if you have any ideas.
That's it for this one.
Thank you so much for watching.
And yeah, bottoms up to all you in cyclamate loving nations.
And to my fellow American compatriots, you know, see if you can smuggle in a few just
to try.
Try to chase the dragon.
Bye.