I then noticed the list of ingredients (once I got home) and it has Sodium Saccharin, Sodium Cyclamate and Ace-K as sweeteners. Digging around it seems like Sodium Cyclamate is banned by the FDA and I remember Saccharin being “bad” but looking around now it seems to be safe for humans(?).
Is the Sodium Cyclamate anything to worry about?
(Apologies if this is out of line. Really appreciate all the info, advice and content you guys are putting out there)
Looks like cyclamate was developed in the 1930’s and appeared to be an attractive option as an artificial sweetener compared to others because it tasted better and was cheaper than sugar. However, some research in the 60’s performed in rats showed that high amounts of ingestion was linked with bladder cancer. Later studies showed this was due to a different pH and protein makeup of the bladder itself in rats as compared to humans. Nevertheless, the FDA banned it at this time and this has held up despite the rest of the world using cyclamate.
Only other thing I found on it was some rat studies showing that cyclamate is converted to cyclohexylamine, which poses some sort of hazard when inhaled or around an open flame (it’s very flammable). That said, there is only one study from 2004 looking at this conversion in humans and the subsequent recommendation was that the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of 0-11 mg/kg body weight per day be adhered to. No adverse findings resulted.
My take on it?
Most of the time with protein manufacturing there is a blend of sweeteners (when using artificial ones) and I’d hazard a guess that this supplement uses the typical 10:1 ratio of saccharin to cyclamate, as saccharin is much sweeter than cyclamate, which means that you’re not taking in a lot of cyclamate - far less than the ADI anyway.
I just read The Bad Food Bible by Aaron Carroll (a doctor who comments extensively on research, including in the NY Times column and on youtube). He wrote that essentially every study that found current artificial sweeteners to be harmful was done on rats and that he didn’t believe this said much about how artificial sweeteners affect humans, mainly because the studies used massive amounts of the sweeteners and that there are major differences between human and rat physiology. Tests of sane doses on humans have not found harm.
Ok cool…So don’t smoke it and I should be good Got ya!
Thanks, I’m not one to freak out about sweeteners but I had never even heard of cyclamate. If there is a hierarchy of sweeteners to use or avoid I’d love to hear if you have an opinion on that.
I couldn’t find anything locally with Stevia so I guess i’m stuck with artificial sweeteners…What am I gonna do…Not whey?
Got ya!