[TXLady]

You probably aren't old enough to remember the cyclamate debacle in the 1960's. It was the first (and last) sweetener to actually taste good in food or drink. The sugar industry got up in arms and if I remember correctly they were the ones to get it off the market.

They said it caused cancer in rats but they fed them huge amounts at a time to prove it. Probably a lot of things you might eat in those huge amounts would cause some kind of problem in your body.

[brytlea]

I do remember the cyclamate thing, and yes, I believe it was the sugar industry. You could still get it elsewhere (Canada I believe) and I recall an Atkins recipe years ago for Illegal But Not Immoral Or Fattening Cheesecake using cyclamates if you could get them (or saccrhine if you couldn't).
sundero

[Military family member]

They also bred rats, as I recall, that were hypersensative to cancer, then fed them the equivilant of a human eating 15 pounds per day of the cyclamates.

Shortly thereafter, the FDA (true story), required DeCon to take the Red Dye #2 out of its rat poison because it caused cancer in lab rats.

[sully777]

They said it caused cancer in rats but they fed them huge amounts at a time to prove it. Probably a lot of things you might eat in those huge amounts would cause some kind of problem in your body.

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You will die if you overhydrate your body. Drinking too much water kills. Maybe we should ban, or limit the sale of water to a prescription.

[LibertarianInExile]

I had never seen cyclamate, so I looked it up. Evidently it's being reconsidered for the market (it's 30 times SWEETER than sugar!) after being yanked in 1970.

FDA's Cancer Assessment Committee (CAC) reviewed the scientific evidence and reached the following conclusion in 1984: "[T]he collective weight of the many experiments... indicates that cyclamate is not carcinogenic." In June 1985, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reaffirmed the CAC's conclusion noting, "the totality of the evidence from studies in animals does not indicate that cyclamate or its major metabolite cyclohexylamine is carcinogenic by itself."

As usual.

[-YYZ-]

Cyclamate is still legal and available in Canada, however saccharine (sp?) is illegal here (AFAIK).

Personally Aspartame and Acesulfame-Potassium (as used in Diet Pepsi) work just fine for me, and I've still yet to see any credible and/or repeatable research showing Aspartame to cause any problems, although there are a lot of crazy websites with many fonts and colours (you know the type) and lots of anecdotal evidence against it.