"SCIENCE Loving spoonful!

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MANY humans are partial to sweet things and there is a vast industry devoted to encouraging and satisfying that liking. There is also a lucrative industry devoted to producing chemicals that mimic sugar.

Sugar substitutes are chemicals that can fool the taste buds. They may be hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, so the amount you need to sweeten your tea is not enough to make you fatter. This is a strong selling point for the incredible number of slimmers in the Western world who still crave sweetness.

Unfortunately for the substitutes industry saccharin (the only permitted sweetener till now) has an unpleasant aftertaste. However, after $250 Aspartame, with "the clean, sweet taste of sugar" and no after-taste ... and expected sales of $500 million a year in the US alone.

But how safe is Aspartame?

Aspartame is chemically related to proteins rather than carbohydrates like sugar. It is made of two amino acids (building blocks of protein) - aspartic acid and phenylalanine (Phe).

The makers probably thought they were giving their customers a bonus, because Phe is essential in our diet - our bodies cannot make it. Unfortunately Phe can actually be dangerous in large amounts.

About one in 20,000 people suffer from an inherited disorder phenylketonuria (PKU), in which they cannot completely break down surplus Phe. PKU is so called because sufferers have a substance called phenylketone in their urine. Babies born with PKU appear normal at birth, but by age one they are severely and irreversibly mentally retarded. However, if PKU is diagnosed and the baby fed on a low Phe diet, it will develop normally!

If PKU sufferers start drinking cans of coke laced with Aspartame, instead of sugar or saccharin, they would undoubtedly suffer damage, but this danger is small since they would already be on a strictly-controlwhere met Keynes and Wittgenstein. led diet. -However, PKU carriers, some subtitle, 'Prelude to a Critique one in sixty people, may be at of Economic Theory', risk. Carriers only have half the cates - was intended to underamount of an enzyme essential mine orthodox academic ecofor breaking down Phe a normal nomics. By a rigorous techperson has. This is enough for nical analysis of prices and an ordinary diet, but no one profits, he aimed to show that knows what the effect of a high Phe diet would be. And no one as the natural reward of capital knows how to detect a PKU and wages as the natural recarrier. ward of labour cannot be made Another danger G.D. Searle into a logical, coherent theory. should have known about that a high level of Phe in the did not spell out the impliblood of a pregnant woman can cations. That was left to others cause abnormalities in her baby, e.g. microcephaly and mental Robinson, retardation.

Other research recently pub- died recently. lished suggests that Aspartame bridge academic, had many may actually cause a craving for more sweet things. Lances to Sraffa. But she Such evidence emerged after the British Government's Committee on Toxicity had approved Aspartame, but the evidence on larly Maoist China. the threat to the unborn has been in textbooks since at least economics, where she spent 1981. The Committee seems only to have taken evidence from Aspartame's makers.

As a result we are about to find ourselves part of a gigantic experiment to find out the effects of a high Phe diet.

A SOCIALIST SCIENCE POLICY FOR THE MOVEMENT.

An informal meeting will take place next Sunday in London to discuss how a socialist science policy can be arrived at and promoted.

Topics which may come up are the following:

A class policy • on laboursaving innovations.

Affecting the direction of science under capitalism.

Using science for our class.

A class policy towards the environment.

Agriculture: chemical organic?

Energy: coal, plutonium or door by post! something else? RATES: £5 Winning the labour move- for a year. ment to a socialist science policy will also be discussed. The Name . meeting will be held at 55 Inni: Address House, East Street (Old Kent Road end), London SE17 at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday 25 September.