WASHINGTON -- 'Banana plants don't make NutraSweet,' the television announcer noted wryly, and the image of an exotic bird perched in a jungle tree filled the screen.
'Neither do cows,' said the voice, as the camera cut to a robust-looking heifer wagging its tail. 'But they might as well. If you've had bananas and milk, you've eaten what's in NutraSweet.'
True -- bananas, milk and NutraSweet all contain phenylalanine, one of 21 amino acids that form the 'building blocks' of protein. But that doesn't tell the whole story.
Dr. Richard Wurtman, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that because NutraSweet lacks other important amino acids normally found in foods, the brain absorbs unusually high levels of phenylalanine that could increase the likelihood of epileptic seizures.
Referring to an ad proclaiming that the body treats the ingredients of the artificial sweetener 'no differently than if they came from a peach or a string bean or a glass of milk,' Wurtman said, 'That's not true.'
Dr. Louis Elsas, director of medical genetics at Emory University, groans at industry arguments that eating or drinking NutraSweet, known generically as aspartame, is just like eating a hamburger.
'Phenylalanine is a known toxin to the brain,' Elsas said. 'Aspartame is phenylalanine and drinking aspartame is like drinking phenylalanine as an individual amino acid.'
A spokeswoman at the New York offices of Ogilvy and Mather, the lead ad agency on the sweetener account for the Chicago-based NutraSweet Co., declined comment on the allegations.
The drumbeat of NutraSweet advertisements has been steady. Beverage Industry, a trade publication, labeled the NutraSweet blitz 'probably the largest advertising campaign ever designed around a product ingredient.'
Industry sources say that since 1984, The NutraSweet Co. alone has spent $30 million to $40 million a year on advertising, and ads by diet soft drink manufacturers and other companies whose products carry the swirl trademark of the sugar-free sweetener would easily send the figure past $100 million a year.
The campaign has worked to make NutraSweet a household word.
Football stars Joe Montana and Dan Marino and boxer Marvin Hagler have pitched products containing the artificial sweetener on television. Former Democratic vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro has appeared in advertisements endorsing a product containing NutraSweet, as have numerous celebrities, including Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch and Billy Crystal.
Children, who some scientists say may be particularly susceptible to ill health effects linked to NutraSweet, are a primary target of the NutraSweet hype. In one ad, for a NutraSweet-flavored vitamin, a curious child asked his mother, 'Why don't they put NutraSweet in broccoli?'
Although not in broccoli, the sweetener flavors scores of products ranging from coffee, cereal, chewing gum, cocoa mix, diet sodas and iced tea to gelatins, puddings, whipped toppings and vitamins.
The campaign to sell NutraSweet marked the first time a brand-name ingredient, rather than a product itself, has been so extensively advertised, industry observers said.
The NutraSweet campaign began with a highly sucessful theme of 'why some things taste better than others,' touting NutraSweet's flavor. But in 1985, after the first serious scientific concerns were raised, the thrust of Searle's advertising shifted abruptly to a controversial new theme boasting that the sweetener is as safe as naturally grown foods.
Today, NutraSweet ads often appear during commercial breaks in TV fitness programs.
