Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I was haunting one of my favorite antique stores when this soda bottle jumped right out at me.

The soda was called Like and the tagline was, “Diets Like Like.”

What was even more interesting was the subtitle:

Artificially sweetened special dietary carbonated beverage

Nothing says delicious like the words “special dietary.”

It took me a while to track down exactly WHAT Like Soda was, but I finally found a footnote on Wikipedia:

• 7 Up – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Diet 7 Up: Originally introduced in 1963 as Like (not to be confused with 7 Up’s Like Cola from the 1980s), it was discontinued in 1969 due to the U.S. government ban of cyclamate sweetener.

The history for cyclamate is interesting as well:

• Sodium cyclamate – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Controversy developed when in 1966, a study reported that some intestinal bacteria could desulfonate cyclamate to produce cyclohexylamine, a compound suspected to have some chronic toxicity in animals. Further research resulted in a 1969 study which found the common 10:1 cyclamate:saccharin mixture to increase the incidence of bladder cancer in rats. The released study was showing that eight out of 240 rats fed a mixture of saccharin and cyclamates, at levels of humans ingesting 350 cans of diet soda per day, developed bladder tumors. Other studies implicated cyclohexylamine in testicular atrophy in mice. On October 18, 1969, the Food and Drug Administration banned its sale in the United States with citation of the Delaney Amendment.

Abbott Laboratories claimed that its own studies were unable to reproduce the 1969 study’s results, and in 1973, Abbott petitioned the FDA to lift the ban on cyclamate. This petition was eventually denied in 1980 by FDA Commissioner Jere Goyan. Abbott Labs, together with the Calorie Control Council (a political lobby representing the diet foods industry), filed a second petition in 1982. Although the FDA has stated that a review of all available evidence does not implicate cyclamate as a carcinogen in mice or rats, cyclamate remains banned from food products in the United States.

Apparently, Diets DON’T like Like…