From the February 2010 Idaho Observer:

Beware ALL processed food!
Now Even Soylent Green Can Taste Good

Senomyx is the main company using “proprietary taste receptor technologies to discover and develop novel flavor ingredients in the savory, sweet, salt, bitter, and cooling areas.” Senomyx has contracts with seven of the world’s leading food, beverage and ingredient supplier companies: Ajinomoto, Cadbury, Campbell Soup, Coca-Cola, Firmenich, Nestle, and Solae. Nestle is currently marketing products that contain Senomyx’s flavor ingredients as an alternative to such additives as fat, salt, MSG, and other ingredients a health-conscious consumer would want to minimize in their diet. Due to the incredibly small amount that needs to be added to trick your taste buds, Synomyx ingredients do not have to be labeled. Processed food and beverage manufacturers can reduce or eliminate the amount of “health-robbing” additives in their product without putting “taste enhancers” on the product label.

Consider the latest release from Senomyx regarding the recent approval of their ‘sweet’ flavor enhancer S2383 as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) under the provisions of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, administered by the FDA: 

S2383 was developed to enhance the taste of sucralose, a chlorinated sugar product that Dr. James Bowen refers to as a chlorocarbon poison. According to Bowen, “Sucralose is a molecule of sugar chemically manipulated to surrender three hydroxyl groups (hydrogen + oxygen) and replace them with three chlorine atoms. Natural sugar is a hydrocarbon built around 12 carbon atoms. When turned into sucralose it becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of Chlorodane, Lindane and DDT.”

Splenda, produced by Johnson & Johnson and marketed by McNeil Nutritionals, is the main supplier of sucralose which is used in a wide variety of beverages and foods such as confectionaries, baked goods, desserts, and dairy products, as well as over-the-counter (OTC) healthcare products and dietary supplements. In taste tests, S2383 allowed the amount of sucralose in product prototypes to be reduced by up to 75% while maintaining the desired sweet taste. By enabling the reduction of sucralose, S2383 allows manufacturers to decrease their ingredient costs while improving the taste characteristics of certain products.

This is all well and good for the bottom line of big corporations. But as with many FDA-approved products, there are no long-term studies performed to prove safety. There are currently no labeling requirements for genetically engineered foods, irradiated foods, neotame (concentrated aspartame) and now “Senomyx-enhanced” foods.