Artificial sweeteners are marketed to you relentlessly as “healthy foods” or “healthier” than sugar. But are they really?
Just to clarify, some of the most popular artificial sweeteners on the market today are:
Splenda/Sucral (sucralose)
Equal/Canderil/Calnox (Aspartame)
Sweet & Low/Sweetex (Saccharine)
SweetOne (Acesulfame Potassium- acesulfame K)
These artificial sweeteners are used in abundance in almost every “diet” drink, “lite” yogurts, puddings, and ice creams, most “low-carb” products, and almost all “reduced-sugar” products. Bad news for fitness freaks is that even most protein powders are loaded with artificial sweeteners too (just look on the ingredients and you’ll usually see one of them).
Splenda/Sucral (Sucralose) is probably amongst the worst offenders of claiming to be “healthy” as they say that it’s made from real sugar. Don’t be fooled! It’s still an artificial substance. What they don’t tell you is that Sucralose is actually a chemically modified substance where chlorine is added to the chemical structure, making it more similar to a chlorinated pesticide than something we should be eating or drinking. Interestingly enough, Sucralose was actually discovered when a scientist was working on developing an insecticide!
This is one of the biggest misconceptions we see all of the time and it saddens to see so many people poisoning their family with dangerous artificial sweeteners like Sucralose, while falsely thinking they’re doing something healthy.
The truth is that artificial sweeteners are not even close to being healthy, and can easily be just as bad for you, if not worse, than sugar or corn syrup. Most people think that they are doing something good for themselves by choosing the “diet” drinks compared to the sugar-laden versions, but the problem is that you’re exposing yourself to a whole new set of problems with the artificially sweetened drinks and foods.
I’m sure you already know the problems with sugar or high fructose corn syrup sweetened products. The excess empty calories, blood sugar spike, and resulting insulin surge this creates in your body not only promotes fat gain, but also stimulates your appetite further, making things even worse.
On the other hand, artificial sweeteners save you calories, but there’s growing evidence that they can increase your appetite for sweets and other carbohydrates causing you to eat more later in the day anyway. Therefore, you don’t really save any calories at all. Also, studies have shown that artificial sweeteners can stimulate high insulin levels in your body too, which again can promote fat storage.
All of the 4 artificial sweeteners listed above are nasty chemicals that the human body is simply not meant to ingest. However, most of us are ingesting a whole lot of these chemicals on a daily basis. Aside from the problems touched on so far, other health issues that have been related to artificial sweeteners in scientific studies as well as observations are:
• some have been linked to potential cancer risks
• negative effects on the liver, kidneys, and other organs
• stimulating cravings
• gastrointestinal problems
• developmental problems in children and fetuses
• headaches
• and too many more issues to list
Now some of the above potential health problems are definitely not proven as fact in studies. However, some of them have been shown in animal studies given high doses. Regardless of the fact that any real health problems for actual human use are not proven yet, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather protect myself and my family and steer clear of these possibly dangerous artificial chemicals.
Let’s now talk of Aspartame (Equal, Canderil, Calnox); Aspartame is, by far, the most dangerous substance on the market that is added to foods. Aspartame accounts for over 75 percent of the adverse reactions to food additives reported to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Many of these reactions are very serious including seizures and death. A few of the 90 different documented symptoms listed in the report as being caused by aspartame includes:
Headaches/migraines, dizziness, seizures, nausea, numbness, muscle spasms, weight gain, rashes, depression, fatigue, irritability, tachycardia, insomnia, vision problems, hearing loss, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, loss of taste, tinnitus, vertigo, memory loss, and joint pain.
Of course, despite all of the health issues potentially associated with artificial sweeteners, the companies that sell the products will continue to claim that they are fully safe. Don’t believe them! The bottom line is that the body was not designed to deal with foreign substances like artificial sweeteners. For the fear of too long an article, I am leaving the discussion here and not going into details of other artificial sweeteners, but believe you me; story isn’t much different there either.
So what are your options for alternatives? You’re probably thinking that you’d like to still save on calories but avoid the nasty artificial sweeteners.
To me, the answer is called Stevia. I’ve been using and studying it for almost two years now. It is great as an alternative sweetener when you want to cut down on calories and sugar but don’t want to harm your health with artificial sweeteners. Stevia is not artificial like the other chemical sweeteners I mentioned above. Stevia is a natural non-caloric herb that’s been used for thousands of years in some parts of the world. It is a South American herb and when dried into a powder, has sweetness about 200-300 times stronger than sugar. A week back Stevia has also received approval from US-FDA so its safety has now been authenticated too.
I’ve yet to see any negative reports or health concerns regarding Stevia and only positive potential health benefits. I definitely give Stevia my seal of approval. Do yourself a favor (and your family), and if you are currently an artificial sweetener junkie, please consider switching to Stevia. Now the problem! I have been getting my supplies of Stevia from abroad, but it is yet to be launched in Pakistan. However, I have reasons to believe that the product will soon hit the market here. Until such time, try cutting down on your intake of artificial sweetener, and satisfy your sweet tooth when Stevia comes here! The bottom-line is: Stevia or no Stevia, but artificial sweeteners are a clear NO NO!
Stay Healthy
