The TRUTH About Artificial Sweeteners

Hi Joel

I don’t use artificial sweeteners or drink diet drinks because I am pretty active and don’t have a lot of sugar anyway but I am definitely interested in whether they are good for you or not. Love your e-mails

Yours in fitness
Michael

I think it’s more of why you want to use it in the first place. For example, if you’re diabetic and can’t use sugar. Or if you’re trying to lose weight and want to avoid sugar.

Sweeteners never really worked for me. They always taste different. But I learned to get away from sugar by simply recognizing that things can taste good without sweetening. Cereal, oatmeal, fruit… they don’t need additional sweet.
For coffee, personally I found that 1% milk does enough. It cools it down and provides that small dash of lactose, which sweetens just enough.
With diabetics… if your body processes the artificial sweetener the same way it processes sugar, what have you gained by not just using the sugar?

FYI, I am anti-artificial sweetener, simply because they don’t work for me. I’m pro sugar, as long as it’s used within reason – now that I’ve mostly kicked my sugar habit I can use it wisely. But even more of the time, I’m pro not sweetening at all. (Same with salt… I just don’t need it.)

Darn. I forgot to add that I’m staunchly anti-high fructose corn syrup. THAT’s why diet drinks don’t taste the same as regular drinks. Because there isn’t sugar in the regular drinks. It’s corn syrup.

Who needs that?

Hey Joel…I’m totally with you buddy! Moderation is the key. A disturbing and pervasive trend in our culture today is to simply believe in anything that’s become “trendy”. In this case, it’s become “fashionable” to recite the horrors of artificial sweeteners as if it was the 11th commandment! It’s unfortunate that for many of us, once we become emotionally attached to a thought…our ability to objectively process that thought becomes compromised. We are ALWAYS better served to rely on facts as opposed to relying on how something makes us “feel”.

@David –

Yeah David,

I heard similar things about the body confusing the sweet and basically going into metabolic halt because it isn’t getting the benefit of sugar. I used to use Equal like no tomorrow but was getting migraines and stopped. Then came my buddy Splenda : ) I use that every day but only in my coffee. I don’t drink diet soda, well only on occasion instead of a Captain and Coke. hehe

I also read that when equal reaches a certain temperature (98) it turns into formaldehyde so I guess it will preserve you in the end? lol

Anyway, it’s all just confusing to me. There’s always someone to tell you you’re wrong when you think you’re right.

I’m always a bit skeptical of research that is often sponsored by the very same companies that make the the product claiming it is safe. There’s a tremendous amount of money involved if the findings are negative, so what are the chances that the negative research runs will come out.

Even with truly independent research, maybe it is safe, maybe it’s not. I prefer to err on the side of caution and avoid outright artifical chemicals. I think we all ingest enough artifical chemicals without having to intentionally add any.

I find that properly managing my blood-sugar levels by eating 5 or 6 smaller meals a day along with eating fruits has significantly reduced my desire for sweet things other than the very occasional bowl of Cap’n Crunch! :)

If you want sweet, go for something more natural like xylitol, stevia or my current favorite, agave, which is 1.4 times sweeter than normal sugar.

I think glycemic load is at least as important as glycemic index and if you’re doing a teaspoon (~4g) of sugar, the glycemic load from that is pretty small (3 according to nutritiondata.com) and a whopping 15 calories. That’s like an extra minute of cardio for me. Big whoop.

Finally, to flip the coin around, is there actually any research that indicates that consuming artificial sweeteners actually helps you lose weight? Joel, I’d love it if you could find some research on that!

Yes they don’t have calories, but do people who consume large quantities of them actually lose weight better/faster than those who consume natural sweeteners? If not, then what is the point?

Well, I can’t agree with you at all. Let me guess, you are talking about the studies conducted by the manufacturers of this/these products. I have also read all the heresay and also done tests myself. Including removing all artificial sweetners from my diet, and guess what? My lethargy, migraines and just feeling blah went away. As for the research,
From the very beginning, the risks of this toxic artificial sweetener were presenting themselves loud and clear (it’s just too bad the policymakers chose to ignore them).

In a two-year study conducted by the manufacturer of aspartame, twelve of 320 rats fed a normal diet and aspartame developed brain tumors while none of the control rats developed tumors, and five of the twelve tumors were in rats given a low dose of aspartame.

Other studies have shown that aspartic acid, one of the main ingredients in aspartame, causes damage to the brains of infant mice.

In 1981, an FDA statistician stated that the brain tumor data on aspartame was so “worrisome” that he could not recommend approval of NutraSweet.

And a late FDA toxicologist testified before the U.S. Congress that aspartame was capable of producing brain tumors. He stated in his testimony that G.D Searle’s (the maker of aspartame) studies were “to a large extent unreliable” and that “at least one of those studies has established beyond any reasonable doubt that aspartame is capable of inducing brain tumors in experimental animals … ”

Moving forward to present day, a review conducted in 2008 by scientists from the University of Pretoria and the University of Limpopo found that consuming a lot of aspartame may inhibit the ability of enzymes in your brain to function normally, and may lead to neurodegeneration.

According to the researchers, consuming a lot of aspartame can disturb:

• The metabolism of amino acids
• Protein structure and metabolism
• The integrity of nucleic acids
• Neuronal function
• Endocrine balances

Further, the breakdown of aspartame causes nerves to fire excessively, which can indirectly lead to a high rate of neuron depolarisation.

There is a correlation between weight gain and artificial sweeteners, but I’ve seen people order a 1700 calorie meal from a fast food restaurant and then order a diet soda. Correlation isn’t causation.

While I think having too many freaky chemicals in our diets is a bad idea, I don’t see why the occasional artificially sweetened beverage is a problem.

Just think that people should be made aware of the fact that artificial sweeteners are just that–artificial.
Splenda, as the folks at the chemical plant explained to me, is sugar–turned inside out.
Whoa!!! That is scary in and of itself; isn’t it?

And yes, chlorine is one of the main components of the changing process. Deadly chlorine.
This is one of those plants that people living nearby live in fear of their lives for each and every day.
If you want..I can get you some photos, etc. It is just 10-15 minutes from my house.

What can be so wrong about what nature provides? Anything…anything at all..can be harmful if overused or misused.

The bottom line is…nature provides.

It is just like the ‘new’ sugar they have discovered. Well, corn syrup was new…a very long time ago. Just wait a few months and they will find something wrong with that, too.

The problem is the chemical plants. People quit buying their products and it sets off a chain reaction. Their revenue drops, people are laid off and fired, the companies providing the chemcals they need to ‘change’ the sugar are also now down revenue, etc, etc.
Of course they don’t want us to know how bad it is! Why would they? They have every reason to keep feeding us stuff that is harmful. They do not care about us–all they want is our money for as long as they can get it.

People should look into XYLITOL. Good sweetening capacity, tastes more like normal sugar than some other alternative sweeteners, and it has the added benefit of reducing cavities when used regularly.
http://www.learn-about-tea.com/xylitol-sweetener.html

Joel,

As arule I stay away from aspertame. I mean, a sweetener derived from ester of wood rosin can’t be all that great for you. Splenda, on the other hand, is awesome. Now that diet coke comes with splenda, I’m set. I only drink about 20 ounces every 3-4 days.
I’m no expert on aspertame. I have heard of some of the things it can do to you. I’m sure that moderation has a lot to do with that. If you eat a tube of toothpaste you can get fluoride poisoning but that doesn’t stop us from brushing 3 times a day.

@Don Bell –
I’m with you Joel. I first got linked to a site re aspartime a couple years back. Personally, i never drink what you guys call soda (we call it soft-drink, or its name, coke, pepsi etc) I just cant handle the false, highly sweet gross tastes of any soft-drinks. But, after reading site after site saying how bad artificial sweeteners are. especially Aspartime, I wouldnt drink any. It seems to me that your FDA and others lobby your Govt so much and so hard that they get things passed to be safe, that are fully not safe, and then the rest of the world is like – well if they reckon it’s ok, then it’s safe for us – and voila, we get subjected to aspartime and now – stevia, which our consumer advocate magazine Choice, has advised us not to partake of.

Joel, you titled your post – “The truth about artificial sweeteners” – yet you don’t know the whole truth about them. We don’t know for sure what they do in your body – some people seem to be affected more by them. Why would you put crap in your body? Is this just so you cause a stir?

Did anyone mentioned “stevia” it’s like 300 times sweeter than sugar but with 0 calories, even diabetics can use it. It grows in south america. I even know a site from where you can get it but I’m not gonna promote anyone here :) anyway if you really need to sweeten something up I think this is the best way to go…300 times sweeter than sugar, just thought I should write that one one more time :)

@Don Bell –

You are doing just what Joel said with this post – passing along heresay information. ANYONE can type ANYTHING on the internet and it can be then carried along as fact. (oh, by the way – didn’t you hear that trimming your toenails after 8:00 p.m. can cause night blindness?)

Seriously – that long list of “maladies” brought about the by the use of asparatame wasn’t backed up with any better science than my stupid comment above.

I use Splenda – in the summer in decent quantities in my tea – and I dont’ give it a second thought. Until a well researched, well designed and REPLICATED study comes out that tells me my insides will rot out by continuing to use it – I’ll continue to use it.

OH SO RIGHT, Tehri!!! The man upstairs didn’t make it SOOOOO…sorry to tell you but there is no way it is right!!! I don’t care what research says. Now….moderation on the man made stuff is the key. I say if you must have it sweet (and I have HUGE cravings for sweet) go regular old sugar!!! Pop…mmmmm love a good cold pepsi. Again…don’t do diet…doesn’t taste as good and why mess up your body with even MORE chemicals. MODERATION. It’s a treat, not the staple right??? Eat what was created exactly for us and we will cure ALOT of health problems the human race has now. Just for the record…I’m positive chocolate was made specifically with me in mind…LOL!!! Stay healthy all!!!

Originally Posted By TerhiWell, it’s artificial not natural. Does ones body know what to do with it?

Who’s paying for the researches? The food industry? The very companies that sells that stuff?

It’ll be very interesting to read what you have in store for us.

Yep, I partake of artificial sweetners, not equal, because it does have an effect on my blood sugar. I only do Splenda. I’m diabetic, so yeah, I only drink diet soda (but not a lot, I LIKE water!)

I could enlighten you about aspartame, but I can see that you are addicted, so it is not worth my time. The day will come when you realize how stupid it was to think it is safe. Some people have immediate reactions, and it takes years for others to become ill. I had a classic migraine with my first sip. Half my face was numb, I could not see or speak. It took my daughter 2 years to become ill. She started to go blind and had seizures. We took her to to Boston for special studies on her brain, and the doctors at the Clinical Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology confirmed that it was the aspartame that had made her so sick. They said that she had been totally misdiagnosed by the neurologist and that she did not have temporal lobe epilepsy at all. She was ill from aspartame. She also saw a highly-respected ophthalmologist who explained why her vision loss was due to aspartame. In 2007, I spent 5 hours at Mount Sinai Hospital learning how it causes cancer. Have fun drinking it, but please don’t mislead others.

JOEL, AM USING UP TO ABOUT 40 SWEETENERS A DAY IN TEA AND COFFEE. AM I LOOKING FOR TROUBLE???

For many years, the FDA refused to approve Aspartame because of the documented seizures and brain tumors it caused in laboratory animals. When President Reagan (a friend of Searle) took office in 1981, he asked the FDA Commissioner to approve aspartame, and the man refused. So, President Reagan fired the FDA Commissioner and appointed Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes to do the deed. There was great opposition, so a Board of Inquiry was set up. The Board said not to approve aspartame. Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes overruled his own Board of Inquiry and approved Aspartame in dry foods. (Don Rumsfield was CEO of Searle then.) In 1983, with acting FDA Commissioner Mark Novitch, he approved Aspartame for carbonated beverages, in spite of a thirty-page protest from the National Soft Drink Association asking for a delay of approval until further evaluation verified its safety. Then, when he was under investigation for conflicts of interest, Dr. Hayes went to work for Burson Marstellar, the manufacturer’s public relations firm, for $1,000 a day. In 1993, the FDA approved aspartame in baked goods, even though they themselves admitted it couldn’t be heated!
There are numerous documents that show that the late Dr. Adrian Gross, an FDA toxicologist, and many, many other physicians and scientists, tried to prevent aspartame from ever being approved. For example, Dr. Gross said, “We have uncovered serious deficiencies in Searle’s operation and practices which undermined the basis for reliance on Searle’s integrity. . . Searle has not submitted all the facts or experiments to the FDA, retaining unto itself the un-permitted option of filtering, interpreting, and not submitting information . . an attitude of disregard for the FDA’s mission of protection of the public health . . conduct which compromises the scientific integrity of the studies.” He also indicated that Searle “did other terrible things. For instance, animals would develop tumors while they were under study. Well, they would remove these tumors from the animals.”
Dr. Gross also said, “The report of the Task Force submitted in March 1976 in essence constituted a stinging indictment of Searle, and it contained various recommendations for regulatory action including referral to the Justice Department for review of possible criminal violations of the law.”
On January 10, 1977, in a thirty-three page letter, FDA Chief Counsel Richard Merrill recommended to U. S. Attorney Sam Skinner that a grand jury investigate Searle for “apparent violations of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, Title 21, United States Code Section 331, and the False Reports to Government Act, 18 U.S.C. 1001, for their willful and knowing failure to make reports to the Food and Drug Administration required by Act 21 U.S.C. 355, and for concealing material facts and making false statements in reports of animal studies conducted to establish the safety of Aspartame.” It was an open and shut case, so Searle’s lawyers hired the U.S. Prosecutors, Skinner and Conlon, and the case died when the statute of limitations ran out.
In 1985, Senator Howard Metzenbaum introduced a bill entitled “Aspartame Safety Act of 1985.” It required quantity labeling of Aspartame on food items and mandated that there be a moratorium on new uses of Aspartame until independent tests could be conducted under the auspices of the National Institute of Health, since the original studies were the target of an indictment for fraud that was never carried out. Due to heavy Monsanto lobbying, the bill never got out of committee. (Monsanto bought Searle in 1985.)
Apparently, Aspartame did violate the Delaney clause’s “zero-tolerance” law. The late FDA toxicologist, Dr. Adrian Gross, told Congress that it violated the Delaney Amendment because it triggered brain tumors, astrocytomas , (the first stage of the deadly glioblastoma now said to be rampant in the population ), and his last words were, “and if the FDA violates its own laws, who is left to protect the public?” His words are in the Congressional Record.
The Delaney Amendment made it illegal to allow ANY residue of cancer causing chemicals in foods. Dr Gross concluded his testimony by asking “Given the cancer causing potential of aspartame how would the FDA justify its position that it views a certain amount of aspartame as constituting an allowable daily intake or ‘safe’ level of it? Is that position in effect not equivalent to setting a ‘tolerance’ for this food additive and thus a violation of that law? And if the FDA itself elects to violate the law, who is left to protect the health of the public?” Congressional Record SID835:131 (8/1/85)
All Aspartame victims have busy lives. They wouldn’t take their own valuable time to fight to have Aspartame banned from our food supply if they didn’t think it was crucial to the health of the American people and to others all over the world.
Naturally I worry about the carcinogenicity of aspartame, but I also worry about all the other illnesses it causes. For 20+ years, I have written to the FDA and have been ignored. Someone needs to convince the FDA to seriously reconsider the use of aspartame and remove it from the market. The FDA totally ignores the toxicity, carcinogenicity and neurodegenerative disabilities caused by aspartame. And, many other groups, including the American Council on Science and Health and the Calorie Control Council are nothing but industry supporters. They have absolutely no conscience! They all follow the modern Golden Rule which is: He who hath the gold makes the rules!
Aspartame is one of the few products consumed by more people than any other product, since pregnant women drink it as well as children and the elderly. This has to stop!
In 1969, Dr. Harold Waisman approached Searle to conduct one of the first experiments with aspartame. He found that some infant monkeys suffered seizures when fed aspartame. Searle commissioned other studies which showed more positive results, and they pushed ahead for approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) beginning in 1973. In 1974 aspartame was approved for use in a restricted number of foods. Two scientists filed objections based on a study that found the sweetener caused holes in the brains of mice.
The Bressler (1977) report exposed mammary, uterine, and ovarian tumors. James Bressler, leader of the FDA Task Force, said, “The question you have got to ask yourself is: Because of the importance of this study, why wasn’t greater care taken? The study is highly questionable because of our findings. Why didn’t Searle, with their scientists, closely evaluate this, knowing full well that the whole society, from the youngest to the elderly, from the sick to the unsick . . . will have access to this product.”
As a teacher, I am especially upset when students drink diet soda.
In addition to causing other serious health problems, aspartame can definitely have a subtle effect on cognitive functioning and can interfere with the concentration and attention skills of the students.

Most students realize that illegal drugs and smoking are bad for them, but many don’t know anything about the hazards of aspartame. With all the media attention on obesity these days, Americans will start using even more “diet” products.

Yes, obesity is a serious problem!!! However, what upsets me even more is that people turn to artificial sweeteners in an attempt to lose weight or prevent weight gain.
Several important studies have shown that aspartame contributes to weight gain!!! People who lose weight while consuming aspartame are losing only because they have the determination to make proper food choices and to exercise.

Government statistics indicated that more than 2.2 million American teenagers experience major depression. The use of antidepressants is skyrocketing. Not always, but very often symptoms of depression are caused by aspartame. Aspartame greatly lowers the Serotonin Level, and, decreased brain serotonin has been associated with depression, anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal attempts, hostility and psychopathic states, as well as hallucinations and insomnia.

Cool! I am interested in hearing what you find out. I would drink diet soda all day long, if I thought it would do me no harm…. and have done exactly that in the past. Now I try to avoid it…. but stilol need a ‘fix’ every couple of days. I also would not drink iced tea… of any kind without some kind of sweet in it, and I think that even though reas sugar may be the organic-er way to go, I am just as happy with the taste of… even good old ‘sweet- n- low…. and honestly, I just have no business adding the extra calories that sugar has to my beverages. I dont drink coffee, so Im clear of that one. I HOPE truly…. cause everyone says it’s so BAAAAD…. I hope that you find different!~ but either way it will be good to know that what you say about it will be due to yourself researching it …..(provided there is acurate info out here to be had) Kudos to you, for doing that! Research takes SO much time… more than I have….so Thanks ahead of time…. for your time in doing it!

I don’t use artificial sweeteners because they taste like s@!t. For me I’d rather consume the 16 calories. That was until I found a product called wheylow. Tastes like real sugar, very low insulin response and only 4 calories a teaspoon. Worth every cent.