Artificial Sweeteners

I have been a user of all kinds of these artificial sweeteners, and was shocked to find out that they are so detrimental to our good health. I love Diet Coke, I have used Crystal Light for years as a way of increasing my daily water intake, anything that said it was diet or sugar free, I used to get all excited about. NOT ANY MORE!
Did you know that there were five known types of Artificial Sweeteners? I didn't. I have found out about them all and will highlight them for you.
By the way... the medical world seems to be referring to these as "nonnutritive" I personally don't want to ingest something that is nonnutritive!
First there is Saccharin. Saccharin has been around for over 100 years and claims to be the best researched sweetener. Saccharin is also known as Sweet and Low, Sweet Twin, Sweet'N Low, and Necta Sweet. It does not contain any calories, does not raise blood sugar levels and is 200 to 700 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar).
Even being the safest of all nonnutritive sweeteners, it has still been tagged to cause allergies and bladder cancer.

Next lets talk about Aspartame. Aspartame is also known as Nutrasweet, Equal, and Sugar Twin. It does provide calories, but because it is 160 to 220 times sweeter than sucrose, very small amounts are needed for sweetening so the caloric intake is negligible.
The positive side is that if you want to lower your calories it can be done with all of the consumer products available today that contain this. The bad news is:
Aspartame disease: H.J. Roberts, MD, coined the term "aspartame disease" in a book filled with over 1,000 pages of information about the negative health consequences of ingesting aspartame. Dr. Roberts reports that by 1998, aspartame products were the cause of 80% of complaints to the FDA about food additives. Some of these symptoms include headache, dizziness, change in mood, vomiting or nausea, abdominal pain and cramps, change in vision, diarrhea, seizures/convulsions, memory loss, and fatigue. Along with these symptoms, links to aspartame are made for fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, tinnitus, joint pain, unexplainable depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus, and various cancers. While the FDA has assured us that the research does not show any adverse health complications from aspartame, there has been some evidence to suggest that some of these symptoms can be related to aspartame.

Next is Sucralose. Sucralose is the newest nonnutritive sweetener on the market. It is most well known for its claim to be made from sugar. It is as sold as Splenda and is 600 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). It provides essentially no calories and is not fully absorbed. In 1998, it was approved for limited use, and in 1999, it was given approval for use as a general-purpose sweetener. It is currently found in over 4,500 products, including foods that are cooked or baked.
The bad side for Sucralose scared me the most. It was discovered while formulating a pesticide. Splenda is a form of sugar, but this is what they did. They took out some natural cells and substituted them with chlorine. According to the book Sweet Deception, sucralose is made when sugar is treated with trityl chloride, acetic anhydride, hydrogen chlorine, thionyl chloride, and methanol in the presence of dimethylformamide, 4-methylmorpholine, toluene, methyl isobutyl ketone, acetic acid, benzyltriethlyammonium chloride, and sodium methoxide, making it unlike anything found in nature.
Wow!!! I am shocked!!!
Next in the list is a sweetener that is put into products that we buy ready to eat. We don't even know were eating it until we read the label.
Acesulfame K. The problems surrounding acesulfame K are based on the improper testing and lack of long-term studies. Acesulfame K does contain the carcinogen methylene chloride.
Long list but we have come to an end, another sweetener that we have to check labels for;
A new version of aspartame called Neotame. Again it has not been tested enough and there are no long term studies done making it a bad choice for me, but you decide for yourself.


this information taken from the website http://www.medicinenet.com/artificial_sweeteners/page5.htm