Are Sweeteners Healthy? by Nicolle Mitchell

You may have noticed some consistent & persistent themes with regards improving your health. You know, drink plenty of water, eat your 5 a day (should be more like 7-9 really according to latest sound research!) & avoid sugar. That’s all very well say the sweet toothed among you, so what can we use instead.

Ain’t Nothing Sweet About Me….

Well there certainly lots of alternatives available on the market today all touting promises of weight loss or low GI (low on the Glycaemic Index).

How, would you feel then, if I told you about studies in America that strongly suggest that sweeteners actually make you gain weight!

Well, some boffins at the Purdue University in Indiana have pondered long & hard as to why people put on weight when they eat foods which are sweetened with artificial sweetener rather than sugar. Obviously this is a multi faceted consideration which needs to take into account exercise, lifestyle & diet. They theorised that sweeteners muddle the body’s ability to decide the right amount of calorific food we need. They tested this theory using lab rats (not ethical, nor always accurate in my opinion), feeding one group of rats yoghurt with sweetener & the other group of rats yoghurt with sugar. The rats eating the yoghurt with sweetener put on more weight!

More similar studies have been conducted all showing comparable results. In one of these studies, the rats who had sweetener had less energy. So less energy, the less likely you are to want to exercise or burn off your calories, & the more likely you are to retain calories & therefore weight. The artificial sweeteners fill the body with artificial calories which the body does not recognise & therefore cannot burn off.

More recently, at the Health Sciences Center, University of Texas a huge study was undertaken involving almost 2000 people monitored over 8 years. All the people in the study were of normal weight at the start of the study. By the end, about 1/3 of them had become obese. The researchers focused on the intake of soft drinks & sodas. Those people who had drunk products with sweeteners put on more weight. They calculated that there was a 41% increase of being overweight if you had a fizzy pop each day.

Other side effects from aspartame according to the American Food & Drug Administration (FDA), are as follows:

Headache, high blood pressure, dizziness, mood changes, vomiting/nausea, abdominal pain/cramps, vision problems, diarrhoea, seizures/convulsions, grand mal seizures, memory loss, fatigue/weakness, neurological problems, rashes, hives, sleep problems, change in heart rate, itching, numbness, tingling, local swelling, change in activity levels, difficulty breathing, oral sensory changes

Scientific journals state that aspartame causes: depression, headaches, Fibromyalgia, Thrombocytopenia (a condition where not enough platelets are produced in your blood & cause abnormal bleeding), Sjogren’s syndrome (where your white blood cells attack your body & can cause symptoms like dry eyes & dry mouth.

Aspartame is an excitotoxin or a neuro toxin, which basically jangles your nerves. It can particularly affect those with behavioural problems, ADHD, or those with learning difficulties. In fact scientists are linking sweeteners with mental disorders in young people, & poor memory (I seem to recall a recent article on this subject I read recently….hmmm).

There is also a link between aspartame & cancer. There is still more research to be done in this field, but I feel that putting a stress on your body to metabolise a foreign constituent is going to do your health no good at all long term.

So what are safe sugar substitutes? HONEY is a natural sugar & is not an antinutrient like sugar & sweeteners. It can boost immunity & stave off hayfever. Simply replace every ounce of sugar in any recipes you have with a fluid ounce of honey. It’s worked in everything I’ve tried it in, from chocolate cake, to macaroons, pastries & mincemeat for Xmas; even the homemade custard I make with rice milk, cornflour & vanilla essence…..LUSH with bananas. It is high on the GI though.

So how about AGAVE NECTAR? This is low in the GI. It from the Agave cactus. Add it into your home cooking, mousses, cakes etc. again replacing 1 oz sugar with an ounce of the golden nectar.

Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) are carbohydrates extracted from bananas, Jerusalem artichokes, & onions. They can be useful to help Candida too. However, this is quite a processed sugar substitute, & I believe the closer to nature an ingredient is, the better our body recognises it & can process it more healthily.

Beware of High Fructose Corn Syrup (FCOS), also known as glucose corn syrup or corn sugar. This is widely used in the food industry as a sweetener & to increase the shelf life or improve the consistency of processed food. Gillian McKeith slates this sweetener big time. I too avoid this ingredient knowing that it is an unhealthy sugar, but now have more reason not to ingest it. Renee Dufault discovered that almost half the samples she studied had toxic levels of mercury in them when ingested as by the average Jo. In fact a 20oz bottle of Coca-Cola has about 17 teaspoons of HCFS, with potentially higher amounts of Mercury than found in fish. On top of all that, it is believed to contribute to obesity too.

So what to do? I recommend as always, READ YOUR LABEL, & go the extra mile & vote with your purse. Sometimes it takes more effort to make a stand, but remember it only takes a 4% change in customers purchasing habits to put an item to the back of the shelf. We have a right to good, healthy, natural food with no additives. Even processed foods could be so much better for us if they had less of these nasty, artificial sweeteners & preservatives. Better still, get cooking & always cook up extra to freeze or have for lunch the next day.

Have fun, be well, & know that your real sweetness is already inside you.

Copyright 2009 Nicolle Mitchell ITEC, CThA, Holistic Massage Specialist, The Little Massage Clinic | www.lifenlimb.co.uk | www.tlcinabottle.co.uk