How to Choose an Artificial Sweetener

Most of us have a fondness for sweets, but eating too much sugar has helped contribute to our national epidemic of diabetes and obesity. In an attempt to control our weight many of us have to turned to alternative sweeteners. How should we choose one given the conflicting information?

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Consider if artificial sweeteners work at all. In a Purdue University study released in February 2008, rats given artificial sweeteners actually gained more weight than those eating food flavored with sugar. Researchers use calorie free saccharin but said the results could probably extrapolated to include other sweeteners. The Purdue scientists concluded that the sweet taste of saccharine prepared the bodies to take in a lot of calories, but when the calories didn’t follow as expected the rats ate more to compensate. The results are counterintuitive since consuming lower calorie food should produce weight loss.

2. Consider using aspartame, the main ingredient in Equal and NutraSweet. It tastes good and is sold in thousands of packaged foods world wide. It’s not used in baking, because it breaks down when heated. Most of the health concerns involving aspartame are regarding the fact that a portion of it breaks down into formaldehyde in the human body. Formaldehyde is a poison that can damage your central nervous system and immune system while causing genetic trauma. Many blame aspartame for headaches and joint pain. If you have these symptoms and are drinking a lot of aspartame sweetened soda, cut it out and see if your aches diminish.

3. Know that Splenda is sucralose, touted as a more natural sugar substitute because it is derived from sugar itself. The molecule was stumbled upon in Great Britain by scientists who were searching for a better pesticide by bonding poisonous Chorine atoms to sugar. Nobody really knows if Splenda is safe yet. In short term studies, rats showed shrunken thymus glands and enlarged livers and kidneys after exposure. In some humans sucralose has caused rashes, diarrhea, numbness and muscle aches. If you experience these symptoms cut out your use of sucralose.

4. Know that saccharin was the first widely available artificial sweetener. It does not taste as good as aspartame, which has largely replaced it in diet soda. It’s still available as Sweet and Low and in gum. Saccharin was found to cause bladder cancer in rats, but no longer rates a warning label as a potential carcinogen because no evidence was found that it causes cancer in humans. Still this is not a license to consume excessive amounts of saccharin.

5. Be aware that stevia is more of a sugar substitute than an artificial sweetener. In fact it is gaining in popularity because it is a from a natural herb, stevia rebaudiana. It’s 300 times sweeter than table sugar and is used in concentrations that effectively make it calorie free. In Paraguay South America it’s known as the sweet herb where it’s been consumed by Guarani Indians for hundreds of years without ill effects. For the past two decades it’s been marketed as a sweetener in Japan. There it competes head to head with aspartame and sucralose. But in the United States, it can be sold legally only as a dietary supplement, but not as a food additive. Ironically, stevia may be the healthiest sugar substitute of all. For more information, go to www.stevia.com or www.stevia.net.