Sugar Is Latest Supermarket Demon (artificial sweeteners safe?)

New York Times:
Low Carbs? Who Cares? Sugar Is Latest Supermarket Demon
By MELANIE WARNER
Published: May 15, 2005


....Low-sugar has become the new low-carb. Food makers are rushing to meet demand from consumers concerned with their waistlines and healthier eating by providing an array of new products, some of them aimed at children. But scientists are divided over how positive this development is, questioning whether the change will help people lose weight, and how healthful the artificial sweeteners are....

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Propelled in part by the popularity of the sugar substitute sucralose, or Splenda, the food industry last year introduced 2,225 sugarless or sugar-reduced products in the United States, according to the research firm Productscan Online. This figure is more than double that of two years ago and represents 11 percent of all new products in 2004....

***

Last week, ACNielsen identified both organic and low or no sugar as the two "good for you" food segments that will get products noticed by consumers and generate the strongest sales growth. Many of these new low-sugar products are not just the old standbys like diet sodas and sugarless gum, but foods and drinks like cereals, fruit juices, cookies, bread, ice cream, flavored milk, pasta sauce, maple syrup and even bottled water.

A few of these products, like Kellogg's 1/3 Less Sugar Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes cereals, and Mott's Healthy Harvest apple sauce, simply have less added sugar and taste less sweet. But most are made with one or more of the half-dozen no-calorie artificial sweeteners on the market and are designed to taste much like the original....

***

Dr. Susan Schiffman, a sweetener specialist and professor of medical psychology at Duke University Medical Center, says she has safety concerns about sucralose, which is the nation's fastest-growing sugar replacement, according to the Freedonia Group, a research firm. She points to the Food and Drug Administration's 1998 report giving approval for sucralose, which said the compound is "weakly mutagenic in a mouse lymphoma mutation assay," meaning it caused minor genetic damages in mouse cells....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/business/15sugar.html?hp&ex=1116129600&en=c35c5f6c402f9609&ei=5094&partner=homepage

I had read some about aspartame about 5 or 6 years ago, when i was a heavy consumer. I had been putting on weight, my face swoll up to where I didn't recognize myself, I had trouble even going up stairs without getting out of breath. After doing anything the least bit active (like the stairs) I felt the need to stick my head in the freezer and breath cold air (note: I lived in Florida and while the cold felt good I think it was more of getting air with less moisture in it). I laid off all sweetened things for a year or two, lost weight and had more energy - neither back to my level of 8 years ago. I switched over to sucralose/Splenda a couple years ago with these flavored waters. They seemed so good after no soft drinks for so long. But then I started putting on weight and getting depressed again. I didn't have the swelling or extreme lack of energy I had with aspartame, but there was something going on. I also had chronic diarrhea while drinking it. About 3 months ago I read about the dangers of sucralose and gave that up. It feels like I am slowly detoxifying.
But reading that link you gave it seems like the aspartame might still have left long lasting things in me I need to detox to get rid of even after a few years.

It's just fun to say.

sucrose is not as dangerous as high fructose corn syrup. It's what sweetens most all soft drinks and is a real danger to health. When scientists want to do research on triglyceride lowering drugs they cause the rats to have high levels of triglycerides by making their water rations be 10% high fructose corn syrup solution.

We do consume way too much sugars. Think about it, where would we get this stuff in a primitive society. It's not particularly natural in the human or any animal diet for that matter.

Those artificial sweeteners have their own problems. Since I have diabetes and am addicted to Coke I drink Diet Coke. There are risks with aspartame but I am willing to take them. It caused some really bad problems with some people, headaches and so forth. The rest have problems and few can be used in cooking. Splenda takes heat OK but since it is so concentrated it does not build the structure that you want in a cake or other sweets.

On edit-Just read dbonds second post. There are non caloric sweeteners that are sugars like Splenda, maltodextose and others that we cannot digest. They get in the gut where sugars and carbos don't belong and cause bloating, gas, diarrhea.

Most of the Mexican stores and taquerias have it.
It's Coke bottled in Mexico.

then sugar.

Then there's stevia and prune puree and apple juice.

So many sweetners that are better than sugar... yet industry and Americans probably don't even know what Barley Malt is.

I've avoided aspartame ever since I took the time to read about its neurotoxic - albeit slight - effects.

Staying away from that particular ingredient means swearing off most chewing gum, save for the cinnamon kind, and avoiding a large swath of popular diet sodas.

We already did this one years ago. I think they're running out of food fads to glorify, and food fads to demonize, and have started to recycle.

None of this stuff is harmful. It's just that 'everything in moderation' should be the phrase to follow.

and you can grow it yourself.

http://www.loghouseplants.com/stevia_info.htm
http://www.stevia.net/growingstevia.htm
http://www.stevianow.com/growing_stevia.htm


sweeet..
dp

i'd never heard of this plant before...i'm passing the info on to my green thumb mother.

I've been buying cut stevia leaf in bulk for a long time now and brew it with my yerba mate or tea right in the pot. Love it and haven't bought sugar literally in years. The stevia is already dried and cured, too, so the bitter aftertaste of the raw leaf isn't there.

Here's where I buy my stevia leaf and yerba mate. It's very reasonable and I get delivery within a couple of days: http://www.herbalcom.com

I also keep the packets of powder on hand for when I'm brewing by the cup or need a sweetner for another purpose. They're available in any health food store.

Growing my own would be fun, but I don't think I want to be bothered with processing to get rid of the licorice-bitter aftertaste that the raw leaf is noted for.

On edit: Another bonus is that stevia is well known to have a diuretic effect. That makes it ideal for people with borderline blood pressure who want to avoid medications -- and might even mitigate the need for a diuretic in people with mild hypertension or congestive heart failure, etc.

always nice to find another source.

:kick:

dp

Rethink artificial/processed sweeteners.

Favor yourself. Read up. Don't trust the FDA.

People started having big weight problems with affordability, convenience, long shelf lives, artificial and dyed stuff, and before our FDA compromised themselves with lobbyists and pressures.

My belief - don't trust the FDA. Use your head. They partnered with the corporations and decided that a few labratory failures with mice was OK. Favor yourself. Read up. Ignore this if you trust the FDA.

A simple test for me is the length of the list of ingredients and my ability to recognize the ingredients.

Is artificial butterscotch still made with benzene?
Why would anyone need to put MSG in a can of tuna?

I agree that corn syrup is a problem.

I speak out because of the problems caused by some ingredients that the FDA thinks are just great and whose lobbyists are ranked near the top of money rakers.

My sermon has ended.

I'm an avid food gardener, and I always maintain that if it isn't a part of the natural life/food cycle, I won't eat it. It helps that aspartame makes me totally sick (mood swings, headaches), and "Splenda" has a chemical aftertaste to me. Don't get me started on MSG; it is so potent and so prolific in our food supply, and has addicted people's tastebuds to an unreasonable idea of what food should taste like.

I shop the outer edges of the supermarket and cook my own meals. I rarely venture down the middle aisles unless I need a specific spice, oil, vinegar or canned vegetable that is out-of-season.

I don't know if my husband would be able to stand a regimen that didn't allow any ice cream, ever. Of course, that might be part of why he developed diabetes in the first place. That's really the only thing he does that involves a lot of artificial sweetener - usually Splenda, now. Life is ironic or something. He's got a huge sweet tooth - always has had. He never gained a lot of weight, though, so there didn't seem to be any reason for him not to have what he wanted. Until his blood sugar went to over 1000, that is. Then, when he regained consciousness, adjustments in diet had to be made. My grandfather had diabetes and used to sneak into the kitchen when everyone was asleep and cheat. If my husband did that he'd be very sick, very fast, so I'm glad that there's something that makes him relatively happy.

it's in EVERYTHING! aspartame is an excito-toxin, it excites your brain cells and makes you think the product its in tastes good, and then your brain cells die. splenda causes allergic reactions in many people...but its steamrolling its way into all the products anyway. i started that lifestyle advocated by a certain blonde, now cancer-free, ex-TV roommate- no white flour, no sugar...(and other restrictions) and I've lost 35 pounds very easily and feel great. Come to think of it, it's kinda like being a kool-aid Republican- drinking diet soda makes you think you're being noble, but since you didn't bother to do any research into the matter, you're being manipulated by the corporation and sabotaging your own best interest!

even Spenda leaves a bitter aftertaste. Maybe it's just my personal body chemistry that reacts to such stuff.

whenever i used it, it made me feel bloated. then i read that, and figured it was the splenda doing it. i'm better off with brown sugar in my tea!

it was recommended to stick with older artificial sweeteners that have been through some testing. splenda has not.

i'll dig out the link if someone is interested. it actually came to me in a snail mail newsletter, but there was a link.

If you check the IT about any of these artificial sweeteners, you find a whole lot of qualifiers, a whole lot of possible side-effects.

I believe honey grown in your area is a far better way to get your sugar hit. Mix the honey with butter and knife it onto dark toast. It tastes good and I think it's also helpful in immunizing (a little bit at least) those with allergy problems to the pollen and other such in the area. Honey isn't as problematic for diabetic-tending bodies as refined sugar. It's metabolized more slowly I believe.

I also think natural foods are much easier for the body to handle. After you drink a soft drink w/ aspartame or such, monitor yourself. Do you get the runs? Do you get headaches the next day? Etc. Look in the mirror to find the best doctor anyone can ever have.

The doctors need to return the body to its rightful owner.

IMHO of course, all this.

.... at all due to some kind of "sensitivity" that doctors get all vague about when pressed.

"Sugar" in this case includes corn syrup, or any carb sweetener that is quickly assimilated. I can eat slow carb sweeteners like maltitol, sorbitol, etc.

I can eat Nutrasweet without obvious problems, but Splenda makes me itch all over. Soft drinks (which I drink very few of anyway) seem to be all switching over to Splenda, so no more soft drinks for me :)

For sweetener, I use calcium saccharine, which I think is pretty safe. After you use it a while, you don't even taste the bitter aftertaste anymore :)

I second or third or fourth the idea that corn syrup is a bigger problem than cane sugar, there are scientists who believe that it is the main reason Americans are becoming so obese.

in Worcestershire sauce. High Fructose Corn Syrup is almost impossible to avoid. Manufacturers love it because it is so cheap and so incredibly sweet and they put it in freaking everything. Corn producers love it because it's a way to use excess corn crop (which this country insists on overproducing).

But your body does not metabolize it the way it does other sugars. I can't recall the exact science, but it interferes with your body's insulin level and satiety (that feel-full feeling) and that might be partly why it is a factor in obesity.

... fortunately, the amounts contained in condiments is not enough to cause me problems.

I have a son who has to avoid ALL corn products. It severely limits what he can eat, we have some special ketchup for him :)

http://www.splendaexposed.com/

I have personally had horrific headaches after eating something
with Splenda and have felt very ill, which is odd because
I can tolerate Aspertaine fine.

Stevia has been repressed, tastes great, no studies suggesting
anything bad..
they suppress it because it's a plant, thus not patentable and also
grows in S. America.

I haven't read anything but strongly suspect high fructose corn syrup,
a chemical is really bad news.

In Europe they make everything with cane sugar and notice they
aren't bulging out of their pants.

The same guy who snuck Nutrasweet past the FDA is also the architect of the plot to sneak "nutritional supplements" past the FDA. And then they re-framed the debate on supplements as "personal choice" and a way to bypass "the greedy medical establishment."

Wake up, people!

There is a small tree called "miracle fruit" that produces red berries. When you eat one of these berries, they say that lemons and other sour things taste sweet. The effect lasts for 30 minutes. Supposedly research is being done on this as a "sweetener."

I am going to be buying one of these trees and will experiment. The tree grows only in frost-free locations.