What to use to sweeten your food is a popular subject, given that so many people have an affinity for sweets, and it’s widely known that refined sugar is one of the worst foods you can eat. You have to be cautious when choosing an alternative, though, because some may actually be worse for you than the real thing, including some sweeteners that are widely regarded as “healthy” but in reality are anything but.

MSN Health actually did a fairly good job in assembling a list of the best and the worst for your health, which I expand on below.

The Best:

  • Stevia
  • Sugar alcohols
  • Honey (I recommend Manuka honey, or raw honey in very small quantities)
  • Pure glucose

The Worst:

  • Aspartame
  • Agave (which I would expand to include all sources of fructose)
  • Sucralose (Splenda)

Artificial Sweeteners Are Worse Than Sugar

Sweetener lesson 101 is to avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague. There’s little doubt in my mind that artificial sweeteners can be even worse for you than sugar and fructose, and there is scientific evidence to back up that conclusion.

But do you know what they are called or where they are? Check out the list below from Dr. Axe on some of the most popular/common artificial sweeteners on the market today.

  • Aspartame
  • Acesulfame potassium
  • Alitame
  • Cyclamate
  • Dulcin
  • Equal
  • Glucin
  • Kaltame
  • Mogrosides
  • Neotame
  • NutraSweet
  • Nutrinova
  • Phenlalanine
  • Saccharin
  • Splenda
  • Sorbitol
  • Sucralose
  • Twinsweet
  • Sweet ‘N Low
  • Xylitol

If you haven’t yet, train yourself to read the labels on everything you buy that you are going to ingest, inhale or put on your body. Once again, Dr. Axe.

  1. Toothpaste and mouthwash
  2. Children’s chewable vitamins
  3. Cough syrup and liquid medicines
  4. Chewing gum
  5. No-calorie waters and drinks
  6. Alcoholic beverages
  7. Salad dressings
  8. Frozen yogurt and other frozen desserts
  9. Candies
  10. Baked goods
  11. Yogurt
  12. Breakfast cereals
  13. Processed snack foods
  14. “Lite” or diet fruit juices and beverages
  15. Prepared meats
  16. Nicotine gum

In 2005, I wrote the most comprehensively documented book I ever wrote called Sweet Deception, in which I expose the many concerns related to the consumption of artificial sweeteners. It’s an extremely well-researched book, and it’s as valid today as it was when I first wrote it. I spent over three years and had five health care professionals work on it with me, and the maker of Splenda, Johnson & Johnson, had their legal firm write me a 20-page letter threatening to sue me if I published the book. Needless to say, the book was published and they did not sue me as the information was all true.

Here’s a breakdown of what you need to know:

Aspartame

Aspartame is a synthetic chemical composed of three ingredients – two amino acids and a methyl ester bond. The amino acids are phenylalanine and aspartic acid, two common components of many foods that are usually completely safe for consumption. But not in the case of aspartame.

Why?

Aspartame is the ingredient found in NutraSweet. It is also found in Equal, Spoonful, Equal Measure, AminoSweet, Benevia, NutraTaste, Canderel, and many popular “diet” foods and beverages. I’ve gone on record saying that aspartame is a bigger public health threat than high fructose corn syrup and can lead to birth defects, cancer and weight gain, among many aspartame side effects. It’s also been linked to brain tumors.

Forgetting for a moment that aspartame is metabolized inside your body into both wood alcohol (a poison) and formaldehyde (which embalms tissue and is not eliminated from your body through the normal waste filtering done by your liver and kidneys), the trouble with the component parts of aspartame is one of volume.

In a normal protein like meat, fish or eggs, phenylalanine and aspartic acid comprise four to five percent each of the total amino acid profile. This is how nature intends the human body to encounter these two amino acids and there is nothing wrong with these substances if they occur naturally in a proper balance with other amino acids.

But in aspartame the ratio of these two amino acids is 50 percent phenylalanine and 40 percent aspartic acid (with 10 percent methyl ester bond, aka wood alcohol, a known poison). In other words, on a percentage basis this is a massive quantity of two unnaturally isolated amino acids that are simply not found in this ratio in nature, bonded together by a known poison.

The result of this chemical cocktail is a sweet tasting neurotoxin. As a result of its unnatural structure, your body processes the amino acids found in aspartame very differently from a steak or a piece of fish. The amino acids in aspartame literally attack your cells, even crossing the blood-brain barrier to attack your brain cells, creating a toxic cellular overstimulation called excitotoxicity.

MSG is also an excitotoxin, and works synergistically with aspartame to create even more damage to your brain cells.

Sucralose (Splenda)

Sucralose is a synthetic chemical created in a laboratory. In the five-step patented process of making sucralose, three chlorine molecules are added to one sucrose (sugar) molecule.

Some will argue that natural foods also contain chloride, which is true. However, in natural foods, the chloride is connected with ionic bonds that easily dissociate. But in Splenda, they’re in a covalent bond that does not dissociate. In fact, there are NO covalent chloride bonds to organic compounds in nature—they only exist in synthetic, man-made form. Aside from Splenda, other examples of synthetic covalently bound chloride compounds include:

  • DDT
  • PCBs
  • Agent Orange

Now, your body has no enzymes to break down this covalently bound chloride. Why would it? It never existed in nature, so the human body never had a reason to address it. And since it’s not broken down and metabolized by your body, they can claim it to be non-caloric—essentially, it’s supposed to pass right through you.

However, the research (which is primarily extrapolated from animal studies) indicates that about 15 percent of sucralose IS in fact absorbed into your digestive system, and ultimately stored in your body.

 

https://www.healthnutnews.com/the-3-worst-artificial-sweeteners-and-4-of-the-best/