THE REAL SKINNY ON ARTIFICIAL SWEETENERS

If I were to pick one area of controversy that generates more emotional attachment and pseudo science, it would be the comparison of artificial sweeteners with sugar.

It is immensely popular, especially if you represent alternative medicine as I do, to say that artificial sweeteners are evil, wicked, mean and nasty.

Let me warn you that I am going to be brutal in my approach today and that when the smoke clears, there is still going to be some low hanging fog!

Let me begin by asking you this question: How do you feel about artificial sweeteners and why do you feel that way?

Before I go any further, let me say first that I am not trying to convince you or change your mind. I am merely going to present the facts as I see them.

Here they are:

1) Artificial sweeteners have been linked to hundreds of different human illnesses via personal complaints to the FDA.

2) Artificial sweeteners have been linked in some lab studies to serious illnesses in lab animals (rats) like cancer.

3) The doses used in those studies exceed the reasonable human consumption limit by hundreds to thousands of times and produce cancer in rats that have been inbred for over 40 years, ultimately causing them to have a higher cancer rate to begin with.

4) No clear well controlled human studies have proven any link to any serious disease from any artificial sweetener. EVER.

5) Aspartame is the culprit in over 75% over the food additive complaints reported to the FDA. Cited side effects range from seizures and death to Gulf War Syndrome, hair loss, and 90 different types of complaints!

6) These complaints are not scientifically proven or investigated for validity. There are basically people calling or writing saying "aspartame caused me to have a problem". Anyone can report a complaint and no one is required to prove its validity.

I promise you there is no death certificate anywhere that lists "NutraSweet" as the cause of death!

7) In spite of their completely diverse and unrelated chemical nature, the complaints lodged against all artificial sweeteners are strikingly similar. Most common are headaches, GI intolerance, memory, brain and personality disorders, and of course, cancer.



8) No one is "For" artificial sweeteners. Only "against" them. The 50 + million people who use them on a yearly basis in this country do not come to their aid or defend them against their critics; they just keep quietly using them! A far smaller but far more vocal minority slams them with tremendous vehemence.

9) Artificial sweeteners did not make anyone fat. EVER. No matter what some supposed studies say. If you look at the test subjects, they were all overweight to begin with. Sorry, but the general rule is: If you are overweight, you are likely to continue the behaviors that got you there in the first place. You know…the ones that were not controlled in the studies (what you ate and drank besides diet soda).

By now you probably realize that I don't oppose the use of artificial sweeteners. You may think that means I support their use. Not so fast, because there’s more to consider.

Remember those big studies I told you about that showed that the artificial sweeteners we use here in the U.S. are safe? Well, they were done by the sweetener manufacturers, which automatically open them up to biased results.

Keep in mind that these studies cost big bucks, so the companies are not likely to repeat them. After all, they got the results they wanted.

A similar, large well-designed highly controlled study run by an independent agency that has nothing to gain but has to spend millions is not likely to ever happen.

So what proof do we really have they are safe? We have the fact that 50 million people use them without complaints every year. That is a pretty big study!

Now here is some more food for thought: Let's look at sugar, especially refined table sugar.

1) It started the slave trade in the western hemisphere

2) It has been directly linked to diabetes and obesity

3) It causes tooth decay

4) Before the 1600's, few cultures used sugar

5) Sugar has been reported as 200x more addictive to the human brain than cocaine

Ultimately, the human body does not need highly refined sugar OR artificial sweeteners. There are plenty of naturally occurring substitutes for sugar you can use if you want, like Stevia.

So, let’s be clear that the overconsumption of refined sugar poses a very clear and well documented danger compared to artificial sweeteners.