So you're determined to lose weight and you're going to use artificial sweeteners to help you do it. Well hold on! Before you reach for that diet soda, think about this. Habitual users of artificial sweeteners tend to gain more weight than users of the real thing! And diet drinks are the worst! Artificial sweeteners contribute mightily to raised insulin levels. On top of that, you need larger amounts of food and drinks made with artificial sweeteners to feel satisfied, partly because artificial sweeteners don't have much taste to begin with.
In order to make their processed foods taste better, manufacturers often combine two or more artificial sweeteners in their products. When these foods hit your mouth, your brain signals the pancreas that sugar is coming in and the pancreas shoots out a load of insulin to handle the sugar that isn't there. Your stomach is disappointed, you're still hungry, and you eat more to compensate for that lack of fullness. Now let's take a look at some of the artificial sweeteners used in these chemical creations.
SACCHARIN - THE GRANDADDY OF THEM ALL
Sacharin, a petroleum derivative has been around for a long time. Saccharin is still found in little pink packets on restaurant tables even though it is well known to have carcinogenic potential. To many people, saccharin has a bitter after taste. Saccharin is the first chemically formulated artificial sweetener ever produced and today is being rather rapidly superseded by competing artificial sweeteners.
ASPARTAME
Aspartame, commonly known as NutraSweet or Equal is an excitotoxin for your brain. You will find aspartame in many diet sodas and other bottled drinks. Aspartame can cause all kinds of brain disfunction. Many users of aspartame have complained about headaches, mood disorders, and even skin rashes. Aspartame is a very poor sugar substitute! Here are some other reasons for staying away from it:
Aspartame is made up of 50% phenilaline, 40% aspartic acid, and 10% methanol. Phenilaline is a substance many people cannot metabolize and they pass this trait on to their children, causing mental retardation in those children. Aspartame can stimulate your brain to death, trigger tumors and brain cancer, and interact adversely with prescription drugs.
We said that Aspartame contains methanol. Methanol is wood alcohol. Methanol distributes itself throughout your body, including your brain, muscle tissue, fat, and nerve tissue, and that's not all.
When Aspartame gets into your body and reaches a temperature of 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the methanol converts to Formic Acid and Formaldehyde, commonly known as embalming fluid. Since you know that your normal body temperature is 98.6 degrees, you now know that you can have embalming fluid in your cells binding to proteins and DNA. Drink a lot of soda and you risk vision, brain, heart, nerve problems, and pancreatic inflammation. And if that's not enough to convince you to stay away from it, Aspartame was once on a Pentagon list of bio-warfare chemicals submitted to Congress. Our government at work, looking after our welfare! There's more, but we're going beyond the scope of this article.
SUCRALOSE (SPLENDA)
Splenda, as an artificial sweetener, tastes better than Saccharin or Aspartame and has heat stability that enables its use in cooking. The claim that Splenda is made from sugar is only partly true. Splenda starts out as sugar, true enough, but then three parts of the sugar molecules are chemically replaced with chlorine atoms. This process creates a chlorocarbon very similar to insecticide. While the manufacturer is very quick to call Splenda "natural," this artificial sweetener is still nothing less than a chemical concoction. The manufacturer of Splenda claims that his artificial sweetener is "not absorbed," but the truth is that about 15% of Splenda, about 6 calories per tablespoon is absorbed. These calories come from a mixture of carbohydrates needed to stabilize this chlorocarbon compound.
SUGAR AND WEIGHT LOSS
Sugar, in contrast to artificial sweeteners, has really taken a bad rap when it comes to the weight loss question. It's not the teaspoon of sugar you put into your morning coffee that's doing all the damage. It's all that sugar that other people are putting into the food you eat that's making the waistband of your jeans too tight. Forget that those "Cocoa Krispies" are "organic" or that the "Krispy Kreme" donut is ""whole grain." They're loaded with a big sugar blast. Commercial processing of almost any whole food will blunt its flavor. Processors get the taste back into it by putting in sugar. (Most ingredients listed on the label that end in "ose" contain sugar. Any "syrup" contains sugar.) Too much sugar is not good for your body. Sugar adds calories. Sugar has no helpful nutrients and forces your body into insulin and inflammatory responses that can eventually backfire as asthma, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetes, among other health disorders. Some processed foods have as much as 300% of the recommended daily allowance for sugar.
THE UBIQUITOUS HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP
The number one source of calories in America is high fructose corn syrup, or HFCS in sodas. There are about 40 grams of HFCS in each can of soda, far more than the American Medical Association's recommended daily maximum consumption of all the sweeteners you consume during the day. And we haven't even considered all the high fructose corn syrup that is included in just about everything that comes off the packaged grocery shelf. Twenty five percent of the calories consumed by the average American is in the form of manufacturer added sweeteners and the majority of those sweeteners are high fructose corn syrup.
High Fructose Corn Syrup is known to raise your trigliceride and LDL cholesterol, putting you at increased risk of heart disease. The unbound fructose in HFCS, which contains zero vitamins, can in itself interfere wqith your heart's use of copper, magnesium, and chromium, minerals vital to its functioning. HFCS interferes with your feeling of fullness when you eat, so you tend to eat more than you need, and to top it all off, HFCS is addictive! High Fructose Corn Syrup affects Leptin, a hormone made by the body's fat cells. Leptin tells your body to stop eating! Processed fructose fails to stop the action of Ghrelin, a hormone that increases hunger and appetite. You fail to get the message to stop eating!
ONE SWEETENER THAT'S ACTUALLY BENEFICIAL
Without a doubt, the very best sugar substitute available to us today is XYLITOL This plant based sugar alcohol has the look and texture of sugar. Xylitol is slightly less sweet than sugar, but only slightly so. Essentially, Xylitol can be used one on one in recipes calling for sugar. It will not feed yeast however. Xylitol is metabolized much more slowly than sugar, and most diabetics, after consulting with their doctor, should be able to use it safely.
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