Some News and Gentle Reminders of Artificial Sweeteners

I hope your month of July was wonderful.

Let’s end this month on a sweet note with the intention of bringing that same sweetness into August 2009…

I, Laura Fenamore  drink a ton of tea…and I love my tea sweet.

SWEET GREEN TEA, YUMMY.

For many years I used artificial sweetener until one day I stopped and now love, love, love the sweetness of Stevia…..read on…

What’s worse than something that’s sweet, fake and bad for you (no, I don’t mean Lindsay Lohan tabloids)?

What if you ingested something fake every day to make your life a little sweeter, and instead, it gave you cancer, which is decidedly the opposite of sweet?

That’s just what so many of us do with artificial sweeteners every day.

Take your cute little packets of Sweet ‘n Low. I love pink, so I’m not dissing the packets. But the stuff in them is enough to make you sick—and it does! Made out of Aspartame, which is also found in Nutrasweet, Equal, and Canderel, this stuff—found in thousands and thousands of our food products—has actual wood alcohol (paint remover) as an ingredient! It’s been found to cause mental retardation, interfere with fetal brain growth, and may even be linked to Alzheimer’s disease, memory loss, vision loss, depression and seizures. Plus, it can block serotonin production, making us cranky full of cravings!

If Aspartame wasn’t bad enough, there’s also Splenda, the “I’m-so-natural-and-safe-for-you!” sweetener. But the sugar substitute, also known as Sucralose, is anything but—considering it’s actually chlorinated sugar! Side effects of Splenda include joint pain, depression, seizures, wheezing, headache, itchy eyes, nausea, chest pains, skin rashes and tons of other gross stuff we wouldn’t wish on our worst neighbors (at least on Sunday).

The scary thing is, even if you aren’t buying these bad babies in little packets, you could still be eating them since they’re used in many varieties of diet drinks, gum, yogurt, vitamins (including children’s), drugs—and even water!

So what do we do about this granulized version Satan incarnate we’ve been ingesting? Good question. Here are some great, real foods that you can use instead of sugars—and artificial wackiness:

Stevia, an all-natural no-calorie sweetener;
Honey, the bee staple of goodness that we all know and love;
Agave nectar, a neutral-tasking juice from the plant with the same name
Maple syrup, yet another all-natural gift from nature
Date sugar, which is made from actual dates (not referring to smooches from your date)

Your best bet for defense? Check your labels. I’ll say it again—check. Your. Labels. Sure, it’s tedious at first, but once you find out which products you can trust it will be a piece of cake—honey cake that is, not the Splenda-with-sick-side-effects cake!

I care about your health alot and would love it if you did too.

XO, Laura

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