Why to choose natural sweeteners....

Today's post: Monday, 10-13-2008

Fruit is the best kind of sweetener to use if you eat whole fruit instead of juice.

Real juice with no extra sweeteners added has many of the benefits of whole fruit.

Occasional real sugar can be OK if you keep it occasional and get enough regular exercise and take the supplements alpha lipoic acid and chromium polynicotinate and possibly use the spice cinnamon with the sugar you eat. The exercise, the supplements, and cinnamon all help your body use the sugar without causing problems. And, by eating sugar just a few times a week or a month instead of several times a day you allow your body to recover before the next time you eat it. It also helps to eat some and not a huge amount each time you eat it.

Whole fruit has fiber which slows your processing of the fructose in it which enables your body to process it normally unless you are diabetic or nearly so.

And, both fruit and real fruit juice have vitamin C and other vitamins and micronutrients that protect your health and also seem to prevent the kind of blood sugar spikes that sugar by itself will cause.

If you are trying to control blood sugar that is too high or lose fat, you may be better off only eating whole fruit only because of the positive effect of the added fiber in it. At least keep fruit juice and real sugar to low and infrequent use, such as a few times a month or less.

Since the evidence is that sweeteners with no calories, possibly even natural ones, tend to cause your body to crave real sugar enough to cause you to gain fat, it seems to me to make more sense to eat real sugar if you want something sweet but to just eat it sparingly.

And, if you can override those cravings and insist on more frequent sweeteners, you are far better off if you use natural ones. You can also use half as much sugar and replace the other half with natural sweeteners with no calories that are natural. This cuts your sugar intake in half and may avoid the cravings sweeteners with no calories by themselves can cause.

Stevia, erythritol, and xylitol all work and are sweeteners with no calories that are natural. Some people like the added taste of Stevia. I’m NOT one of them. Erythritol & xylitol have no added taste. But large amounts of xylitol can cause gas.

Why, besides the tendency to crave and eat real sugar they cause, should you avoid sweeteners with no calories that are not natural?

They all tend to produce the same fat gain and health problems that over-eating real sugar does for starters. Researchers had hoped to confirm the popular belief that they did less harm than equal amounts of sugar. The found that artificial sweeteners with no calories were as bad or worse than excessive consumption of real sugar or of high fructose corn syrup.

But two of the most commonly used artificial sweeteners with no calories seem to cause more health problems than most artificial sweeteners with no calories.

HSI sends out one of the health emails I get. In today’s email, they listed several kinds of bad news for sucralose or Splenda. It tastes like sugar and is a sweetener with no calories. And, since it is made from sugar molecules it seems to substitute well for sugar.

For me, the only thing I needed to know is that it is made from adding chlorine to the sugar molecule. Chlorinated hydrocarbons tend to be long lasting. And, they tend to be poisons. Other chlorinated hydrocarbons are used for insecticides for example.

My guess was that if there were known health problems from sucralose, it was because it had been insufficiently studied yet.

The HSI email lists some reported problems with sucralose that are not yet well known.

It sometimes produces stomach or gas pains.

Between 13 and over 40 % of the people who eat it absorb some of the chlorine in it.

Eating it tends to make you gain extra pounds of fat, just like eating that much sugar would do. (Some studies even suggest it may be even more effective than sugar in doing this.) This defeats the main purpose of using it.

But there are more serious problems reported by HSI. Sucralose also reduces beneficial or probiotic bacteria in the intestines of people who eat it by as much as half. Since those bacteria support good health and help you digest your food, that’s more problematic than it may sound.

In fact, sucralose also has been found to significantly reduce the absorption of prescription drugs according to this article.

Dr Al Sears who also sends out health information email, sent an email today titled, “Ignore this Sweet Deception…”

This email lists several reasons why HFCS, high fructose corn syrup is harmful to your health.

He then explains that despite being made from corn, which IS natural, high fructose corn syrup is made using enzymes that are genetically modified. So the high fructose corn syrup in foods and drinks is NOT natural.

He then quotes a study finding that ingesting HFCS raises triglycerides and the bad kind of LDL cholesterol that causes heart attacks. (We reported that in a previous post.) He also quotes a study showing liver damage similar to that found in severely alcoholic people caused by ingesting high fructose corn syrup.

And, last but far from least, he notes that the large surge in blood sugar you get if you eat or drink things with high fructose corn syrup in them is bad for you in other ways.

Other artificial sweeteners have similar track records of health problems too.

So, this is one area where the only safe way to go is 100 % natural.

And high fructose corn syrup and sucralose are definitely on the do not consume list if you want to stay slim and healthy.