411 on Sugar Substitutes - Part III

LAST BUT NOT LEAST!!!

The scoop on 

The familiar yellow packet: Splenda

Here's the scoop for the last of the artificial sweeteners! Jorge Cruise for his Belly Fat Cure also says this is poison to the body.  This has been the toughest of the sweeteners in researching.  Well, maybe not.  All of them have such conflicting reports when you search on the Internet!

 OK--Saccharin was first said to cause cancer. That was later delisted as not being dangerous. Some feel it's still safe, some say it's not.  Aspartame...wow...that seems to be THE one which almost everyone agrees is dangerous, except of course the American government (should the FDA be trusted? What does FDA stand for? Falsified Drug Approval?).  

Now we get to Sucralose. This one is really puzzling! 

First some history. This is the last of the 3 big artificial sweeteners to be placed on the market.  This one was discovered in 1976 by some scientists who were trying to develop, of all things, pesticides. At least you'll know that ingesting sucralose will help you rid your insides of insects and other undesirable bugs.

  This sweetener is 600 times sweeter than table sugar and is now in about 4500 products. Unlike aspartame, this one won't embalm you and you can use it in baking as well!  How lucky can we get?

There are SO many conflicting articles on the Internet that I don't know if I'm coming or going. If you go to Wikipedia you'll get some history on this.

OK is THIS ONE safe or not?  Your guess is as good as mine...again very puzzling. Some studies have hinted that there may be an effect on the thymus.  For those who don't remember their middle school or high school (or college) biology, the thymus is an "organ  located at the base of the neck, that is involved in development of cells of the immune system. It is prominent in the young but shrinks after puberty."  Now I'm really not sure if the tests showing shrinkage of the thymus had started with pre-teen rats and continued with them until after puberty. But I guess that would invalidate the results.

Either way, all the studies were only conducted on rats and not on humans. But the way rats metabolize stuff is not necessarily the same as humans. 

The Australian National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme (NICNAS) cites two studies. The equivalent amount of sucralose for humans (in relation to what was given to the rats) would be equal to about 17,200 packets a day for a month.Wikipedia goes on to say that "The dose required to provoke any immunological response is nearly 4,300 Splenda packets/day."


DIABETES SCARE????
Uh Oh!!!  Oh wait! Doesn't appear to be a problem here according to Canadian Diabetes Association 2008 Clinical Practice Guidelines.  Health Canada (Health Canada is the Federal department responsible for helping Canadians maintain and improve their health) has approved sucralose and said it is safe when used by people with diabetes.

So, if you've had the patience to read all of this mumbo-jumbo, you're probably saying that there's probably nothing wrong with Splenda. Well, about 3,246 web sites (OK, I'm exaggerating) say there's dangers in this stuff.  The site womantowomen says that there just isn't enough information and that it IS accumulating little by little. It's been said that there is a possibility that sucralose is a migraine trigger. 


One of the most common things I've read is that tests were only conducted on rats and that there were NOT ENOUGH studies done and for long enough periods of time to really see the long term effects.
Now, this web site listed a table prepared by Medline (the National Library of Medicine's premier bibliographic database covering the fields of medicine, nursing, dentistry, veterinary medicine, the health care system, and the preclinical sciences):

Now here's the kicker which makes me wonder just how reliable all these sites are.  Medline says that no studies have shown that there are any adverse effects found from ingesting the small amounts of sucralose.


Also while reading through quite a bit of stuff on web sites it appears that many of the ones citing the dangers and what's really been found in testing have taken a lot of stuff completely out of context. It was really amazing to see that.  Ya know, it's kind of like religious fanatics who take small parts of bible passages, and twist them completely out of context to make them fit their own wild beliefs.

So, here we are again!  Safe or not safe. There are no instant replays here. Holy sucralose, Batman! I can't even get a straight answer on whether this stuff accumulates in the body.  Some say it does and some say it doesn't.  So what's a human to do?


Like the other two, MAKE YOUR OWN CHOICE!!!! For me here's the way I feel...I'll stay away from saccharin mostly because I can't stand the taste. I'm DEFINITELY staying away from aspartame.  Sucralose? I'm not sure on that one. I'm thinking that I'll cut MOST of it out of my diet but still have occasional small amounts...certainly not 17,000 packets a day!