Sweet Misery

 In an effort to control weight, artificial sweeteners, sugar alternatives, were used. Whereas sugar began as a natural substance (subsequent processing removed all health benefits), artificial sweeteners had their birth in a chemical laboratory.

Rather than helping consumers lose weight, these sweeteners are not only contributing to accelerating obesity rates, they are also being implicated in serious medical problems. It has been estimated that Americans consume over 20 pounds of sweeteners per year! In 1986 The American Cancer Society documented that people who use artificial sweeteners gain more weight than those who don't use them.

Saccharin

The very first artificial sweetener ever discovered, saccharin was accidentally found in a chemical laboratory at John Hopkins University in 1879. Over 300 times sweeter than sugar, this sweetener is now used in a variety of products from toothpaste and chewing gum to canned fruit, salad dressings, and baked goods. Sweet'N Low is saccharin based.

In the late 1970s a Canadian scientist tested saccharin on laboratory animals. Fifty percent of these animals developed bladder cancer having been fed high doses of saccharin. The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) confirmed that saccharin was carcinogenic in its tests.

Banned after the Canadian tests, the FDA rescinded its ban on saccharin in 1991 as a result of its tests on people who used large quantities of the sweetener. These tests were conducted largely on diabetics and did show a correlation between saccharin use and cancer. AVOID THIS AND ALL SWEETENERS.

Aspartame

Discovered in 1965, aspartame is better known commercially as NutraSweet and Equal. Aspartame is an excitotoxin. Excitotoxins cause brain cells to fire continuously when they make contact with it. Eventually these cells die. Also aspartame is completely metabolized (broken down and absorbed) by the body. When this happens one of the chemicals which is released is methanol (wood alcohol), a toxin. Methanol can break down into formaldehyde in either hot or cold environments. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen (causes cancer.)

Aspartame attacks the body at the cellular level. Because it attacks at this level, common medications you may take are rendered ineffective. This includes but is not limited to antidepressants, Coumadin (Wayfarin), cardiac drugs, hormones, insulin, and vaccines.

Over 6,000 products are made with aspartame. These include the majority of diet sodas and chewing gum. When the use of aspartame became unlimited in 1983, cases of breast and prostate cancer increased with the increased use of aspartame.

Since aspartame is a neurotoxin (it poisons the brain), it can lead to such neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. AVOID THIS AND ALL SWEETENERS, Use a healthy kind of sugar to add sweet such like stevia or Honey is good replacement.

Victoria Inness-Brown, M.A. became concerned because her family was addicted to diet soda (notorious for their amount of aspartame.) After performing a thorough research on this excitotoxin, she believed that it would one day lead to health problems--or even their deaths.

Victoria decided to conduct her own experiment. She used 108 rats and the study lasted two years and eight months. The photos left show the results of her experiment. The rats in top photo became severely obese. The one in the bottom photo developed a mammary tumor.

Animal cruelty

Sucralose (Splenda)

Like aspartame and saccharin, sucralose is a chemical which was accidentally discovered in a laboratory. In 1975, an Indian graduate student at Queen Elizabeth College in London and his advisory, were working together to find a new insecticide. Instead an artificial sweetener which is 600 times sweeter than sugar was discovered.

Splenda is America's number one sweetener. Well known diet plans whose foods use splenda are Atkins and South Beach.

Splenda is made with chlorine which is extremely toxic. Despite the claims of its manufacturer, chlorine in its free form is not found in nature. This means that it is NOT natural. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies chlorine as a class-one carcinogen in humans (it causes cancer.)

Sorbitol

This artificial sweetener is commonly used in sugar-free mints, chewing gum, cough syrups, and diet drinks and ice cream. It has been found to cause severe bowel problems, diarrhea, pain, and weight loss.

These effects were discovered quite by accident. Dr. Juergen Bauditz of the University of Berlin and colleagues, began investigating when two of their patients complained of abdominal pain, diarrhea, and weight loss.

A 21 year old woman lost over 20 pounds and had been suffering discomfort for eight months. Another patient lost 49 pounds after suffering diarrhea for over a year. Both were chewing between 15 and 20 sticks of sugar-free gum daily.

"Our cases demonstrate that sorbitol consumption can cause not only chronic diarrhea and functional bowel complaints, but also considerable unintended weight loss-about 20 percent of usual body weight," wrote Dr. Bauditz.

Chewing as little as 5 to 20 grams of sorbitol at one time can cause stomach bloating and cramps. Each stick of chewing gum has about 1.25 grams of sorbitol.

Article source: British Medical Journal
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