Nutrition

Artificial Sweetners

Sucralose

Ever heard of Sucralose? Well Sucralose is the newest non-nutritive sweetener on the market. It is most well known for its claim to be made from sugar. It is used alone or found in Splenda and is 600 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar). When used alone, it provides essentially no calories and is not fully absorbed.

This artificial sweetener can be used for cooking, so it has rapidly become one of the most popular and highly consumed artificial sweeteners.

The most misunderstood fact about sucralose is that it is nothing like sugar even though the marketing implies that it is. Sucralose was actually discovered while trying to create a new insecticide!!!

 It may have started out as sugar, but the final product is anything but sugar and without going into the bio-chemistry of i…it is unlike anything found in nature.

If you read the fine print on the Splenda web site, it states that “although sucralose has a structure like sugar and a sugar-like taste, it is not natural.”

The presence of chlorine is thought to be the most dangerous component of sucralose. Chlorine is considered a carcinogen and has been used in poisonous gas, disinfectants, pesticides, and plastics. The digestion and absorption of sucralose is not clear due to a lack of long-term studies on humans. The majority of studies were done on animals for short lengths of time. The alleged symptoms associated with sucralose are gastrointestinal problems (bloating, gas, diarrhea, nausea), skin irritations (rash, hives, redness, itching, swelling), wheezing, cough, runny nose, chest pains, palpitations, anxiety, anger, moods swings, depression, and itchy eyes. The only way to be sure of the safety of sucralose is to have long-term studies on humans done.

Splenda is a product that contains the artificial sweetener sucralose, but that is not all.

Sucralose does have calories, but because it is 600 times sweeter than sugar, very small amounts are needed to achieve the desired sweetness so you most likely won’t consume enough to get any calories. The other two ingredients in Splenda are dextrose and maltodextrin, which are used to increase bulk and are carbohydrates that do have calories.

One cup of Splenda contains 96 calories and 32 grams of carbohydrates, which is often unnoticed due to the label claiming that it’s a no calorie sweetener. Because this is found in so many products and can be used in cooking, it can be possible to consume 1 cup or more each day. For people with diabetes, this is a significant amount of carbohydrates, and for people who are watching their weight, this can be a problem. Consuming an additional 100 calories a day can result in a weight gain of 10 lbs. per year!

Please spear some thoughts on this and think again before using any Artificial Sweeteners…they are “artificial”….therefore cannot be natural!

However do not panic! If you don’t eat sugar and don’t eat artificial sweetener doesn’t mean you are left with a bitter mouth! ….in fact there is ALWAYS a healthier alterative…the way to go when it comes to sweet tooth is STEVIA…never heard of it? Of course not! They do not sell it in the UK (It would be interesting to ask yourself why??? But I won’t go there!) But you can find it online, just google  Stevia Extract, and it comes in powder or liquid extract.

Stevia is totally natural as it is a plant extract and totally calorie FREE!

So as you can see…once again YOU have a choice…