What are your opinions on diet soda and splenda?

[partgypsy]

My view is moderation in all things. So if I want a sweet, I would rather have small amounts of the real thing than lots of stuff with artificial sweeteners. I used to work at a lab that did research on taste and smell and see some true information with alot of misinformation here. Here are some potentially bad things about artificial sweeteners. For one it increases your thresholds for sweetness. You want things to be sweet, and will gravitate towards sweetened products. Since you cannot choose artificial sweeteners for all foods you encounter in the sum of things the amount of sugar you consume will go up, not down. Second, there is all kinds of preparatory digestive behaviors your body does, from the first smell and first bite and tasting of food. Your body will anticipate the food from smelling and tasting what it perceives to be fat, sugar, etc, and make preparations to digest them. Why is this important? Well there are potential consequences to disassociating those cues and actual food. first of all when say someone who is addicted smells cigarette smoke, their body anticipates the nicotine and makes preparations to break it down and metabolise it faster. Basically you go into withdrawal! So it is possible when you think you are consuming sugar and your body doesn''t get it, your body is basically going into withdrawal for that sugar. In the long term your body may unlearn those those smell/taste-digestive responses, and typically whenever there is poorer digestive responses like that (elderly, patients who cannot taste, etc) you see poorer nutrition.
As far as splenda creating free radicals, etc, I have not seen any credible evidence to that. From what I understand it is the right-handed version of the sugar molecule which our bodies percieve as sweet, but is undigestible and passes through your body (no chemical processing, no free radicals). Saccarine may promote cancer in large quantities (fractions of your body weight daily). Overall evidence is that the artificial sweeteners are safe as additives to your food supply, my beef with them is that they divert people from eating more healthy alternatives.

 

[HollyS]

I haven''t read the other posts yet, and maybe someone has mentioned this:

You should avoid, as much as possible, artificial sweeteners. They have been shown in studies to inhibit your metabolism, making it more sluggish. There is also a connection with diabetics, where they can be as bad as sugar -- I forget exactly what the studies say. I''m sure that any number of claims and warnings can be found on the internet.

Best rule of thumb, in everything you eat, is eat the real thing or not at all.

 

[Haven]

Oy, this thread has me worried.

I despise diet soda, so if I do splurge and drink soda I drink regular.
HOWEVER, I use Splenda in my coffee and iced tea. I thought Splenda was better than the other artificial sweeteners, but it sounds like I''m wrong.

I eschew real sugar because it takes so much of it to produce the same sweetness effect, but I''m thinking about switching now.

Thanks for the thread!

 

[AmberGretchen]

Date: 1/3/2009 2:20:03 AM
Author: Haven
Oy, this thread has me worried.


I despise diet soda, so if I do splurge and drink soda I drink regular.

HOWEVER, I use Splenda in my coffee and iced tea. I thought Splenda was better than the other artificial sweeteners, but it sounds like I''m wrong.


I eschew real sugar because it takes so much of it to produce the same sweetness effect, but I''m thinking about switching now.


Thanks for the thread!

I dunno Haven, I honestly wouldn''t worry too much. I think that the rule of averages applies here too. If everything you ate and drank was filled with processed, artificial sweeteners and other preservatives, I''d be worried. But if its just a packet or two of Splenda in your beverages I really doubt it will add up to a big problem over the long term.

I''ve read through some of the scientific literature, and I really think that moderation is key here as in all things. My morning caffeine of choice is, and has always been, Diet Coke. Is it good for me? No, I''m sure its not. Can I count on one hand how often I drink more than 10-20 oz in a day? Yes.

So considering that the rest of my diet is 95% made up of healthy, whole foods (vegetarian, lots of fruits and veggies, whole grains, lowfat dairy, legumes, etc...), I''m not really worried about it, and would be very surprised if it had any measurable, long term, negative effects.

 

[partgypsy]

Haven if this makes you feel better I think Splenda has a very safe track record, by most in the industry seen as an improvement over prevous artificial sweetners. You have to understand that sucralose has the sweetness 600x that of sugar so that a packet of splenda has a miniscule amount of sucralose. And of that 80-90% of that passes through your digestion intact. I also have to say that alot of stuff you read on the internet is not true (understatement).

 

[Octavia]

Haven, you can also start to gradually cut back on your sweetener consumption if you''re worried. So, if you usually use 2 packets of Splenda, try using 1 1/2 for awhile, then cut back to 1, etc. After a few days, you probably won''t even notice that your drink is marginally less sweet. I did this when I weaned myself off of sweetened tea, and it worked really well. At the end, I was using about 1/4 packet and my tea still tasted plenty sweet because my brain and tastebuds had adjusted. If you like the flavor of sweetened drinks, just using a little less sweetener each time (which adds up in the long run!) should help allay your worries

 

[marcy]

I too avoid fake stuff as much as possible. Diet margarine does not burn. No fat cream cheese becomes cement on your knife even after going through the dishwasher. Fat free cheese doesn''t really melt. What does that do to your insides? Nutrisweet makes me really sick so I never gave splenda a chance. I even use small amounts of butter now instead of the spreads - it''s better for you and tastes much better.

 

[steph72276]

I used to drink lots of diet coke and put spenda in my coffee. Then I switched to Coke Zero because I liked the taste. Well, I started breaking out in hives and couldn''t figure out what it was. Then I noticed I got them really bad if I had 2 cans of Coke Zero. I cut them out and haven''t had a problem since. I stopped putting it in my coffee and now try to avoid the fake stuff as much as possible. It didn''t agree with me, that''s for sure!