Whether you live in Louisiana, Texas, or any other part of the country, eating healthier does mean giving up foods with added sugar, but that doesn’t mean you should put in artificial sweeteners instead. While there are a lot of health issues from eating too much sugar, there are different ones that occur when you substitute the chemical artificial sweetener. Some of these may actually be worse! In fact, a recent study showed that drinking diet drinks with artificial sweeteners may actually be worse for you than drinking ones with regular sugar.
Each type of sweetener has different side effects.
There’s no one answer to the side effects of artificial sweeteners because each sweetener has different side effects. The amount you ingest also makes a difference. Side effects also depend on the person’s sensitivity. Some sweeteners tend to give people rashes, while others may give digestive symptoms. In fact, one sugarless gummy bear sold on the internet had the side effect of explosive diarrhea as noted in the product reviews. While it was advertised as sugar free, it had sugar alcohol, which also spikes blood sugar levels, besides causing digestive upsets.
Recent studies show that drinking diet drinks may be dangerous to your health.
Visceral fat is fat around your middle that’s the most dangerous type of fat. New studies show that people drinking the most diet drinks using artificial sweeteners had the most visceral fat, compared to those who never drank diet drinks or seldom drank them. The measure was of the waist circumference, a good indicator. Scientists believe it may be because artificial sweeteners interfered with metabolic functioning. In fact, tricking the body into reacting the same way it does with sugar might also be the issue.
While Xylitol and erythritol are alcohol sugars that are made from fruit, they’re not considered natural sugar.
There are natural sugars that aren’t as harmful as sugar substitutes and aren’t artificial. The juice from the Stevia rebaudiana plant is one of those. It’s called Stevia and is used as a medicine by some. It’s 100 times sweeter than sugar but has been used to help lower blood sugar levels in diabetics, plus known to lower blood pressure by as much as 14%. If you have artificial sweetened food that contains xylitol and a family dog, beware. It’s extremely dangerous for dogs to consume it.
- There are some scientific links that indicate some artificial sweeteners may contribute to diseases like cancer, chronic fatigue syndrome, Alzheimer’s, autism, MS, systemic lupus and Parkinson’s.
- Simply giving up sugar is difficult, but very worth it. It takes a while, but eventually your taste buds will go back to normal and you can taste the natural sweetness of fruit or a delicious dessert.
- As each artificial sweetener is found dangerous, companies replace them with new ones. When aspartame’s safety came into question, companies replaced it with sucralose and Ace-K, which now are under scrutiny for serious health concerns.
- Check labels thoroughly to avoid ingesting artificial sweeteners. They’re in everything from children’s vitamins and cough syrup to toothpaste.