Splenda and Aspartame linked to neurological and immunological disorders. Whats Your Story?

A few blog posts ago I talked about some serious chemical and amino acids that cause damage to the body. I would like to leave with you today that those same chemical compounds lead to not only many neurological and immunological disorders but also cause the reverse effect that they are sold for. They cause weight gain!

What am I talking about?

Artificial sweeteners. Aspartame and sucralose. (Nutra sweet and Splenda)

Do you have any stories about these chemical sweeteners? Please share your thoughts, questions and stories in a comment.

Do you know someone suffering from the toxic effects of aspartame? Learn how to detox from this excitotoxin.

Unsure about the safety of Splenda ?

So many of us out there don't realize the danger of these fake sugars. I have watched parents sit their little ones down with fresh fruit and a small bowl of splenda to dip their berries in. I use to be a big Diet Dr. Pepper drinker and was having blurred vision and migraines, then heard about a study done at the University of Washington that linked aspartame to lesions on the brain. I quite drinking my fav soda! One of my strongest testimony stories comes from a friend that I had helped. She was suffering from severe migraine's and had to go to the doctor at least once a day for shots to help with the pain. What was she to do, being the mother of three active children she needed to survive the day and be present for her kids. Never did she link that the diet Pepsi she was drinking everyday was the cause of these migraines! I knew I had the answer, I knew I had to speak out and share with her the research on these diet drinks. In a few short weeks her migraines subsided. No more migraine shots needed. Today her and her lovely family are aspartame free today and migraine free!

There are so many stories. What's yours.

Read Aspertame's Not So Sweet News

Scaring Your Kids Away From Fast Foods

According to a study by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), roughly a third of children polled didn't know the main ingredient in French fries.
And, about 10 percent of them thought fries were mostly made of oil; others suggested eggs, flour, and even apples. This may be part of the reason that an estimated half-million children in the UK will become obese or overweight over the next two years.

Food4Thought

In hopes of scaring kids away from fast food, the foundation launched Food4Thought yesterday, a national campaign including billboards and posters of hamburgers, hot dogs and chicken nuggets as they would appear before their common ingredients are melded and processed into the food you see at the grocery store -- gristle, bones, and connective tissue.
The campaign is primarily an attempt to engage children on the subject of why certain foods are less healthy than others, and encourage them to become interested in what they are eating.
Targeting Children, Parents, and Society
But the BHF is also targeting the government, food industry, local authorities, schools and parents to get involved. The BHF has identified three critical areas for change:
Stop the marketing of unhealthy food and drink products to children
Ensure that nutritious food is affordable, accessible and appealing for children and parents
Provide children with opportunities to learn practical cooking skills

Sources:
British Heart Foundation November 7, 2005
BBC News November 7, 2005

Everyone knows that our family is very health focused. But I will admit that all of my children do know a fast food location. We do on the rare occasion make use of such a place. My husband and I try and make it on a few date nights each month and on these nights we may ask the children,"what would you like for dinner?, Its treat night!"

It is the everyday use of the fast food industry that becomes a health concern. I was happy to hear when recently reported in a documentary on TV that places such as McDonald's have seen a decrease of almost a quarter in their profits/customers per year. This is good news for the American populations health. It is about time that we start to wake up and realize on a global scale how dangerous these pseudo foods can be. For any of you who watched Super Size Me you have a firm understanding of this epidemic and crisis.

READ ON REAL FOOD

Continuation on A Sweet Note....

How many sodas do you drink in a day?
How many does your child drink in a day?
How many teaspoons of sugar are in the juice your child had for breakfast?
In the energy drink after the game?
In the lollipop treat after the dental visit?

Maybe you have already started to eliminate the sugar in the house and jumped on the no sugar bandwagon and started using such products as nutra-sweet and splenda. We have learned more about these items in previous newsletters and there will be more in the future, but what I will say here is that you might want to reconsider those attempts of replacing sugar with these above named sugar substitutes.

As sweet as it is, sugar can be a very dangerous substance. One that we as parents are all guilty of taking too lightly. Sugar might give us that immediate high, that sudden burst of energy that we think we would not have gotten else where, but it is an unhealthy high. After the sugar causes its immediate nervous energy in our blood stream it throws our bodies into a state of crisis, our bodies begin to waste energy instead of burning energy in a useful form. The wastes cause drainage on our systems, which in return causes sleepiness, fatigue, anger, and weeping. That’s why your child after a double scoop of ice cream at 7pm finds himself outside running all over hyper and active and not wanting to get ready for bed and then throwing a tantrum at 7:15 about the ball rolling too far down the street, then another fit to try and stay out longer and finally another about getting to bed, but once in bed at 8pm finds himself passed out by 8:04pm. Is this just a child being a child or did the sugar he had before going out have anything to do with the meltdowns and the sudden passing out?

What I look for and do.

When I first learned about sugar I went crazy. I walked out to the garage got the dumpster and sat it in the middle of my kitchen. Opened the refrigerator and my pantry cabinets. I then proceeded to pick up each item and read the ingredients. At first I was only looking for High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS). I did not think that there would be that much of this bad product in my home.

To my surprise, I was wrong! Very wrong.

HFCS was in everything. The salad dressing, the mustard, the ketchup, apple sauce, peanut butter and of course the jelly. I even found it in the deli meat. The freezer, well you guessed right, the ice cream, the juice, and the frozen bread products. The pantry was not much better. I discovered HFCS in cereals (some that I thought were healthy), pancake syrups, sauces, canned goods and easy bake packages. My dumpster was bulging at the seams and my kitchen was 80% empty!

Now, I am not suggesting that you do as I did here. But what I am suggesting is for you to get familiar with the products in you kitchen and then don’t re-purchase anything that has granulated sugar, corn syrup, brown sugar, powdered sugar, or HFCS in it again.

I found that the best products in the bread, pasta, cereal and grain section do not have any sugars, not even honey or molasses. I now only buy organic raw peanut butter, jellies made with natural fruit juices to sweeten, yogurts that are plain or have evaporated cane juice or maple syrup, and unsweetened natural organic apple sauce.

Some of my favorite products are:

· Organic Agave Syrup (made from the agave cactus plant, a sweetener for yogurt, granola, oat meal, tea, coffee, on toast, etc.)
· Organic Molasses, unsulphered (great on oats, toast, marinades and dressings/sauces, and baking with it, etc.)
· Local organic raw unfiltered Honey (local is important with honey, it will help reduce allergies and boost your immune system)
· Organic Maple syrup (top pancakes or waffles, yogurt or cottage cheese, makes yummy sauces and much more.)
· Organic Evaporated Cane Juice (use in place of granulated sugar)
· Stevia (great in teas and even some baking)
· Bionature organic Fruit Spreads (great on toast or for PB&J’s)
· Crofters organic Fruit Spreads
· Vegenaise (in place of mayo)
· R.W.Knudsen Juices plain or mixed with pure sugarless seltzer water to create a healthy option to soda other wise known in our home as soda juice.

To review more health alternitives to processed sugar and sugar substitutes, please visit A Sweet Note.

Read Part One

On A Sweet Note. Is it possible?

Real quick. While preparing this, a story popped in my head. Not that long ago we had my brother-in-law and his youngest daughter over for dinner. We had cooked a yummy dinner and were enjoying it when my niece walked into the kitchen and noticed a plastic bag sitting on the counter. She picked it up and read what it said, ”Organic Raw Evaporated Cane Juice.” She looked over at her dad and asked him what this stuff was. He said, “I guess that’s suppose to be healthy sugar, if there is anything of the sort.” Sugar in its natural state is healthy. It is a complete food, one we want to eat. It is only through processing that sugar becomes unhealthy. I guess the next logical question here, as a parent especially would have to be, what does refined sugar do to the body? How does it harm the body? A little hyperactiveness followed by my child getting tons of exercise and then passing out with a good nights sleep, is not that bad a thing. Right? You know the answer I am sure.


According to Tim O’Shea author of Sugar The Sweet Thief of Life and his expansive research refined sugar does a whole list of negatory things to the human body. To our children’s bodies.

· Suppresses the immune system
· Causes hyperactivity
· Kidney damage
· Mineral deficiencies, especially calcium, magnesium, chromium and copper
· Makes the blood acidic
· Tooth decay
· Advances aging
· Digestive disorders
· Arthritis
· Asthma
· Candida albicans
· Decreased blood flow to the heart
· Cause osteoporosis
· Causes food allergies
· Causes eczema
· Atherosclerosis
· Free radical formation
· Loss of enzyme function
· Increases liver and kidney size
· Brittle tendons · Migraines · Blood clots
· Depression

Can all of this really be possible? Can sugar really cause our children’s bodies to suffer from such things? The answer to both these questions is, Yes! Studies have been done. The research is out there. The scarier thing about sugar and the above list of health consequences is that all of those consequences have consequences.

If the average adult person consumes about 150 pounds of sugar a year and that adds up to about 20% of the calories of the average American diet, making 20% of what we as Americans eat have NO nutritional value whatsoever, then how much sugar do we really need to consume?

FACT: A DOUBLE BIG GULP (1/2 GALLON) OF SODA EQUALS 48 TSP. OF SUGAR

This actually is not a hard answer. We need not consume any white sugar (refined that is) absolutely NO high fructose corn syrup. In a normal bloodstream, which is about 5 liters, only about 2 teaspoons of glucose should be circulating at any one time. What does this look like in the soda world? Well, one 12-ounce soda is about 10 teaspoons of sugar. May not look like a lot of sugar but it raises the glucose in the bloodstream by 5x for four hours. That’s one soda!

Read Part Two