Faker, faker. Are fake sugars safe?

I put regular sugar or cane sugar in my tea and coffee. This started after years of using the fake stuff and I finally realized that saving a few extra calories, wasn’t worth putting the chemicals in my body. This isn’t a medical finding, it’s a personal choice. Here’s a look at the story, “Are Fake Sugars Safe?,” from Women’s Health Magazine.

Move over, Splenda. Sugar’s new doppelganger is coming soon to cafés everywhere. 

Made from Rebaudioside A, an extract of the leaves of the stevia plant, the newest zero-calorie sugar sub promises to be up to 300 times sweeter than regular sugar. 

If you’re like more than half of all Americans, the white stuff you reach for comes in a pink, blue, yellow, or green packet, not a sugar bowl. Stevia is being marketed as the first all-natural calorie-free sweetener, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s good for you. But to figure out how these chemicals are tinkering with your health, you first have to learn what’s in them. 

The pink one, Sweet’N Low, contains saccharin. It was discovered in 1879 and is the result of a chemical reaction that produces methyl anthranilate (yum!). It has only 1/8 calorie per teaspoon versus sugar’s 15, yet it’s 300 times sweeter than the natural stuff. 

The blue packets, labeled Equal or NutraSweet, contain slightly less bitter tasting aspartame, which is derived from the amino acids L-aspartic acid and L-phenylalanine. On diner counters and in diet foods since 1981, aspartame contains 24 calories per teaspoon, but because it’s 180 times sweeter than sugar.

In the yellow packet comes Splenda, which gets its sweetness from sucralose. As it says on the label, sucralose — which has been around since 1998 and is used in ice cream, sauces, and jellies—is made from sugar and tastes closest to the real thing. To create it, food chemists substitute chlorine atoms for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sucrose molecule. That switch makes Splenda a tongue-tingling 600 times sweeter than sugar. 

Can these chemical concoctions really be good for you? Despite a handful of scary studies back in the ’70s that linked saccharin to increased rates of cancer in rats, there’s little evidence that artificial sweeteners cause problems in humans. 

One exception: A 2001 study from the journal Headache found that aspartame can trigger head pain. Experts believe that the phenylalanine in aspartame has a negative impact on neurotransmitters. If you’re prone to headaches (especially skull-splitting migraines), avoid foods with aspartame or phenylalanine in their ingredient lists. 

In the end, who knows whether these products are good or bad or you but why not stick with what the good green earth gave us and leave the chemicals to the chemists. And the real stuff, tastes like the real stuff – sweet.

MikeZ_striving to put good things in my body but sometimes failing.

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