Artificial Sweetners – Are they safe?
Saccharine is prepared from toluene (a distillation of coal tar) by interaction with sulphuric acid and treatment with ammonia. In other words it is a coal derivative and suspected of giving rise to cancer. It is interesting to note that although saccharine is 300 times sweeter than sugar, neither ants nor houseflies will touch it.
Aspartame, used in the popular artificial sweetners NutraSweet and Equal, is made up of three components: the amino acids phenylalanine and aspartic acid, and methanol. Methanol is known to be poisonous even when consumed in relatively small amounts. Disorders caused by toxic levels of methanol include blindness, brain swelling, and inflammation of the pancreas and heart muscle. In the body, methanol metabolizes into formaldehyde, a known carcinogen; formic acid, a carboxylic acid found normally in the venom of bees and ants; and diketopiperazine, which has been shown to cause brain tumors in animals.
Aspartame can cause cancer in rats at lower levels than are approved for human consumption. A study noted in Environmental Health Perspectives (Nov. 2005) reported that rats fed aspartame (at levels that would be the equivalent of the acceptable daily intake for humans) from the age of eight weeks until its natural death showed evidence of malignant cancers including lymphomas, leukemias and tumours in multiple organs.
Sucralose is produced by chemically changing the structure of the sugar molecule by substituting three chlorine atoms for three hydroxyl groups. In the USA, pre-approval research showed that sucralose shrunk the size of the thymus gland of rats by up to 40 per cent when taken in large doses. Further studies however claim that there is no observable effect on lymphoid organs and the immune system of taking a daily dose of up to 3000 mg of sucralose per kilogram of body weight. Sucralose, under the brand name Splenda has been available on the American market since 1998.
All artificial sweeteners also leave an extremely acidic residue in the body after digestion. Indeed, the acid end product of their chemical breakdown is more acidic than white sugar.
The message is clear: avoid all sugar substitutes. Either use sugar, at least we know where that comes from (a plant),
or better still avoid all refined sugars and their substitutes completely. We do not need them, it is simply a matter of
retraining our taste buds.