By Todd Lee M.D.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGWMdRejL-c]

Who am I? Click here for my Bio!

NEED HELP? GET A PHONE CONSULTATION OR COACHING!

Fool Born Every Minute

Non-nutritive sweeteners are one of the best dieting tools of the 19th century and of course today.  One of the favorite opinions of the ignorant is that non-nutritive sweeteners are the devil and you're better off with “natural sugar."

Natural Sugar: As Accurate a Statement as Dry Water

Natural cane sugar, like in carbonated beverages that claim to be natural sugar, is nothing more than sucrose. Sucrose is just a glucose and a fructose molecule. High fructose corn syrup is just that, fructose and glucose dissolved in water (corn syrup). That's it. The difference is high fructose corn syrup is from corn and cane sugar is from a sugar cane. Natural? Please... there is nothing natural about it. The sugar cane is chopped down by huge agricultural machines (not found in nature) then burnt to black ash so that the sky is blocked out by huge acrid clouds of black smoke (not found in nature). The beautiful rain-forests of Hawaii are covered in this black soot. Then, this ash is crushed and bleached in machines so it looks white (not natural, not natural) then packaged in non-biodegradable plastic containers (NOOOOT Natural!!!). All so that Americans can get fatter faster and leave a bigger corpse for their Costco. coffins.

So please, before you refer to sugar as natural, just bury your head up your ass because it's as natural as 500cc breast implants.

Sugar has calories, empty calories. It also spikes insulin that contributes to obesity. Very few humans are underweight. If you're American in 2015, there's a 66% chance you're overweight. Obesity is a life threatening illness. So in all reality, this “natural” sugar is toxic poison. This nonsense of, it's a “better choice,” is from sugar addicts and people looking for justification for letting go and becoming obese.

Being obese is not a lifestyle, its a lack of several key behaviors which are necessary for survival. Being obese is the most likely reason an overweight person will die so the more sugar you consume, the closer you are to death.  How on Earth could a calorie free alternative be worse for an already overweight person or even more ridiculous, how about a diabetic? Diabetes Type 2 is a polite way of saying end stage obesity. If you don't put the sugar down, you will lose your kidneys, your eyesight, your feet, your erections and soon, your life.

If you still want “natural” sugar, then have at it. I can get away with eating it metabolically, but not psychologically. I can eat enormous amounts of calories and stay lean. BUT, I never stop. I just eat and eat and eat until even my super human metabolism is overcome. THEN as the body fat flys on, my metabolism decreases and it starts to accumulate FASTER!

Even if you're a genetic freak like me, the addictive qualities of sugar may get you.

Obesity Key:

Healthy + sugar + time = Overweight

Overweight + sugar + time = Obese

Obese + sugar + time = Diabetes type II

Diabetes II + sugar + time = Blindness, impotence, amputation and death

So if you're a 19 year old and love to bake, eventually it will be cats scratching at your door to get out and not boys knocking at your door to get in.

The only useful or intelligent time to have sugar is mid workout if you're prone to smelling like ammonia while you lift or during the Anabolic Window

 

The Usual Suspects

Color coded for your convenience, I like to use all three. Best of all worlds.

Here is the list of patsies that sucrose blames for their ravaging destruction of mankind and the mushification of your children’s brains.

I've ordered them best to worst here:

Stevia > Sucralose > Aspartame > Ace K > Saccharin

Sucralose (Splenda, Yellow packets):

Is sucralose safe?

"In determining the safety of sucralose, the FDA reviewed data from more than 110 studies in humans and animals. Many of the studies were designed to identify possible toxic effects, including carcinogenic, reproductive, and neurological effects. No such effects were found and FDA's approval is based on the finding that sucralose is safe for human consumption."

"In the 2-year rodent bioassays ... there was no evidence of carcinogenic activity for either sucralose or its hydrolysis products ..."[1]

Need I say more?

Sucralose is a trichlorinated galacto-sucrose. Basically, it's a galactose bound to a glucose and a ribose with 3 chlorines attached. It’s 200 times sweeter than Sucrose which is 2 times more than other leading sweeteners. It is not absorbed and has no calories.  It is packaged with maltodextrin in packets though! Maltodextrin is a string of dextrose molecules which tastes mild like a starch, but as soon as it touches your tongue gets dissolved into sugar. The FDA allows anything with 4 calories (like “non-nutritive sweetener packets”) to be labeled as 0 calories.

So to our government in all its grand shitheadedness, think 4 = 0.  Maybe that's why I'm weary of doing my own taxes.  Our government employees must have learned core math. The math I use is thousands of years old and is still popular today because its math, it doesn't change with public opinion.

Of course these packets need to be labeled as carbs = 1g

Sugar = 1g

and Calories = 4.

Aspartame (nutrasweet/Equal, pink or blue packets):

This is the red headed stepchild of the family. Why?

“Aspartame has been found to be safe for human consumption by more than ninety countries worldwide,[2] with FDA officials describing aspartame as "one of the most thoroughly tested and studied food additives the agency has ever approved" and its safety as "clear cut", [3] but has been the subject of several controversies, hoaxes[4] and health scares.[5]”

Aspartame is made from 2 amino acids. It is stable in solution at a pH of 4.3 (like soda pop) but not at other pHs. Additionally, it gets toxic if you cook with it but being packaged with maltodextrin helps with that. Clearly how that dumb habit started.

“...and studies of metabolism suggest it is not possible to ingest enough aspartic acid and glutamate through food and drink to levels that would be expected to be toxic.[6]”

That's the funniest sentence all day. I read it like this, “ We can't imagine anyone eating that much junk food to actually get the 1% methanol concentration and the 1% absorption to force blood concentrations to toxic levels of methanol. ”

Less than 1% of aspartame is absorbed and 200 mg/kilogram would still not create an appreciable blood level. Considering you use 1/200th as much aspartame as sugar for the same level of sweetness that would be the equivalent of someone eating 400g of sugar assuming a 100kg human, that’s 1600 calories.  So these 'Rhodes Scholars' who claim “natural” sugar is better than aspartame are saying that it's better to have 400g of sugar and all the incredible amount of insulin that comes with it and 1600 calories, than a harmless blend of normal amino acids which do not enter your “body,” but just pass right through you and have no calories. 1600 calories a day would be a pound of blubber every 2 days. Eating that much sugar, you would gain 180 lbs a year.

Ace K:

Like the other non-nutritive sweeteners, Ace K is about 200 times sweeter than sugar. Like saccharin, it has a slightly bitter after taste. Kraft patented a modification on Ace K which takes the aftertaste away.

A rat study did show that Ace K increased insulin levels in a dose dependent fashion.

Unlike other non-nutritive sweeteners, Ace-K is not generally sold as a recognized brand or “color” packet of sugar substitute.

As far as safety goes:

“60 rats were given acesulfame K for 40 weeks, making up as much as 3% of their total diet (which would be equivalent to a human consuming 1,343 12-oz cans of artificially sweetened soft drinks every day). No sign indicated these (or lower) levels of acesulfame K increased the rats' risk of cancer or other neoplasms. “

Stevia (Truvia, white and green packets):

This is a semi-natural sweetener extracted from the Stevia Rebaudiana plant found in South America. “Sweet leaf” has been used in tribal Paraguay for over 500 years. 200-300 times sweeter than sucrose.

Stevia is:

*Heat stable - you can bake with it, not that you should be baking anyway.

*pH stable

*Not fermentable

*Has no significant effect on blood glucose thus it has no calories or insulin mimicking or secreting effect.

Japan has been using it safely for decades.

Why is it so new to us if it's so awesome? You guessed it, our government banned it for political reasons. Likely corrupt politicians receiving bribes from other companies’ lobbyists, the smart ones who realized Stevia is the superior sweetener.

Used in South America for 1,500 years, it wasn’t named Stevia until the 16th century by a professor at the University of Valencia. Yes, people have had this for 500 years in our western scientific community. The FDA banned it until 2008. Hmmmm, so it was safe for 500 years until aspartame was developed now its safety is ‘questionable?' It was studied extensively in 1931 by 2 French chemists. They extracted the exact components that gave stevia its sweet taste. The exact structure was released in 1955.

This means a sugar alternative, which is an extract from a plant, not totally synthetic and is completely harmless has existed and was available for 60 years. Why not endorse it?

In the 1970s, there was a scare about saccharin causing cancer so Japan developed an alternative calorie-free sweetener. And n 1971 Stevia was in production in Japan. Now Stevia is what they have been using in everything from their Coca-Cola formulas to their table “sugar." 40% of Japan’s sweetener market is Stevia.

A 2011 review found that the use of Stevia sweeteners as replacements for sugar might benefit diabetic patients because it is a non-caloric additive.[7]

Wait… you thought it was so toxic that it was banned until 2008 but by as little as 2011, you think it's a good replacement for sugar? The other non-nutritive sweeteners have been around for decades and the government has never acknowledged their superiority over “natural” sugar, but the one that was just unbanned is the frontrunner for the future? I smell bullshit. They clearly knew for years that Stevia was the cat’s meow and those greedy pockets just kept getting lined to keep it off the shelves.

Best part? Stevia wasn't actually legalized, Coca Cola was allowed to release a chemically modified version, which is sweeter and less healthy called Truvia! How ironic, if this represents anything, it isn't truth. By taking a healthy “natural” sweetener that's calorie free and chemically modifying it just to be allowed to slip through a legal loophole in a law YOU created to keep your competitor, Pepsi-Cola, out of the Stevia market. But of course our government is sneaky. Like a good arms dealer, it sells to both sides. Right after Coca-Cola released Truvia (which is mostly Erythritol, a sugar alcohol), Pepsi was allowed to release its version Called Purvia! but just like Coke’s version, wasn't true sweetner, Pepsi isn't pure.

To recap: Japan develops a super sweetener that has all the best properties of all the sweeteners and none of the flaws AND its from a plant, not purely synthetic.  For NO REASON AT ALL it's illegal in the US until 2008. Then in 2009, Coca-Cola comes out with a less healthy version but the original, more natural version, is still banned. Then right after, Pepsi does the same thing.

Multiple versions and none as good as the real thing. Only in America would something scientists are suggesting is the new cure for diabetes be illegal.

It looks to me like Coke was bribing the government to keep Stevia illegal until they adapted their Japanese formula to work with a synthetic version. Then bribed the U.S. more to let it slip through a loophole in a ban they created.  Coke didn't expect the U.S. government to be playing both sides and dealing with Pepsi as well. Now, we have 2 versions of Stevia, neither is pure, neither is true and neither is as good as the real thing. Sounds like if I do a Stevia article it should be in the black market section along with other evils like Marijuana and testosterone.  But alcohol and birth control pills are legal. So stupid or corrupt. Hopefully corrupt, at least you can manipulate evil people.  Stupid people are totally useless.

United States (as of December 2008):

Purified Rebaudioside A is allowed since December 2008 as a food additive (sweetener), sold under various trade names, and classified as "generally recognized as safe" ("GRAS")

Stevia rebaudiana leaf and extracts are available as dietary supplements since 1995, but the 2008 FDA authorization does not extend to them, and they do not have GRAS status.

It seems other people put 2 and 2 together as well:

http://www.stevia.net/fda.htm

That's a pretty nice way of saying what I came up with. If I read it first, I would have been skeptical but I drew the same conclusion first, so I see it as corroboration.

Saccharin (Sweet and Low, pink packets):

This was the first non-nutritive sweetener to be widely used. In 1907, the lead chemist of the USDA had an argument with President Theodore Roosevelt. He claimed sugar was better than saccharin because saccharin did not provide the calories that sugar did. In that era, people died from undereating not overeating like the gluttons of today. This was a bad thing, not a good thing like now.  President Roosevelt said, "anybody who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot."

4 years later in 1911 the government labeled foods that had saccharin added, were “tampered,” but in 1912 determined saccharin was not harmful.

In 1969, in response to public fears of Saccharin, tests done on saccharin from the 1940’s were used to claim that Saccharin was indeed dangerous. The lab tests actually showed it wasn't and the FDA was thwarted. Again, they tried in 1972 but again they were unsuccessful due to a lack of evidence. This actually goes on and on for a long long time, hell, I'm defending it now.

Like Ace K, this has been shown in extraordinary amounts to have an insulin secreting effect.

Disclaimer

Nothing in this article or on this site should be considered medical advice or as an endorsement to violate any law of the country in which you reside. The information given is for fun and entertainment purposes only. All claims are 100% dependent upon proper diet and exercise. Please consult a medical practitioner prior to any diet and exercise program.

References:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2010.00755.x/abstract