Satan Has a Sweet Tooth

Last time you were in a restaurant, how many different colored sweetener packets did you see? Most places now have six -- pink, blue, yellow, white, brown and green. So which one is the best for you? This one seemingly innocuous choice can make a great big difference in your health, not to mention the size of your ass. We’ll break it down for you in order of best to worst.


Green = Stevia
Guru girls approved. Stevia comes straight from an herb so it's totally natural. “Stevia Rebaudiana is an herb in the Chrysanthemum family which grows wild as a small shrub in parts of Paraguay and Brazil.” Tribal regions have been using it for centuries. It’s not refined or chemically processed. It doesn’t cause a spike in blood sugar, so this is a good choice for diabetics. It’s even calorie free. You can use it in anything you would typically use sugar.

[EDIT 4/12/10: Make sure to only eat pure stevia. Be wary of all the new stevia products coming out. There are some that are overly processed and contain additives—which makes them bad for you. As more companies learn they can make money off of it, the more processed and unnatural it will get.]

*Agave nectar is another guru girls approved sweetener. It doesn’t come in fancy colored packets because it’s a liquid and that would be messy. But this is what we use at home. This one also comes straight from a plant, the Agave plant. It tastes almost like honey, but is much better for you than honey because it’s low on the glycemic index. It’s safe for diabetics in very small amounts. Agave is awesome in iced tea, lemonade, margaritas and just about anything else you can think of, except coffee. Some people carry it with them in their purse, or keep one at work on their desk.

[EDIT 4/12/10: Due to the latest research, we no longer recommend agave nectar as a healthy sweetener alternative. To see why, check out this blog post here.]

Brown = Raw Sugar
Unrefined, unprocessed Sugar In The Raw is the next best choice. Your body knows how to process it, and there are no harmful chemicals. One packet = only 20 calories. So if you’re watching your weight, it’s not going to throw you over the edge. It’s also great for baking – nobody will ever know the difference.


White = White Refined Sugar
To make white sugar, they take raw sugar (same stuff as above), process and refine it with tons of chemicals, including bleach. It does a job on your body. Refined sugars are responsible for many of the diseases we see today. Stay away from white sugar and opt for the raw stuff whenever possible. The brown better-for-you packets taste exactly the same as the white. You can read everything you ever wanted to know about refined, white sugar, here.


Yellow = Splenda = Satan
We beg you to not choose the yellow packet of Satan. If you see a friend using it, you have our permission to smack that Splenda right out of her mouth. It’s for her own good.

First things first, all artificial sugars make you fat. Take a look around. Who’s drinking the diet drinks and using artificial sweeteners? Not hot, skinny people. Artificial sugars trick your body's natural balance causing you to eat more calories throughout the day. So using artificial sweeteners to lose weight doesn't work. This includes Splenda.

How was Splenda discovered? Actually, it was by accident. A 1975 London grad student named Shashikant Phadnis and his teacher, Leslie Hough were creating new insecticides, DDT. Hough asked Phadnis to test the powder they created, and Phadnis thought Hough meant to taste it, so he did and discovered it was sweet. After some conversation about the possible toxicity, they became excited about their discovery and Hough added it to his coffee. They partnered with Tate & Lyle, a British sugar company and then sold the product to Johnson and Johnson.

You’ve heard the marketing message, “It comes from sugar.” Don’t buy it. Magic sugar without any calories? Puh-lease. Here’s what they don’t tell you. Splenda, the brand name for sucralose, is a chlorinated artificial sugar. They add chlorine to the sucrose molecule to create a chloro-carbon, which is essentially the chemical composition of a pesticide. It’s poison. So all that extra money you’re spending on organic food? A waste if you're eating Splenda.

Chloro-carbons are unrecognizable to the body and impossible to digest. So Splenda passes right through you, hence non-caloric. Which would be great if it didn’t harm you on the way through your system. In addition to causing weight gain and intestinal disruption it can do a lot of damage. From the book, The Lethal Science of Splenda, A Poisonous Chlorocarbon by James Bowen, excerpts from this paragraph summarize the danger of chlorinated sugar:

…chlorocarbons such as sucralose deliver chlorine directly into our cells through normal metabolization. This makes them effective insecticides. Any chlorocarbons not directly excreted from the body intact can cause immense damage to the processes of human metabolism and, eventually, our internal organs. The liver is a detoxification organ, which deals with ingested poisons. Chlorocarbons damage the hepatocytes, the liver's metabolic cells, and destroys them.

Artificial sugars, even ones originally derived from sugar, are not a healthy alternative. Especially for children.

Pink = Sweet’N Low = Satan’s Sister
Now the pink packet is pretty and all, but it contains saccharin -- the oldest of all the sweeteners. People have been trying to get this stuff banned for years. That’s why so many new sweeteners keep coming out. People learn about the dangers of one, so companies come up with another to replace it. But the new ones aren't any safer.

Saccharin is just as bad as all the other artificial sweeteners we talk about in this blog. This one makes you fat, too. Here are two different weight gain studies done with saccharin in particular:
Uno.
Dos.

The extra bad thing about saccharin is it stimulates insulin production. So contrary to what we’ve been told, Sweet'N Low is not good for diabetics. The companies claim this only happens in rats. Well maybe we can get the executives of these companies to consume massive amounts of their products so we can have a real human study of the consequences?

One of the biggest problems with artificial sweeteners is their affect on the nervous system. We'll explain more next week in part 2 of this blog when we discuss the blue packet. Until then, brown and green are your new best friends. The kind of best friends that won't let you get sick or fat.

(click here to read part 2 of this blog)