Which Is More DANGEROUS – Sugar or Artificial Sweeteners

This article is part of our series of materials dedicated to artificial sweeteners

What the lesser evil is– sugar, called “black death” or its “healthy” alternative – artificial sweeteners which can also cause numerous health problems.
This is extremely difficult choice having in mind that both can harm our health.

Artificial Sweeteners – the Insidious Poison

Which is the better choice for your health – sugar or artificial sweetener?

First of all you should know that neither sugar, nor artificial sweeteners are poisons if you consume them in moderation.
Americans consume sugar average on 22 tea spoons sugar only on breakfast. Canadians consume 14 tea spoons sugar. And this is really scary statistics.
We all know the harm of sugar on our health – higher “bad” cholesterol, bigger risk of heart diseases, diabetes, kidney problems, problems with bones and eye problems.
So many people think that if they turn to artificial sweeteners this will make them healthier. But positives of artificial sweeteners are really controversial. Actually there are even more researches on artificial sweeteners than on many medications. There are around 100 researches on Sucralose – (E955), which is discovered in 1976. The problem is that artificial sweeteners affect our eating habits which inevitably affect our health.
For example diet soft drinks make people think that “eliminate” calories in hamburgers and French fries. And what is the point to order diet soda in combination with 3 hamburgers, 2 portions French fries and 3 donuts.

Why Flaxseed Is Food of the Future?
Sometimes foods with artificial sweeteners even make us eat more. The reason is that instead of instead satiate the need of the body for sweet, only fueling the appetite for it.
Moreover, there is no evidence that artificial sweeteners somehow help weight loss.
So if you are wondering whether to choose sugar or artificial sweeteners (unless you have a disease that you explicitly prohibit eating it), better rely on sugar, but in moderation. 22 tablespoons a day are not at all acceptable amount. And as to eating sweet things – always choose fruit and dark chocolate, especially hazelnuts, oranges and pears. Do not frown! Sounds delicious!

What is your choice – sugar or artificial sweetener?

Source : dailyhealtharticles[dot]com

Artificial Sweeteners – the Insidious Poison

This is the first from series of materials for artificial sweeteners and their effect on human’s body. Tell us what you want to know about artificial sweeteners.

Sugar is anathematized as real threat for human’s heath. They call it “white poison” or “sweet poison” and many people have become really paranoid about it. Statistic is really annoying as we talk about sugar consumption in the U.S. In comparison with the period 1887 -1890 when an average American consumed only 5 lbs. per year in the last 20 years this number have become 135 lbs per person for only one year. It is really interesting to know that at the beginning of 20-th century cancer and cardio-vascular diseases are barely unknown.
Diet Traps: 9 Foods with TOO MUCH Hidden Sugar

Aspartame has 92 side effects known till now!

So as people realized that sugar is really harmful for their health they turned to something even worse – artificial sweeteners. The paradox is that artificial sweeteners actually created even more health problems even though they are invented to decrease the detrimental effect of sugar on human’s health.
Market of diet foods is real golden mine for food industry. Low-calorie food is preferred as healthier, soft drinks with “zero calories” (and “zero” nutritional value) are world hit and earn millions of money all over the world. In this group are also artificial sweeteners and they become more and more important.
The most popular one is aspartame. It is shocking that aspartame is the main reason for 75% of the side effects of food additives and food labels don’t give any information about possible risks. Only on some soft drinks have a tiny, shy notice ‘contains a source of phenylalanine” that the average user does not speak anything and only serves to “wash hands”.

See How Sugar Harms Our Health!
The effect of aspartame on the human’s body is close to those of poisoning with methyl alcohol in smaller doses but permanently. Both substances broken down into formic acid and formaldehyde – very powerful toxins that kill nerve cells in the body.
The consequences are loss of vision, memory impairment, symptoms similar to multiple sclerosis – muscle spasms, convulsions, dizziness, headache, undue concern. These are just some of the 92 side effects that have been reported with the use of aspartame. It is not by chance that in the last 15 years have seen a boom in neurological diseases, it is time that aspartame is used extensively in the food industry.

For those who want to shed pounds maybe all these dangers are irrelevant, since they ensure unlimited favorite beverage without a single calorie more. Yes, aspartame really no calories, but it leads to obesity because it violates the body metabolism and accelerates the conversion of carbohydrates into fat. Here, this is called diet food!

Energy Drinks May Hide Health Risks!
Despite scientific evidence of permanent damage from aspartame, not only it is not prohibited, but is still moisture in more and more products. Information blackout is the best way those goods are sold. At the same time we are constantly exposed to the dangers of publications on traditional products, and that in order to replace them with artificial equivalents.

Why even being so harmful aspartame is than the most popular and most frequently used  artificial sweetener? We will tell you later…

To be continued….

Source : dailyhealtharticles[dot]com

What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Seafood & Pregnancy

Has anyone else been following Environmental Health News’ series Pollution, Poverty, People of Color as if it were the new Mad Men? No? Personally, I can’t get enough. I especially can’t get one article from last month out of my head. It was about how contaminated fish warnings fail to reach the people most at risk.

It’s probably stuck in my mind because I’m pregnant. As I  (s l o w l y)  make my way around my city, day in and day out, I have a hard time not screaming as I watch other pregnant moms eating things I know they should not be eating, and doing things I know they should not be doing (what is with everyone walking into nail salons and willingly breathing that unsafe-for-anyone air?). Do they not know? Or are they just ignoring the warnings?

But fish really surprised me. Even conventional OBs who aren’t particularly attuned to environmental health issues tend to warn their patients not to eat certain very contaminated fish that are known to contain mercury, PCBs, and more. If doctors fail to issue this warning, most baby books and pregnancy websites take up their slack. So what’s Environmental Health News talking about?

Well, seafood isn’t a cut and dried issue. It’s nuanced and complicated. As I wrote in The Conscious Kitchen, rockfish can mean more than sixty different kinds of fish on the Pacific West Coast. There are eighty-two different species of groundfish, and more than forty different species can be called snapper. Which means that warnings about big predator fish like shark, tuna, swordfish, tilefish, and king mackerel containing elevated levels of mercury might make it to most pregnant people, but the subtler stuff just doesn’t.

People—pregnant or not—tend to be less aware of advisories about local waterways (both fresh and saltwater-like), and about which local seafood might harbor industrial chemicals and pesticides. As the article I cannot get out of my mind states, these are linked to cancer, reproductive effects, and various other health problems. Let’s be honest, these present risks for everyone—not just pregnant women and children.

Local officials do issue warnings, but too often residents either aren’t getting them or choose to ignore them. Sometimes they know about the warnings, but need a cheap source of protein. Or they come from fishing communities and are inclined to eat what they’ve always eaten, whatever the health advisories say. There are even people interviewed in the article who say that if the water looks clean, they assume the fish is safe to eat.

Except it’s not safe. And so the advisories need to be louder and more clear, and there needs to be more education, including about how the contaminants made their way into the air we breathe and the waters we fish. No one should be eating unsafe food, and knowing that it happens more frequently in low-income, minority, or indigenous communities is the kind of thing that keeps you (or is it just me?) up at night. As the article clearly explains, this is an environmental justice issue. If inadequate risk warnings aren’t reaching these communities, states need to try harder. Advisories need to take language barriers into account and, in general, be a lot simpler for everyone to understand and heed.

Here’s hoping Dr. Jeanne Conry, president-elect for the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) agrees. She’s the winner of the 2012 U.S. EPA Environmental Health Heroes of the Pacific Southwest in the category Children’s Environmental Health and could really help spread the word. Hey, Dr. Conry, if you need help, we’d love to join the crusade.

TELL THE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES TO TALK ABOUT POLLUTION CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING

Related:
8 Reasons Not to Eat Tuna
The Effects of Air Pollution on Prenatal Health
Mercury: the Culprit of Mysterious Health Problems

Read more: Eating for Health, Environment, Nature, Nature & Wildlife, Pregnancy, cancer, contaminated fish, fish, fish to avoid, mercury in fish, mercury poisoning, pollution, seafood

By Alexandra Zissu

Source : care2[dot]com