You may not have noticed this but
artificial sweeteners are everywhere! I am fine with them being
labeled and saying “No Added Sugar,” but they are being added to
many more items and they are not letting us know. It is only on the
label if you read the ingredients. If it is a primary ingredient
they need to add extra labels, but if it is one of the last
ingredients; I guess you need to just keep reading for those funny
little words like aspartame and saccharine.
The first switch I noticed was Juicy
Fruit and Wintergreen Wrigley Gum. They used to just use sugar for
those gums and yes, the flavor was gone in 5 minutes. But what a
fantastic 5 minutes it was! Now it has aspartame and the crappy
flavor lasts much longer. Meh.
Yogurt is supposed to be healthy,
right? It is, unless it is fat-free and sugar-free. Then, to me it
is just a chemical factory with a possible addition of those healthy
bacteria for your tummy. You have to read the labels very carefully
when you buy yogurt now, unless you like the taste of a chemical
factory and it seems many people do.
My last and most egregious example is
hot chocolate. Nobody is probably thinking of the stuff right now
because it is summer but I still am pissed about what happened last
winter. I was at the local Target buying the hot chocolatey goodness
for my kids. I saw a package of Swiss Miss Marshmallow Lovers Hot
Cocoa. Perfect, right? I mean why would a box of “Marshmallow
Lovers” Hot Cocoa need any artificial sweeteners, since you are
asking to get sugared up with the extra marshmallows.
Well, I make cups for me and my kids
and instantly tell that there is something wrong. It is subtle but
still the sweetness tastes wrong. I check the ingredients
and it has Sucralose. I then go back to see if there is a hot cocoa
I can buy with just sugar. At Target in Tucson, the answer is no.
ALL THEIR HOT CHOCOLATE PACKAGES HAVE ARTIFICAL SWEETENERS SOMEWHERE
IN THEIR INGREDIENTS! I was only able to find the generic brand at
Safeway only has sugar. For us, that is the only safe way or make
our own, which is really not that difficult.
Why does this bother me so much? Well
you can call me an artificial sweetener detector cause if there is
even a 0.00001 of a gram in there I will taste it. It tastes wrong
to me because those sweeteners have always given me headaches. If it
gives me a headache, I avoid it, wouldn't you? It used to be much
easier to avoid these things but now they are popping up where you
would think regular sugar should be just fine. The reason? My guess
is that the producers of these items think they are making it more
healthy by reducing the overall carbohydrate amount. Sorry, but for
me a headache is a headache, and it just tastes WRONG! And it does
not matter what kind because to aspartame = sucralose = saccharin =
any other artificial sweetener = tastes wrong = headache. Give me
good old-fashioned sugar and I will adjust the amount I want of it to
sweeten my tea.
There is another thing about one
artificial sweetener, you can get aspartame poisoning. It is very
difficult to detect and is often misdiagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis.
There
are many symptoms associated with aspartame toxicity reported by the
FDA. No wonder I get headaches, it is the #1 neurological
reaction. When my kids are older and can make the decisions for
themselves they are allowed to eat all the artificial sweeteners they
want, but for now we try to keep them out of our diets. I also have type-2 diabetes running in
my family. Instead of running to the artificially sweetened drinks
and foods, we are just trying to monitor our real sugar levels, with
the occasional hot chocolate with marshmallows as a wintertime treat.
Then make sure that me, my hubby, and my kids exercise.
No comments:
Post a Comment