My take on “so called” good for you artificial sweeteners

Hey guys! Its me again. Today I want to talk about something that has been on my mind for a while now. And hopefully after reading this you will think twice about reaching for those yellow, pink, and blue packets that are so conveniently placed at every table, at every restaurant all over the United States.

You guessed it today’s topic is ………. “so called” good for you artificial sweeteners.  For the longest time diet soda and sugar free candy has long been looked at as a “healthier alternative” but what if I told you that isn’t necessarily true!!!  As a matter of fact it these “low sugar and sugar free” sodas and candies just may be destroying our gut health .

Ok so here’s the deal. Artificial sweeteners are basically a manufactured synthetic sugar substitute that is added to foods and drinks to make them sweeter without adding the extra calories.  These sweeteners are actually made to be 200-1000 times sweeter than regular sugar! CRAZY RIGHT? Manufacturers can actually make products sweet with smaller amounts of “sweetener” compared to real sugar and in return keep those calories down.  Saccharin (Sweet’n Low), sucralose (Splenda), and aspartame (Equal) are all common artificial sweeteners that are FDA approved as “safe” but that does not mean that are “healthy”. As a matter of fact they are far from it!!

One of the biggest problems that can arise when we consume artificial sweeteners is that they tend to disrupt the balance of beneficial bacteria in your gut. This bacteria is the good bacteria that protects your gut against infection, helps regulate your immune system, and produces vitamins that are important for our bodies. An imbalance of this “good” bacteria is called dysbiosis. Dysbiosis has been shown to cause celiac disease, inflammatory bowel disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and I promise is more than likely affecting your weight.

A study that was done by Anglia Ruskin University in 2020 actually showed that these sweeteners can also make your gut bacteria “pathogenic”. This basically means it makes the bacteria diseased and in return this diseased bacteria kills cells that line the wall of our intestine. YUCK!!! They have also found that the concentration of artificial sweeteners found in just two cans of diet soda can significantly increase the adhesion of both E.faecalis and E. coli to the cells that line our intestines.  And If that does gross you out I’m not sure what will.

While I know we as a society have long been told that over consumption of sugar can affect our weight and lead to diabetes we must be informed about the negative effects of these artificial sweeteners that we have been told are so much better for us. Cutting these addictive sweeteners out of your diet or switching to natural sweeteners will not only help your long term health but will slim down your waste too!