I Choose Natural Sweeteners

Woo hoo! My order of Xylitol, Psyllium Husks, organic Coconut Oil and aluminum free baking soda arrived today! I'm so excited because I thought it wouldn't arrive here late in the evening. I already have a grain-free, sugar free and gluten free Pumpkin Gooey Butter Cake (recipe courtesy of Lauren at Healthy Indulgences) in the oven, sweetened with my beloved sweeteners, Xylitol and Stevia.

This is the brand of Xylitol I use the most. You can find it here.

Why do I choose Xylitol and Stevia over cheaper alternatives, like Aspartame or Sucralose? Xylitol is pretty inexpensive online, if you see the link above, but what makes me shun artificial sweeteners over more natural and healthy alternatives? Here is a short list of what I have found out to be true of sweeteners such as aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) and sucralose (aka, Splenda). This list is by no means exhaustive or complete.

#1 - Other than being completely foreign to your body, these substances are completely unnatural, and have only been in the market, and the food supply, for a very short time. These are CHEMICALS that our bodies were NOT designed to ingest. If you gave this to your great-great-great grandmother, you would bet she would not have eaten this, and would have stuck to natural sugar (and crazy, seeing how diabetes was somewhat of a rarity back then).

#2 - Artificial sweeteners trick your body's metabolism, leptin signals (a hormone telling you you're full) and increases your chances of craving more calories, usually in the form of carbohydrates, and will lead to weight gain.

Whenever a sweet substance touches the tongue, our brains senses that this is food and it is time for our body to produce insulin to take that food and bring it into our cells for the use of energy. This is exactly what happens with artificial sweeteners. The sweetness emerges, as does the insulin, but calories are not delivered for the cells to take in for energy. Now you have all this insulin surging through your body waiting for that energy that you unintentionally promised it.

When we have unwanted insulin flowing throughout our body, doing nothing, it will store in our body as fat deposits, or as adipose tissue. Also, when we promise our body calories yet fail to deliver, our bodies will revolt against that trickery and make us crave carbohydrates much more than if we had regular sugar. See this study, followed by this video to find out why:

Aspartame also interferes with the hormones serotonin and dopamine, which can lead to the cravings for carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates.

Also, according to a study in the Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health, Splenda has been shown to decrease the beneficial bacteria in our intestines by up to 50%. Without good bacteria in our system, this can back up the digestion of our food and make it that much easier for it to be stored as fat, rather than be assimilated in the proper places within our body.

#3 - Aspartame, as in Equal or NutraSweet, can lead to the build up of formaldehyde within the brain. Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen, and can also interfere with your DNA. This buildup in the brain and body is something that definitely motivated ME to get OFF of aspartame, and eventually sucralose (Splenda).

Artificial sweeteners also can form excitoxins, which are toxins that can actually excite your brain cells to death. Dr. Russell Blaylock, a well known neurosurgeon coined this term and has researched and written on this topic extensively.

#4 - Artificial sweeteners are NOT calorie free. A loophole in the law says that any nutritional content that is less than .5 g or 5 cal/kcal, can be listed as dietarily zero. Splenda actually contains 99% sugar (the fillers dextrose and multodextrin are sugars), whereas only 1% is actually the chlorinated chemical, sucraclose. This can be disastrous for people who are trying to watch calories, or for people with diabetes. Dr. Merocla explains this well in the video below:

#5 - Artificial sweeteners such as aspartame and sucralose have NOT been proven, or rigorously tested, to be safe in our diet. There have been many studies, however, but most were done on animals, and most studies were funded by the actual companies who make these chemical sweeteners.

Here is an excerpt from the website WomanToWoman, speaking about the studies on Splenda:

"Here are two other reasons for our concern: first, in the eleven years after Splenda was put on the market, no independent studies of sucralose lasting more than six months have been done in humans. Second, none of the trials that were done was very large — the largest was 128 people studied for three months, making us wonder, what happens when you’ve used sucralose for a year, or two, or ten?"

The author also notes that the own manufacture's studies resulted in shrunken thymus glands, enlarged livers and kidney disorders in rodents. However, this was not taken seriously as it could not be seen as conductive toward humans. Although, no studies on humans were done to test this, partly out of conflict of interests, partly from human integrity (hopefully).

Also, according to Dr. Mercola who wrote the book Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health, studies on Aspartame were far from exhaustive:

"The approval was given after the FDA supposedly reviewed more than 110 animal and human safety studies, but out of these 110 studies, only two were human studies, and the longest one was conducted for four days!"

When the results of the studies came back from the animal labs, it showed increased male infertility, brain lesions, decreased red blood cells (anemia), spontaneous abortions and enlarged kidneys.

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There is more I would like to cover about this very important topic, but I shall save it for another day. Diet drinks were not covered, but I should be able to form an entire post about such products.

Tomorrow, I will delve into natural, healthier sweetening alternatives, mainly focusing on my favorites, Stevia and Xylitol. For just a preview, Stevia, my favorite sweetener, is actually an herb and contains NO calories, carbs or sugar. Xylitol is a sugar alcohol which has virtually no effect on insulin levels and has 6 calories less than regular table sugar (for those interested in watching their caloric intake).

For now, this has been the Healthy Advocate.

P.S. If you like this post, or have any questions, please post a comment! I LOVE hearing from anyone and everyone who reads my writing and my research as it makes it all worth while. You can also post a question regarding a health matter that you would like me to cover in a later post.

Since both New York and New Jersey are home to so many immigrant children, then it stands to reason that we must learn the best techniques for language learning. Some children are learning disabled as well and this presents us with an extra challenge. Blogs and websites allow both parents and educators to "mix and match" ideas regarding education. Since the importance of play and its function on the brain has been well documented, it stands to reason that links leading to child friendly sites are welcome to home as well as the workplace.

The Twisted Truth About Saturated Fat

Note: This is only a fraction of what I have to say about this matter and it is far from complete, and don't be surprised to see more posts on fats, particularly saturated fats, in the near future.







It's raining outside, and I sit here sipping on my raw hot chocolate. I love mornings like this. The rain makes it so cozy, and knowing that it is cold outside, I feel very grateful that I have a warm home with everything that I need. There's a Hitchcock documentary on in the background.

I also begin pondering on a subject that I have spent a bit of time researching on, and I dwell upon this subject for a while, trying to discover why this information is not out to the majority of the public. This is the subject of saturated fat.


Yikes! This term even strikes a bit of fear in myself, because I have always been told that these natural, nature made (or God made, depending on what you believe) fats are harmful and contribute to a variety of diseases like heart disease and elevated cholesterol.


However, I have found this topic to be quite controversial, and with the analysis that I have accumulated in my nutritional research, I quite strongly believe that saturated fat isn't the devil it is made out to be.


After reading studies accumulated by Dr. Mercola, studying the diets of native and isolated populations (via Nourishing Traditions and The Weston A. Price Foundation), and really delving deep into controversial research, I have found that saturated fat has been a part of healthy populations for centuries. In fact, it has nourished all people for hundreds of thousands of years (maybe millions?), and it wasn't until the USDA told us to eat more carbohydrates and less overall fat to fight heart disease, that heart disease actually increased.


The "theory" that saturated fat is corrleated to an increase in heart disease was developed by Dr. Ancel Keys in the 1950s (I just finished a fascinating book about Keys' starvation experiment). His research covered over many different countries, but omitted data that was unfavorable to the study and only concluded seven countries. The research did show a link between fat consumption and heart disease, but only when one looked at the countries Keys included. When one actually looks at all the countries that were available in the study, the link between saturated fat and heart disease completely disappears, and it is seen that there were other factors that contributed toward heart disease.



This study, however, gained much publicity (Ancel Keys was a big guy on publicity of his experiements), and the "Low-fat" craze swept the nation, and later the world, with low-fat and fat-free products for every thing.


According to nutritional researchers Mary Enig, PhD and Sally Fallon, heart disease makes up 40% of all US deaths, and is growing, which should suggests (if you believe in the "Lipid Hypothesis") that saturated fat consumption (mainly in the form of animal products) has increased. In actuality, saturated fat intake has decreased.


How come if the saturated fat has decreased, the heart disease risk has become even greater? It is believed by many that it has to do with the high level of carbohydrate intake in the forms of processed, refined grains and sugars. These stimulate our insulin levels and elevates our triglyceride and cholesterol levels and hurts our hearts. Plus the intake of trans fats in processed foods, we have consumed large amounts of grains that have degraded our health.




If you look at the USDA food pyramid, you will notice that the majority of our calories should come from grain products, and only HALF of those grains should be whole, complex carbohydrates (these will provide a steadier release of glucose in our system).


However I firmly believe that all grains should be limited, or even eliminated, for overall health. Fresh vegetables, high quality animal proteins and fats and small quantities of soaked and sprouted grains (more on that later) should make the bulk of your diet, as these will not cause a spike in blood sugar.

I definitely don't want you to take this information as the absolute truth, because I strongly encourage everyone to fully research the nutrition information they hear, so that they can make a strong and firm decision about their health. My research has convinced me about saturated fat being an essential part of life (after all, around 50% of our cells in our body are made of the stuff!).




If you have any questions, or would like to be pointed to sources, studies or research articles, please comment below. I'll be uploading a new recipe very soon, so stay tuned!


Until next time, this has been the Healthy Advocate.