Artificial Sweeteners Essay

Artificial Sweeteners: Friend or Foe?

Artificial sweeteners are fake sugar substitutes that many people use to maintain their weight and diabetes. But, what many people do not understand is that artificial sweeteners are not all they are cracked up to be. It is a proven fact that people who consume diet coke on a regular basis will be fatter one year from the time they began drinking them. Many artificial sugars are in the everyday items that people eat/drink including soda, chewing gum, energy drinks, granola bars, cereal, and much more. There are many aversive health effects that are associated with specific artificial sweeteners. The most common artificial sweeteners include aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, stevia, neotame, and Acesulfame- K. Although artificial sweeteners are assumed to be a healthy option but, in the long run they can cause many aversive health conditions that could have been prevented by just consuming natural sugar.

In January 2014, my doctor diagnosed me with Pre-Diabetes. Pre – Diabetes is when a person’s glucose levels are high but not quite high enough to be diagnosed as Diabetes. For about one month he had me monitor everything that I ate in a day and write it down in a Journal. After that month was complete, I returned to the doctor’s office to have some more blood work done and a Fasting Plasma Glucose test done. A Fasting Plasma Test is done after you fast for eight hours without any food or anything to drink. Generally, you fast overnight and have the test done in the morning before your first meal. When all was said and done, my Pre-Diabetes was linked to my diet and my fasting plasma glucose level was 116 mg/dl. The normal level is below 100 mg/dl. I constantly drank diet soda because I a...

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...charin is ingested in big amounts it can serve as a laxative. In 1977 in Canada, there was study conducted that looked at the effects of Saccharin on the average rat. During the study, rats were fed high doses of Saccharin and then after they died, they were dissected this way researchers could evaluate the effects on the rats organs. Numerous tumors were found within many of the rats bladders and researchers were very disturbed by this finding. Within the same day, Canada banned the selling of it and it was ruled to be removed from the shelves immediately. After this study was completed, a law was placed stating that labels needed to be placed on item containing Saccharin. Also, in 2000, the government took Saccharin off of their list of possible carcinogens and stated that there was no adverse health effects found in the more than 200 studies that were completed.