Why To Avoid Aspartame and High Fructose Corn Syrup, Contributed by @shenanigator
For the longest time, I had an idea that I should be eating more natural foods and fewer processed foods, but I didn't know why exactly. Sure, there were additives in food, but "they need to be there to make them shelf stable, right?" Certainly, they'd do research to ensure ingredients were safe for human consumption before putting it into our food!
This isn't always the case. In fact, often times, ingredients are very bad for humans. Here are a couple ingredients to avoid at all costs.
High Fructose Corn Syrup
A study linked high fructose corn syrup (hfcs) to diabetes. There are quite a few countries that have little to no hfcs in their food supply while other countries have a lot of it. This study demonstrated that countries with hfcs had a 20% higher rate of diabetes.
There's a big difference between correlation and causation. Couldn't the diabetes be happening for other reasons?
The researchers said:
There were no overall differences in total sugars or total calories between countries that did and didn’t use high-fructose corn syrup, suggesting that there’s an independent relationship between high-fructose corn syrup and diabetes.
Michael Goran, PhD says:
There are lots of other aspects of the way fructose is handled by the body which are different than glucose that make it metabolically dangerous for the body,
It's a bit more complicated than that, though, Goran states. There's fructose in fruit, but the body handles that fructose just fine. Perhaps because its absorption is slowed by the fiber in the fruit whereas, when refined into a syrup there is no fiber.
Aspartame
There was a study performed in which 200 rats were followed from 8 weeks old until they died of natural causes. The rats were exposed to various levels of aspartame which were measured to be similar to human exposure. They were then autopsied immediately following their death.
The results were that the rats who were exposed to more aspartame had higher levels of a wide array of cancers.
There are people who dispute this study and claim that aspartame has been proven safe many times. My personal opinion is that it takes a lot more evidence to prove that something is safe than to prove it's dangerous.
I don't want to take the chance, so I'll use other sources for my sweeteners, like honey.
Natural foods are a far better alternative to processed food. It has better health benefits.
Salute the knowledge of this, many of us including myself stick with processed food because of our busy schedules.
I think it is always safer to stay away from processed foods and consume as many foods as I can that don't have labels. Chances are, if the foods don't have a long list of ingredients (most of which are impossible to pronounce haha) it is a healthier choice than one with a massive list!
Of course there is more to it but it is a quick and easy thing to remind yourself next time you are at the grocery store!
Great post! :)
Aspartine is a killer. We think we are immuned to it, and drink it in the diet drinks like diet sprite etc but we are really injuring ourselves and our health. Good article.
This is a great article!! The many dangers in consuming aspartame are very high risk indeed. In addition, many companies have now started to get even more aggressive in their removal of high fructose corn syrup, which I feel should have never been added into our food chain in the first place, with all the dangerous side effect it in of itself can, and has caused people.
I do have to agree with the study done on the rats, and how it can speed up the process of cancer, and may also even contribute to brain tumors.
I would rather stick with natural ways to gain sweetness in my drinks too, rather than taking a chance on learning later on I could have possibly avoided the cancer, simply by doing a diet change worth thinking about for sure. Thanks for sharing it to help make others aware of these dangerous products.
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You also want to worry about "sugar free gum" which often contains Aspartame or other toxic chemicals. What you want to chew is Xylitol sweetened gum.