Sounds strange, I know, but do a google search for 'splenda dangerous' and see what you find. There are all kinds of alleged side effects for this stuff. Headaches, depression, panic attacks etc. I remember there was a thread about it here where someone (maybe B-Ball Freak?) was saying some horrible things about it, but search is turned off. I usually pile the stuff in my coffee every morning, and then drink a few Diet 7Up's (with Splenda) in the afternoons. Now I'm a little worried (another side effect, BTW). So is it all hype, or is there something to it?
I wonder that myself. It seems like I remember hearing a lot of different things. I don't go out of my way to completely ban anything with Splenda, but I do try to avoid it for the most part.
I've just recently started using Splenda, but I do also remember that thread about someone thinking it had caused depression. Come to think of it, I have been feeling a little down lately.
I thought it was aspartame that was dangerous, because it turns into formeldehyde while you digest it. Either way they both taste awful. Stevia is the safest sugar alternative, because it is a natural growing plant they harvest.
Who cares? Splenda rocks. It's about as close as you can get to the real taste of sugar. Either I get cancer from Equal, kill myself from Splenda, or get diabetes and rotting teeth from sugar. Gotta die from SOMETHING, right?
I would take Splenda over aspartame (Equal, Nutrasweet, etc.). Splenda is at least derived from sugar, right? Aspartame is a chemical compound that was actually found by accident. I remember when I drank sodas with aspartame in them I would always get these bad headaches so I switched to caffeine-free drinks like Kool-Aid and lemonade and they went away. Splenda and aspartame both probably have theri bad side effects. As Jeff always says, if they had to use a bunch of chemicals and/or processes to make the food item (like margarine) then you probably shouldn't eat it anyway.
I used to take Splenda and it really had adverse effects on me. I couldn't think properly or hold focus for that long. I've also had bad experiences with Aspartame.
With all these artificial sweetners they come out 5 years later and tell you there is all kinds of problems. Then they manufacture a new one and say it's so much better, then another 5 years go by and they say they have found these effects.... Either way i hope not becuase my sis and mom are in love with that stuff.
It definitely isn't any more dangerous than all the fast food most of you guys eat. BUT to make splenda, they take a sugar molecule, scientists change the sugar molecule and add chlorine to it. This way you still get the sugar taste, but your body doesn't treat it as a nutrient due to the chlorine molecule, thus why there are no calories. Your body treates it more like a chemical than a food. I don't think (in high doses) chlorine is good for your body, but it is in our drinking water, swimming pools, etc... I personally don't use splenda, but I don't think it is harmful in small doses.
I attribute many issues I had to it. If you remember, IMA, I played a gig with you guys (a jewish wedding), and in addition to being nervous, I felt very ill. Literally within days of that gig, I was checked into the hospital with chest pains and palpitations. It was after my second stay in the hospital and a cardiac catheterization (when they run dye through an artery in your leg) and they could still not figure out what was going on. They wrote it off as severe anxiety attacks which I had never had before. After that, I took inventory of the things in my life that I had changed recently and the Splenda stood out to me. At the time, I had replaced everything that had sugar in my diet with Splenda so it may have been a case of just way too much. I googled it (Splenda and "side effects") and read posts and letters from dozens of people that had my exact reaction to it and hundreds from those who had other adverse reaction. I read one medical site that stated that the altered Splenda molecule had almost as much in common with an insecticide molecule as it did sugar. Take it for what you will because I was able to find just as much info about how it was completely safe. I just know my own experience.
Splenda is essentially an analog of sucrose. It is the closest thing to real sugar that you can possibly imagine. I've looked at alot of the anti-splenda stuff and it all seems to be scare tactics (i.e. this compound contains Chlorine. Chlorine was used durring world war one to make poison gas.) Most of these articles don't provide accurate information about the nature of Splenda's usefulness as a sweetner. People still claim effects from the idiocy that is homeopathy. Placebo.
There was a Wired article hailing tagatose as the miracle sweetener because it was natural, fought tooth decay, okay for diabetes patients, cooked like sugar and tasted very close to sucrose. Too bad not many products have come out for it. The patent should expire soon.
Sorbitol messes me up big time. I thought I had Crohn's disease....turned out I was unable to process this sugar substitute thats in most gum. I had tons of tests run, took a bunch of meds, it was terrible. I quit eating, drinking, or chewing anything with Sorbitol in it and my stomach went back to normal. Whats scary is that I discovered my problem from watching effin HOUSE. My doc agreed with the TV self-diagnosis.
