Are sweeteners safe?

angeline

I've done a bit of online research on these sweeteners and it seems to be inconclusive. My father uses Hermesetas and was asking about the safety of them. Personally I prefer Canderel. It seems there were concerns years ago that Hermesetas caused bladder cancer in rats but it was not shown to equate to humans. I guess it's like most things, opinions will change in ten years time. Just wondering what other people's opinions were.

weemcd

Skip all the artificial sweeteners and go for stevia. It's just made from the stevia plant leaf, hell of a lot better for you than sugar or the chemically alternatives.

angeline

weemcd wrote: »

Skip all the artificial sweeteners and go for stevia. It's just made from the stevia plant leaf, hell of a lot better for you than sugar or the chemically alternatives.

Read about stevia as well, that it was considered more natural.

Mellor

weemcd wrote: »

Skip all the artificial sweeteners and go for stevia. It's just made from the stevia plant leaf, hell of a lot better for you than sugar or the chemically alternatives.

Being natural or plant based doesn't automatically make some better or even safe.
I'm not saying stevia isn't safe, I honestly don't know much about it.
But people tend to be easily led when it comes to adjectives like natural and/or chemical.

jeamimus

angeline wrote: »

Read about stevia as well, that it was considered more natural.

'more natural' is a marketing invention. Some of the worst entities are 'natural'.

All the sweeteners are 'safe' in the classical sense. However, its not good to fool your body by eating sweet things when there are no sugars to deal with.
The best option is to retrain your taste buds to appreciate less sweetened foods.

Mellor

jeamimus wrote: »

However, its not good to fool your body by eating sweet things when there are no sugars to deal with

Why?

jeamimus

Mellor wrote: »

Why?

Sweet taste causes the body to release insulin to deal with the sugars that its taste receptors tells it that you are eating.

But there arent any sugars so the released insulin is surplus. Because of complex feedback mechanisms, in extreme situations the body could recognise that insulin seems to be produced in excess and cut back its production generally... and maybe even push it towards type 2 diabetes which is probably what the person gave up sugar to avoid in the first place.

Feedback mechanisms are funny things.. Best not to mess with them.

Alf Veedersane

jeamimus wrote: »

Sweet taste causes the body to release insulin to deal with the sugars that its taste receptors tells it that you are eating.

If you're a rat.

Pretty sure it hasn't been tested on humans yet.

OP, if he's only using them in small amounts I don't think there's likely to be much of a risk

Mellor

jeamimus wrote: »

Sweet taste causes the body to release insulin to deal with the sugars that its taste receptors tells it that you are eating

It takes more than a sweet taste to elicit a insulin response. Aspartame, sucralose don't elicit a response, afaik. Stevia does, as do some others.

Has the feedback theory been proven? When consuming a response inducing sweetener in normal amounts.
Besides even if there are some mega aspebts to some sweetness, that doesn't mean they are a better choice than sugar at times.

Speedwell

My family and I are among that small but significant fraction of people who find stevia intolerably bitter. I personally have a bad reaction to sucralose (I blind-tested it and isolated it as the cause). I don't seem to have a problem with aspartame, but who knows really. In measuring whether a sweetener causes an insulin response, you really need to look at its glycemic index.

When I moved to household stuff to Ireland after marrying my Irish husband, part of my shipment included several large plastic containers of xylitol, erythritol, and tagatose, all of which naturally occur in food in small amounts. Tagatose is the safest and best of the lot, the easiest to cook with, and the best-tasting (use it like sugar, one-to-one measure), and has been proven to benefit diabetics. Erythritol is the next best in terms of digestion-friendliness, it has a trivial number of calories and the lowest possible glycemic impact, but it is a little less sweet than sugar, dissolves less well, and shouldn't be used in any recipes where the end product is chilled because it tends to crystallize out of solution rather readily (I once made some lemon curd that turned out a bit crunchy the next morning). Xylitol can upset very sensitive stomachs (like that of my friend back in America who greedily added five teaspoons to her cup of tea), but I don't have trouble with it. It tastes good. It has some calories but nowhere near that of sugar, and it is safe for diabetics.

I've tried to find a local source for tagatose but have come up empty-handed. Erythritol is difficult to source. Xylitol is relatively easy to find. I saw some just yesterday in the health food store attached to the SuperValu in Boyle, and I was pretty sure I saw some in a shop in Sligo town. It's not cheap, but as a diabetic I tend to stay away from sweet things generally anyway.

My best understanding of the latest research is that saccharin causes an increase in insulin resistance (bad) because of its effect on gut flora, aspartame is not shown to have an effect, most other sweeteners have no effect on BMI in the long term at least, and tagatose has been shown to decrease insulin resistance by a possibly-not-too-significant amount. Stevia can lower blood glucose, which can compromise exercise tolerance and "confuse" insulin signaling if the body gets into a hypoglycemic state. Stevia has also been shown to break down into possibly mutagenic compounds in the body, but whether this has an actual effect in human beings is not proven.

The dangers of sugar consumption are fairly obvious by now, however.

seefin

Was just watching BBC program trust me,Im a doctor. They found aspartame etc caused rise in blood sugar whereas stevia didn't. Ye can see details on the BBC website