Alt-Heath Works – by Nick Meyer
Diet Pepsi sales have been slumping for quite some time, and with the ongoing health awareness movement causing major pain for other purveyors of unhealthy foods and drinks, it seems as if Pepsi has finally seen the writing on the wall.
The multi-billion dollar soda company announced recently that they’re ditching aspartame, the oft-used but increasingly unpopular sweetener that’s been linked to serious health problems.
According to Pepsi executives, the new drink will hit store shelves this August, will taste the same as the old one, and will also proudly proclaim “Now Aspartame Free” on the can.
Consumers have turned their back on diet soda in large part because of health concerns, so how they should feel about this news?
Unfortunately, Pepsi’s chosen replacements for the much-maligned sweetener don’t appear to be much better at all.
New Aspartame Replacement — Cuddly Name, Harmful to Your Health
What if aspartame had a less ominous-sounding name, something dreamed up by marketing wizards that was designed to sound safe and harmless?
That’s exactly what the popular artificial sweetener Splenda has going for it, but many people still don’t know the harmful side effects it’s been linked to. Splenda will now be added to Diet Pepsi (along with a second harmful chemical we’ll get to later), but it may not be much better for your health than aspartame after all.
While it was once marketed as a natural form of sugar with no calories, Splenda is actually the result of a five-part laboratory process that takes an original sugar molecule and adds three molecules of chlorine to the mix, turning it into something unnatural and foreign to the body, meaning your body has no way of properly metabolizing it.
Splenda also has a habit of staying inside your body, as at least 15% of it is not excreted in a timely manner according to this article from Dr. Joseph Mercola.
So, what exactly could Splenda be doing to your body once it’s inside of it (and once it stays inside of it)? Several red flags have been raised, and calls for more long term studies have been consistent.
In 2013, the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer food safety watchdog group, downgraded Spelnda from “safe” to “caution” after an independent (albeit unpublished) study out of Italy found that Splenda caused leukemia in mice.
Side effects reported by people consuming Splenda include gastrointestinal problems, blurred vision, dizziness, weight gain and even seizures.
And another study in 2008 published in the Journal for Toxicology and Environmental Health had several shock findings including that Splenda reduces the amount of beneficial bacteria by as much as 50 percent (hello, weight gain) and can affect a glycoprotein in your body that can have serious health consequences for people taking certain medications for recurring health problems.
One More Harmful Sweetener for Good Measure
Splenda, aka Sucralose, may sound harmless enough, and certainly more pleasant than “aspartame,” but another sweetener being added to Diet Pepsi, Acesulfame potassium, aka Ace-K, does not.
If it sounds like another chemical concoction you probably shouldn’t be putting into your body to you, you’d be 100% correct: Ace-K is actually listed in the “avoid” category by the Center for Science in the Public Interest due to health concerns, the same category as aspartame itself.
“It is poorly tested, but the tests done by the manufacturer in the 1970s suggest that Ace-K, too, might pose a cancer risk,” said Michael Jacobson, the director of the center, to USA Today.
Doesn’t sound like much of an improvement for Diet Pepsi fans after all, does it?
Brilliant! Simply replace one poison with another!
Granted, aspartame is absolutely one of THE worst on the market, and in combination with high levels of MSG can be one of the most extreme-violence producing substances available, but replacing it with something less toxic is illogical… unless they’re actually TRYING to kill us… hmmmm… a distinct possibility.
Pepsi is the only soda I ever buy anymore, the stuff with REAL sugar. Yeah, yeah, it’s still bad, I know, BUT… I depend on my MSM to flush the toxins out of my system (and have for many years), and it’s done an outstanding job till now.
I’d love to hang around and chat, but I’ve got an urge to go fishing right now, so I am. Why? BECAUSE I CAN!!! WOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!
I LOVE THIS PLACE!!!!! 😀
The public will not care unless more people take control of there own health and do there own research.
Ya know, when I was a kid we drank sodas with real sugar and there were usually only one or two “fat” kids in the entire school, (which were thin by todays standards btw) no diabetic kids, no kids with major health problems. Why do we need diet crap anyway? If people just had normal diets with real food and kids were allowed to run free outside without having to worry about being kidnapped by cps, then people would grow up healthy and have good eating habits. Everything is screwed up nowadays thanks to corporate bottom lines.