Splenda

[Guest guest]

Best of the Blogs

More and more people from the " low carb world " are taking their thoughts to

the web in the form of " blogs " (short for weblogs). And they're making a lot

of sense. In fact, blogging - an activity that's reaching phenomenon status

is probably the best way to get a message " out there. "

So each month, we'll be bringing you the " Best of the low carb Blogs. " The

topics won't always be about low carb per se. We're simply choosing those

entries

that we, at Low Carb Luxury, find to be buzz-worthy.

This month, we feature an entry from Dr. Mike's Blog, written by Protein

Power doc, R. Eades. is a good friend of ours, and has a

gift for

drawing in his readers. His warmth and down-to-earth nature always show

through, but make no mistake, Mike Eades is one very sharp fellow.

Visit his blog

each week to read all that he has to offer!

Splenda Misinformation

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Do you know what your children are eating?

Block quote end

So asks the ubiquitous anti-Splenda advertisements.

These ads go on to say:

Block quote start

Splenda's advertising claims that it is " Made from Sugar, so it Tastes Like

Sugar. " What it doesn't tell you is that Splenda is not natural, it's a

chlorinated

artificial sweetener.

Block quote end

Since rational people don't want to send their kids off to school with a

lunch box full of swimming pool disinfectant, these ads have gotten a lot of

attention.

What is the real truth behind the Splenda and chlorine? Let's look at the

evidence.

But before we do, I want to lay out my position. First, Dan and I don't

own any stock in the companies that manufacture or sell Splenda. We don't

sell

it. We have no financial involvement with Splenda in any way. Second, we do

use it. We don't use a ton of it because we would rather do without sweets

of any kind as much as possible. But, when we do want to sweeten something,

we use Splenda as our artificial sweetener of choice. Unlike aspartame,

Splenda

is heat stable so we can cook with it, and unlike aspartame it doesn't break

down into toxic substances. In fact, very little of it is absorbed. And we

have never had patients who had problems with Splenda as we have had with

aspartame. We first found out about Splenda in Canada back in the mid 1980s

when

we attended a medical conference in Toronto. Splenda was in use at that time

in Canada and has subsequently been approved for use here in the U.S., and

since then tens of millions of people have used it without major problems

showing up. We have never seen anything in the medical literature showing

that

Splenda is in any way harmful. So, we don't have a problem with Splenda, and

until we find something that changes our minds, we'll continue to use it as

our artificial sweetener of choice.

Now on to the Splenda attack ads.

These ads are the brainchild of Rick Masters, a former Democratic operative

who has gone into the public relations business. He was profiled last March

in the Atlantic Monthly in an article entitled " J-School for Jerks, " which

was a piece about how Mr. Masters conducts a course for people who want to

be

the next Bill O'Reilly. Mr. Masters works for Qorvis Communications, a

large, Washington, DC based public relations firm.

Qorvis Communications and Mr. Masters were hired by non other than the sugar

lobby to mount an attack against Splenda. Why the sugar lobby would want to

attack the folks who make Splenda, I can't imagine.

Mr. Masters and " a group of concerned consumers, led by sugar cane and sugar

beet farmers across America " (read: Sugar Association, the sugar lobby) put

up a website purporting to tell the horrible truth about Splenda. But does

this website tell the truth or is it simply sugar lobby propaganda? Let's

take

a look.

We can forget about all the posturing and all the doctors and others who are

on the site claiming that Splenda is a menace because that's all lip

service.

Let's cut to the chase, to the real nitty gritty.

The main attack against Splenda is that it is a chlorinated artificial

sweetener. Is that true? Well, yes and no. It is chlorinated, which, as

we'll see

shortly, doesn't mean squat. And it is really a sugar molecule, so it really

isn't an artificial sweetener as is, for example, saccharine. It's

artificial

in the same way a bowl of ice cream with artificial flavors added is

artificial. The bulk of the ice cream is made with cream, milk, and sugar,

so does

the little bit of artificial vanilla extract make the whole shebang

artificial? I don't think so. But in Splenda's case, the additive isn't even

really

artificial.

But what about the chlorine? That sounds like the real problem. It can't be

good to consume chlorine.

First of all, every time you eat salt, half of what you are eating is

chlorine. Common table salt is sodium chloride, half sodium and half

chlorine (since

the chlorine is in its ionic form it's called chloride). Chloride is a

natural substance. In fact chlorine is one of the elements in the periodic

table.

No one would consider salt artificial, so how can chloride - a natural

element - be artificial?

So, Splenda isn't really an artificial sweetener. If anything it would be

more accurately called a chemically altered sweetener.

Splenda is made by replacing three hydroxyl groups (and oxygen-hydrogen

combination) on a sucrose (common table sugar) molecule with three chloride

ions.

By doing so, the sweetening power of the sugar is increased by a factor of

about 600. So, in actuality, when you consume Splenda, you consume real

sugar,

but because of the huge increase in sweetening power only about 1/600th of

what you normally would . Instead of a teaspoon it would be a tiny grain.

But what about the extra chlorine? Doesn't that cause any kind of problem.

Well, you do eat salt don't you. A teaspoon of salt contains many thousands

of times more chlorine than you would get from the teaspoon of sugar

equivalent

of Splenda.

If you want even more evidence that the tiny amount of chloride in the

Splenda is harmless consider that like with blood sugar you have about a

teaspoon

of chloride circulating in your blood at any given time, which is more than

20,000 times the amount you would get from a dose of Splenda. How do we

figure

this?

A normal value for chloride as a component of an electrolyte panel (common

lab measurement of blood that doctors often look at) is about 100 mEq/L. One

mEq of chloride equals about 35 mg. 35 mg times 100 equals 3500 mg. One

teaspoon is about 4000 mg, so 100 mEq of chloride is a little less than one

teaspoon.

So, knowing what we now know, it's easy to see who is telling the truth

about Splenda. With the above in mind, let's look at a particularly

egregious example

of truth stretching on the sugar lobby-underwritten, anti-Splenda website:

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Fiction: The chlorine found in Splenda is similar to that found in other

foods we eat.

Fact: The manufacturer of Splenda claims that chlorine is naturally present

in such foods as lettuce, mushrooms and table salt, but they never directly

state that eating Splenda is the same as eating these foods. Remember,

Splenda is not a natural substance, it is an artificial chemical sweetener

manufactured

by adding three chlorine atoms to a sugar molecule.

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Would you trust your health to the sugar lobby?

R. Eades,

MD

Copyright © February 2006 R. Eades and Low Carb Luxury

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