Four years ago, Coca-Cola decided they’d make a pro-active move aimed toward health. It was a move sure to cause health nuts to stand up and applaud, where instead of using aspartame to sweeten their sodas, customers could now choose their diet drinks made from a “healthy” sweetener – Splenda.

Unfortunately for Coca-Cola, the applause line never came.

Now, Splenda claims their product to be natural – “tastes like sugar because it’s made from sugar” as their saying goes. But Coca-Cola’s offering of Splenda-sweetened soda as an alternative to aspartame-tainted soda is a move that tells customers the following: pick your poison.

By now you’ve all heard about the dangers of aspartame – how they contribute to grand mal seizures, migraines, cancer, obesity and a host of degenerative diseases. A lot of people, thankfully, take these risks seriously (not nearly enough, but you’ll nonetheless be hard-pressed to find anyone promoting aspartame’s health properties).

There’s far more debate about the health effects of Splenda, the artificial sweetener with a euphemism for a name (Splenda is actually sucralose).

In the Splenda debate, defenders of its use point to how lots of people have lost loads of weight simply by switching sweeteners – from sugar to Splenda. Folks on the other side argue the opposite, saying Splenda actually contributes to obesity by not sating one’s sweet tooth, thus leading one to eat more than if they had a regularly sweetened cookie.

Both arguments have elements of truth. Most debates do. What can’t be debated, however, are the studies – many of them follow-ups to studies that pooh-pooh Splenda’s use– pointing toward Splenda’s sinister side-effects.

Take the latest one as the latest example. In the fall of 2008, researchers from Duke University reported that Splenda actually reduced the amount of good bacteria in the intestinal tract by as much as 50 percent when consumed over an extended period of time. In addition to that, results confirmed Splenda contributed to weight gain and caused the body to reject common medicines used to treat common diseases. This happens by Splenda altering the chemical composition of the intestinal tract (the pH level, to be specific).

The study is published in the fall 2008 issue of the well-respected Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health.

Bacteria get a bad wrap. Nine out of 10 times one hears the word, it’s associated with dirt, disease, germs or infections. Bacteria may contribute to those things, sure, but just as there was a wicked witch and a good witch in the film “The Wizard of Oz,” there is good bacteria and bad bacteria in the film we call life. Probiotics is an example of good bacteria. I wrote about probiotics a couple of years ago. Probiotics is just one kind of good bacteria, and it helps the intestinal tract by keeping the excretory system running smoothly. Without getting too complicated, probiotics assist the GI tract by aiding in proper digestion, while at the same time blocking food borne illnesses from penetrating and throwing the stomach off kilter (in the form of diarrhea, IBD and bladder infections).

Your excretory system may not be the first thing on your mind when it comes to your health, but it certainly has a way of taking top priority when the bowels go bonkers. By consuming Splenda on a regular basis, you’re increasing the chances and prevalence of those gut-busting moments.

If you pick up a bag of sugar-free candy, somewhere in barely-legible print on the back of the pack will be a warning about consuming the candy in excess. It’ll say something about how when consumed in excess, the candy has a “laxative effect.”

Now you know why.

Sources
GlobeNewswire, Inc.
Mercola.com
The Daily Collegian Online