Here’s the post I alluded to on Friday, the post that I’ve been meaning to write for awhile now on the topic that several of you smart readers of Fearless Fat Loss have asked me about. Yep, we’re talking about Splenda – you’ve heard of it, do you use it?

I first heard of Splenda in 2004, and maybe just like you I’ve been duped by the creative advertising that tells us that it’s perfectly healthy to use. Well, I’m sorry to learn that it’s not all that the happy shiny packaging makes it out to be. It’s not as innocent as I thought it was, and it just might be rather deadly, or at that very least toxic, but isn’t that the same thing?

Maybe I’m being dramatic, but who really knows since the FDA allowed it on the market without the human trials that the drug companies must go through in order to get a new drug on the market. And even then, how many drugs have been pulled off the market because of health dangers and even death after years of use (remember Fen-Phen)?

I cannot fit all of the gory details in this one post however you can find them in the book that is my source for this post – Sweet Deception: Why Splenda, NutraSweet, and the FDA May Be Hazardous to Your Health. I highly recommend you read this yourself and then you can come to your own conclusions.

13 + 1 Reasons to Avoid Splenda

With that being said, here are 14 reasons that stood out for me when I read the book, 14 reasons that I present to you for why to abstain from using Splenda, 14 reasons that have me sticking with Stevia:

Free eBook Fearless Fat Loss

  1. Splenda was “discovered” accidentally in a lab while trying to create a new insecticide.
  2. Whole Foods will not sell Splenda or any product that contains it because it does not fit within their code of ethics of selling “real food”.
  3. The limited “testing” that was done on Splenda was done by the same company (McNeil) that manufacturers it (can anyone say BIAS)?
  4. McNeil, the manufacturer of Splenda, was very smart when they specifically chose the name “sucralose” for their product because smart consumers know that ingredients that end in “-ose” are normally simple sugars. Therefore, it’s very easy for consumers to get confused and think that sucralose is like sucrose or glucose (simple sugars) as its name implies, instead of what it actually is – a complex chlorinated artificial chemical.
  5. Sucralose, the made-up name by the manufacturer of Splenda, contains chlorine.
  6. Chlorine is toxic and is not found in any food or table salt even though the manufacturer of Splenda will tell you otherwise. There is however, chloride present in food and table salt, and chloride is non-toxic.
  7. Chlorine, which is present in Splenda, has caused so much damage to human health that Greenpeace has launched a Chlorine-Free Campaign, calling for a worldwide ban on chlorine. The EPA also maintains a strong anti-chlorine stance.
  8. If you really want some motivation for staying away from Splenda and anything that contains it (example: Atkins and South Beach diet foods contain it) and you’re a future mother, read all about baby boys being born with shortened male anatomy due to chlorine passed to them in the womb.
  9. Splenda is an organochlorine, a chemical that is a carbon and hydrogen molecule with attached chlorine atoms. Splenda is the only organochlorine ever used for human consumption. Other organochlorines you may be familiar with are: DDT, Mustard Gas, Chloroform, PCBs, as well as other insecticides, pesticides, and solvents.
  10. Organochlorines are fat-soluble and their solubility can vary but these substances tend to accumulate in organ tissues that are high in fat (i.e.: your brain), and are believed to be permanently stored there.
  11. The inadequate human testing that McNeil (the manufacturer of Splenda) did was only done on a control group of healthy males and for no more than 3 months. No testing was done on women, children, pregnant women, the elderly, no one else except for the healthy males. I learned in my college stats class that in order for a test to be valid it has to be done on a wide sampling and administered by an outside company from the product’s manufacturer.
  12. McNeil claims that Splenda is not stored in the body, that all of it passes through your system without any absorbption, however this is unlike any other organochlorine. DDT is an organochlorine and is now outlawed because of its horrific long term toxicity at only minute, trace levels in human, avian, and mammalian tissues.
  13. It is not conclusively known just how much of this chlorine sticks around in the body after ingesting it because of the inadequate testing done on humans, however even if it is only 10%, that is highly toxic crap that is hanging around in the body – how much of this stuff builds up in the body over time??
  14. There have been numerous documented unhealthy side-effects that people have reported after using Splenda, symptoms such as seizures, rashes, intestinal problems, fatigue, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, numbness, and headaches, to name a few. You can read the full accounts in Sweet Deception.

These are the main points that hit home for me – I really recommend that you read the book Sweet Deception to get the full picture. I could have listed more than 14 reasons to stay away from Splenda however the above 14 are the ones that grabbed me the most.

This Reminds Me Of…

Are you aware that anti-freeze tastes sweet and that’s why you have to make sure that your dogs or other pets don’t go near it? They will lap it up and it will kill them within 24 hours (it crystallizes in their liver).

No, I’m not saying that I think Splenda is the same as anti-freeze, but when I learned how Splenda was discovered by accident in a chemistry lab by a grad student who was trying to create a new insecticide (he thought his advisor told him to taste the solution he created instead of test it and he found it tasted sweet) it reminded me of how anti-freeze is said to taste sweet. Maybe the next artificial sweetener on the market will be another form of anti-freeze, who knows?

Obtained from the book Sweet Deception – Read It!

This info I’ve passed onto you here is from the book Sweet Deception by Dr. Joseph Mercola – I urge you to pick up a copy of it to read the full story on Splenda. I’m totally sick over this whole topic because I honestly didn’t think that Splenda was that bad (oh yeah, the FDA doesn’t even require warnings on the labels like you’ll find on most other artificial sweeteners) and I, maybe like you, thought that it couldn’t be on the market if it were dangerous – me, the one who has brought you all of those other important articles about “creative advertising” and unhealthy processed gunk:

We Must Rely On Our Own Smarts & Intuition

We have to remember that each of us is the only one who is ultimately responsible for what we put into our body. We cannot rely on the government or the FDA (a conglomerate that does not even require a manufacturer to do outside testing), to take care of us. We cannot take our health, our most valuable possession for granted and give our power away to people who only care about making money.

Am I saying that money is bad? Of course not, I’m interested in manifesting boatloads of it, but not at the expense of other human beings or our planet Earth. What we’re talking about here is big business and billions of dollars, just like the refined sugar industry. Do you really think that these corporations have your best interest at heart? Why should they?

Sweet Deception

What do you think about Splenda now? Have I helped you learn something you didn’t know? Will you be reading Sweet Deception? Tell me what you think in a comment below.