Dec 04 2009
Sucralose and Splenda: Safety Concerns
Splenda uses sucralose as it’s sweetener, although the packets are largely filler so that the same amount of Splenda and sugar are approximately just as sweet as each other.Sucralose is in a lot of stuff now, but should it be? Is it really safe?Are there dangers?
Of course there are side effects. There are side effects with everything. Medicine, additives, sugar, fat, and even vegetables all have some kind of side effects. Especially if you consume an exhorbitant amount of any of them.Eating carrots, while healthy in small quantities, can start to change the color of your skin in large quantities. You won’t suddenly look like a carrot or an orange, but your skin will start to change color.
So, what are the side effects of sucralose and, by extension, Splenda? Sucralose can cause immunological problems, lower the good bacteria in your intestines by up to 50%, and even cause DNA damage! Sounds awful, doesn't it? There's a catch, though.It would take a large number of packets of Splenda to cause these problems, though.One study shows that between 68 and 680 packets of Splenda per day can cause the lowering of your good bacteria for a 150 pound person. So, if you limit yourself to around 10 packets per day, there’s virtually no danger of that. For the more serious problems, though, the required amounts of Splenda are absolutely massive. In order for Splenda to cause immunological problems, the same person weighing 150 pounds would have to ingest around 17,200 splenda packets per day for approximately a month. Good luck with testing that one. That is a whole lot of Splenda.Having 11,450 packets per day can cause DNA damage, but I don't think anybody will have that many per day either!
What would happen if you had that much real sugar, though? The recommended daily intake volume of sugar is around 40 grams.Sugar and Splenda are both packaged in 1 gram packets, so that is 40 packets of sugar per day.Having between 68 and 680 packets of sugar is outright dangerous to your long term health, and it will likely cause diabetes. But if you had 17,200 packets of sugar per day? You would probably pass out and potentially go into cardiac arrest from ridiculously high blood sugar!On top of dieing, you'll probably have diabetes before tomorrow, which would surely be a world record… one that I would recommend trying not to break.Clearly, sugar can be more of a health risk than Splenda.
But what about other artificial sweeteners like aspartame? Well, I would do some research before trying any others, but since Splenda and sucralose is widely regarded as the safest of them, why would you go for anything less?
