A Fight to the Finish: Artificial Sweeteners vs. Sugar

How do you take your coffee? With real cream and sugar? Or black with one or two of those little pink or yellow packets? I’m a yellow-packet kind-of-girl, but I’ve often asked myself - at what expense? For years now there has been buzz about the negative health effects of artificial sweeteners. So . . . what’s the real story? Can the fake sugar really do you harm in the long term? Let’s take a closer look into the facts and the constant battle between artificial sweeteners and sugar.

The Need for Sweet

For thousands of years, man has tried to feed his sweet tooth with various types of products, but the king of them all is sugar.  This sweetener dates back to earliest man and is produced by many plants in nature all around the world.  However, it seems “modern man” is rarely satisfied with a natural solution to a need, and started creating artificial sweeteners. 

Artificial sweeteners are all more concentrated than sugar for sweetening and they are the target for many groups convinced they increase health risks.  The health benefit to creating artificial sweeteners is reduced effects on glucose, a very important quality for diabetics.  Sugar has large amounts of energy (calories) in addition, so dieticians and nutritionists appreciate the reduced calories of artificial products.

Splenda-dly Sweet

One of the newest artificial sweeteners on the market is called sucralose, often sold under the brand name of Splenda®.   

Sucralose is advertised as just natural sugar, slightly modified.  Raw sugar is processed using chlorine and other compounds to create sucralose.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved it for use as a general sweetener in 2002, after conducting hundreds of safety tests and studies.  A concern the FDA always looks at is the possibility for increasing the risk of cancer.  Sucralose doesn’t seem to have a great risk so far, but long term studies have yet to be fully completed. 

The Other Players

Other artificial sweeteners have gained notoriety as potential cancer or general health risks.  Saccharin appeared to increase cancer in rats during tests conducted during the 1970s.  It was listed at that time on the FDA cancer suspect lists, but subsequent investigations showed the previous evidence was not applicable to humans.  Saccharin is now fully approved with no risk of cancer listed.  It is highly desired by retailers as a very low-cost sweetener.

Aspartame (called Nutraweet® or Equal®) started in the 1980s and many people tried to link it to an increase in brain tumors.  The suspicions took several years to disprove, but the truth of the matter was, the higher incidence of brain cancer was largely among the aged population that did not use aspartame for most of their life.  Additionally, clinical studies could find no definite link between aspartame and increased cancer risk.  It is fully approved and widely used in the market today. 

The other major sweetener, once banned and now trying a comeback, is cyclamate.  First invented in the 1960s, cyclamate was popular until it was linked to increased risk of bladder cancer in rats.  It was removed from use by the 1970s, but detailed research in the recent past has concluded the bladder cancer found in the rats is only a risk for that species, not humans.  Interested groups are applying for approval from the FDA to bring cyclamate back into the marketplace. 

To the Bittersweet End

With all of the problems noted and suspected with artificial sweeteners, the old guy sugar is making a comeback as the sweetener of choice.  Current emphasis on natural products and organic foods has aided sugar in gaining respect and market share.

Editor's Note: While the jury is still out on whether or not certain artificial sweeteners really do have a negative affect on human health, we recommend alternative sweetners such as Flora-Key or Stevia Plus. Flora-Key is an immune boosting probiotic formula that contains acidophilus, bifidus, and a special prebiotic, rather sweet-tasting substance known as FOS to stimulate the growth of the beneficial bacteria, often killed off from antibiotics. This product helps to ward off toxin in the future and aids in the synthesis of key vitamins and minerals while helping to support the good bacteria in the gut, ultimately aiding with cleansing. Flora-Key should only be used in non-heat recipes as heating will destroy the beneficial bacteria. Stevia Plus, a combination of the herbal sweetener Stevia and FOS, can be used in recipes that require heat.