Nutrition News and Reviews

Just a quick note for those in and around Birmingham … there is a new community supported agriculture (CSA) outfit serving our area — Moore Farms and Friends — and having tried them out for a couple weeks now I can recommend it. The big plus is that a one-year membership only costs $30, then you can order what you want from week to week (or order nothing). I’ve found the vegetables to be of high quality and the meats and dairy products also to be particularly delicious. And almost everything is organic, grass-fed, etc. Finally, they have multiple delivery locations around the city including the Summit, Homewood and downtown.

The website is MooreFarmsandFriends.com.

I believe local farmers are vital to the cultural and economic fabric of our nation, so I hope you will consider supporting them in one way or another … and getting yourself some highly nutritious food in the process!

Mmm ... formaldehyde producing nectar of the Gods!

So, the U.S. government just added formaldehyde to their list of carcinogenic substances. Credit where credit is due … But what remains OFF the list, and IN thousands of products from Diet Coke to Activia yogurt, is the artificial sweetener aspartame.

The connection?

Well, it’s a documented scientific fact that aspartame breaks down to formaldehyde at temperatures upwards of 90 degrees. Like, inside the human body for example.

Don't fret Mr. Monster, sugar-free turmeric cookies might be quite tasty.

Recently sugar has been a hot topic of conversation in the cancer arena, with many articles such as this one in the New York Times noting that the scientific jury is more or less out on the fact that sugar feeds cancer cells. Of course, some people, namely Dr. Robert Lustig, have gone one step further and actually contend that sugar causes cancer. Not so nice a prospect for the Cookie Monsters out there, myself included.

Then, on the preventative side of the issue, you have the incredible story of curcumin borne out by research from the very prominent and mainstream University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Curcumin is the primary component of the spice turmeric by the way, and the short and sweet of this new research is that curcumin was found to have an innate “intelligence,” such that it can distinguish between cancer cells and normal healthy cells. The real kicker, however, is how curcumin interacts with these two types of cells. Not only does it flip gene switches that destroy cancer cells, it also serves to bolster the defenses of healthy cells. Yowza!

With a finding like that, you’d think that today’s front page article in the Wall Street Journal — citing MD Anderson Cancer Center as a primary source mind you — would contain the word “curcumin” at least once. But yet, it seems a curious omission. The article does of course mention drugs from the likes of Roche, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Pfizer … go figure.

Get your head down and raise your coffee cup!

Steve Dupont here with a little sweet talkin’ for you today on the subject of Splenda.

For those who may not know, Splenda is essentially another word for sucralose — although, interestingly enough, the actual packets of Splenda you may put in your coffee only contain 1.1% sucralose, the rest being maltodextrin and dextrose, which are also in the sugar family but used as fillers. So if you use a 1 g packet of Splenda, that equates to 11 mg of sucralose. Make a note of that, because there will be a quiz later …

With all the backlash against aspartame in recent years, and rightfully so in my opinion, given the number of disturbing studies on its metabolic effects — hell, it turns into wood alcohol and formaldehyde in your system! — Splenda has gained a lot of ground in the sugar substitute field (although aspartame is still the dominant sweetener in most diet soft drinks and other sugar-free products). And I must admit that, while I’ve had it in my “should avoid” category for years, I’ve also believed it to be relatively harmless in moderation, especially compared to aspartame.

Now, that opinion started to change this morning, when I read the following headline out of Mercola.com:

The other sweetener that’s made from sugar but is closer to DDT

This piqued my interest, as intended, so I read the article and found out that the other sweetener in question was Splenda.

To summarize the Splenda piece, it starts by laying out how artificial sweeteners in general have been shown to have a counterproductive effect on weight loss — that is, they actually trigger more cravings that lead to weight gain, and a couple studies are cited to back that up. The article also points out that Splenda — like aspartame and countless other artificial ingredients — has never been adequately proven safe for human consumption at any level. Also arguably true.

Then at last you get to that sensational part about Splenda being closer to DDT than sugar, which is never really fleshed out at all — except to say that both DDT and Splenda (sucralose) have chlorine atoms attached to them (Mercola says chlorine “molecules” which is not technically correct). It’s true, the similarity is there — sucralose has two 6-carbon rings (glucose and fructose, which together form sucrose) with three chlorine atoms attached to them — while DDT is also comprised of two 6-carbon rings (two benzene molecules) with a total of five chlorines attached to them. But chemistry is a funny thing. Not only can compounds with just one or two atoms difference have totally different properties, even two compounds with exactly the same chemical formula but different structural orientation (isomers) can behave very differently. The point is, I don’t think Splenda will be used as a pesticide anytime soon.

And I have one more big beef with this article — again, not for being wholly inaccurate but for sensationalizing and overreaching. When talking about the alleged dangerous effects of Splenda, Mercola says it “reduces the amount of good bacteria in your intestines by 50 percent, “increases the pH level in your intestines” and “affects a glycoprotein in your body that can have crucial health effects.” All this may very well be true, based on the cited study. But then again, it may NOT be true.

See, if Mercola was being precise, he would have said “Splenda has been shown to reduce the amount of good bacteria in rats’ intestines by 50%,” and so on, replacing “your” with “rats.’” After all, this was a study in which sucralose was fed to rats, not people. And, needless to say, animal studies can predict what will happen in humans, but not always. After all, most of us don’t have whiskers and tails.

That said, however, the effects of relatively moderate doses of sucralose in this study are a little concerning — namely, killing friendly gut flora (bacteria) and raising the pH (acidity) in the digestive tract, as measured in the stool (rat poop). It’s not clear if either of these conditions would impact humans in the same way, or what secondary health effects might result, but I can tell you this. You want friendly bacteria in your gut for proper digestion, immune function and much more. And you also want your pH to be in the neutral range (about 7.4). Not that you’re measuring, but the point is that when your body gets too acidic — as was happening to these rats — this is like throwing a monkey wrench into all the major enzymatic processes of your body. Which is to say, just about your entire metabolism, from the first gulp of that Diet Coke with Splenda to the point where your cells’ mitochondria turn it into the energy you need to grab the Twinkies off the top shelf of the cupboard …

Speaking of Diet Coke with Splenda — it’s not easy to find out how much actual sucralose a can of Diet Coke with Splenda contains. I searched all the various Internets and found nothing, so I called the Coca-Cola Corporation and indeed got the answer from a friendly representative named Toby: 60 mg per 12 oz. can.

Now, here’s the interesting part. The lowest doses at which rats in the previously cited study showed these various ill side effects was 1.1 mg/kg body weight. To put that in perspective, for a 132-pound (60 kg) person that would be 66 mg/day. It would take six packets of Splenda to reach that threshold — or, just over one can of Diet Coke. You think anyone (namely women, in the ballpark of 132 pounds) in this country is drinking more than one can of Diet Coke with Splenda per day?

Uh … I would venture to say YES.

To that, I would echo what researchers (wanting more research money) are always saying … “More studies are warranted.” (bigger and better ones, preferably with willing humans this time).