Is Splenda bad for you?

snarky

"I disagree that the FDA is effective. Just because the process may be a pain in the neck does not mean that it is effective. There are food recalls or outbreaks all the time!"
No question. One reason is because the people in the FDA are…people and, as a human institution, it is possible that there will be bad actors, oopsies, and decisions made based on personal and political reasons.
And the FDA does not control the food chain from germination to ingestion. The recent problem with tainted ground beef is good example of how things can go wrong. Factor in the incidence of problems versus the hundreds of billions of pounds of food eaten in the US and I'm pretty happy with the job that they're doing (wow - me praising the Federal gov't for doing a good job?!)


"This article here talks about how the FDA did no long term testing on Splenda and the tests that were performed had an extremely small sample. http://www.womentowomen.com/healthyweight/splenda.aspx"
I'll save the link.

"I try to avoid all artificial sweeteners. The extra calories are worth the piece of mind to me even if it means that it is going to take longer for me to lose this weight."
Certainly can't go wrong doing that! :-)

I think the part of the problem with the food system is that the problems are systemic and different organization are in charge of different aspects of it. USDA for meat, FDA for other foods, EPA for bottled water are just the top three that come to mind.

You are right about the human aspect about it, people make mistakes, and in that regard, I think that they are generally doing an o.k. job. I am more concerned about the effect of agribusiness influence on the system more than anything else, I don't see much protection in there.