SPLENDA????

I'm sure you will get a LOT of different responses to this question. Personally, I discovered that even a tiny bit of Splenda in my coffee or tea gave me a pretty bad stomach ache. I am normally not very sensitive to food and drugs but I made this connection right away as it was the only change I had made to my diet (simply because the break room was out of regular sugar and I wanted something sweet). I was just listening to a nutrition show on the radio and they were saying that Splenda is basically sugar that has been altered so your body doesn't recognize it and doesn't digest it. I don't know all the chemical specifics, but I guess I don't think it is a great idea to put things in my body that it doesn't recognize. It just seems like a bad idea in the simplest sense. I feel like there are probably enough foreign, unrecognizable things going in my body that are beyond my control, I don't want to add things purposefully.

When you think about it, things that you add to your food should have calories, right? I mean, if you add more toppings to your pizza, you would expect it to have more calories. Why should it be any different with our sweeteners? I guess it all just creeps me out.

I have found that I have just gotten used to a lot of things without any sweeteners. I weaned myself off of sugar in my coffee. Now I just use skim milk and I love it. Same thing with my yogurt. I got used to just plain yogurt with fruit and that is quite sweet to me. I still like to have some chocolate or a cookie with dinner, so it isn't like I never eat added sugars, but when you cut back you really do find that you need less and less overall.

ive used splenda for the past 4 years solidly and i have NEVER had any issues with it. In fact, switching from sugar to splenda originally, i lost the urge to eat sugar with my tea and or coffee and i actually cant stand the taste of sugar now.

I don't use splenda, nutrasweet or any of those sweeteners.

My naturopathic doctor also told me to stay away from agave nectar because it is as bad for you as Corn Syrup. I am diabetic, so they market the Agave Nectar as being good for you and its not as good as they market it to be.............

I do use a bit of Sweet Leaf Stevia every once in a while, but not often. Other than that, I use a tiny bit of Raw Honey in hot tea, I don't use any honey out of the grocery store. This is raw straight from the farm.

Just to throw some science at ya...

The process of turning sugar into "Splenda" substitutes three atoms of chlorine in place of the naturally occuring hydrogen-oxygen groups in the sucrose molecule.

And if you know anything about the history of aspartame being approved by the FDA, I'd say it's safe to be skeptical of sucralose's approval too.

The FDA denied approval of aspartame for 16 years, then caved in to political/economic pressure when Don Rumsfeld, CEO of the manufacturer, was brought to Washington by Ronald Reagan. A new FDA Commissioner was appointed to approve it then became a consultant for NutraSweet's public relations firm for $1,000/day on a 10 year contract. One might expect FDA to be more cautious next time, yet FDA approved the toxic chlorocarbon Splenda without hesitation and without any long term testing on human subjects. For aspartame, animal studies clearly demonstrated its toxicity, and sucralose also failed in clinical trials with animals. Aspartame created brain tumors in rats. Sucralose has been found to shrink thymus glands (the biological seat of immunity) and produce liver inflammation in rats and mice.

I know that splenda is most likely not good for you. I consume it almost daily anyway. I like to add it to my yogurt or cottage cheese with fruit. I also use a splenda/sugar combo when baking. I haven't suffered from any side effects. I agree with Kaitlin.. it just seems like a bad idea to consume something chemically altered and unrecognizable by your body. and I like the thought of eating cleaner... I have researched this subject a little as well and read that Splenda is derived from a chlorine salt! Weird! Yet with the way I live I prefer convenience. Convenience comes in packages with ingredient lists as long as my arm. It's unfortunate that I can't pronounce some of the names of things that are going in my body. Just attempting to read the nutrition labels and make efforts towards good choices is enough for me right now. I just don't think it's always realistic to eat and live the way maybe we "should" be. I can't afford special foods. I can't afford the time to prepare them. So-- I guess what I'm saying is... I'm eating that bad stuff anyway! I'm perfectly healthy (as far as I know). I very rarely get sick and I haven't seen any side effects from my eating habits as of lately.

Best of luck!