A bad joke with deadly consequences

They’ve got to be kidding.

The American Diabetes Association (this time in conjunction with the American Heart Association) released a statement recently that may very well trump every piece of terrible advice they’ve given to-date.

Turns out, they’re giving their official stamp of approval to “nonnutritive sweeteners to help people maintain a healthy body weight and for diabetics to aid glucose control.”

Those sweeteners include aspartame, acesulfame K, neotame, saccharin, and sucralose. I will give them one small bit of credit for including stevia on the list, too. But that one bit of wisdom can’t make up for the sheer stupidity of the rest of this recommendation.

Yes, all these sweeteners have zero calories. But because your body isn’t getting that caloric “payoff” when you eat them, these artificial sweeteners actually set you up to crave more sweets. So, even though they’re zero calories, they still feed your waistline.

But that’s not all the damage they do…

When your brain registers sweetness of any kind, it tells your body to release insulin. But if there’s no sugar for the insulin to interact with, it seeks other readily available forms of sugar. And sugars are an essential component of your joints and eyes. So it’s not such a stretch to see how routinely eating high potency artificial sweeteners may lead to vision and joint problems. And those are just two examples of the havoc they can wreak on your health.

So, please, whatever you do, stay away from these poisons!