Why I Avoid Artificial Sweeteners Like The Plague

On to the next ingredient in my series explaining my Top 5 Ingredients I Avoid When Shopping post. (If you missed it, just click on the title in that last sentence and you can get caught up.)  Today we talk about artificial sweeteners.  This can include aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame K, neotame and probably more that I'm not remembering or that are still in the lab and will come out any day now!

In 'studying' to write this post, one of the most disturbing things was at the very beginning of my search.  If you type "artificial sweeteners" into your google search bar, the first page of links are all health related and contain the terms, "cancer" and "most dangerous".  Not good!

For the purposes of keeping this post as simple and easy to understand as possible, I am going to concentrate on aspartame.  The post would be 5 pages long (or longer) if I went into each one!

According to an article on Medicine Net , it was concluded after numerous studies that aspartame was safe with a daily intake of 40 mg/kg/day, except for people with phenylketonuria.

I'm sure you've seen the word before.  There is a phenylketonuria warning on all packages of things with aspartame... you know, the usual, "I'm covering my hind end warning".  Just like the warnings on cigarettes.

So, what it is phenylketonuria?

It is a genetic disease in which you are missing an enzyme needed to break down phenylalanine.  If phenylalanine builds up in the body (due to it not being broken down) it is harmful to the central nervous system and causes brain damage.

The reason you can't have aspartame if you have this disease is because aspartame is made up of phenylalanine, along with aspartic acid and methanol.

If you don't have phenylketonuria you might be wondering why you need to bother avoiding aspartame.  Here's why...  there have been reports of aspartame causing the following problems (this is just a sampling of the problems it can cause):

• Aspartame disease (yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, someone knows this stuff is bad if they are willing to name a disease after it!)
• Headaches 
• Birth defects
• Depression
• Cancer
• Increased hunger (interesting, seeing how they put it in diet drinks)

Here is a great article on the rest of the side effects of aspartame (the side effects are lengthy!).

I hope this gives you a little insight as to why it would be a good thing to cut this out of your diet... or at the very least try to avoid it.  I know this was all about aspartame and how it's evil, but remember sucralose, saccharin, acesulfame K, and neotame are all on that nasty list as well.  When you are in a restaurant and need a sweetener, stay away from the yellow and pink packets and go for the white... or the brown if the restaurant has raw sugar.

Tomorrow's post is the last of this series and will talk about glutamates.

See you then!

Why I Avoid Buying Foods With Sodium Benzoate

As promised in my post about the Top 5 Ingredients to Avoid, here is more information on Sodium Benzoate so that you will understand why it doesn’t enter my house.

There have been some health concerns about the combination of sodium benzoate and ascorbic acid or vitamin C. When the two are mixed, they can form the chemical benzene, which is carcinogenic (cancer causing).  However, sodium benzoate on its own is not considered a carcinogen, and you would have to consume a huge amount of it in order to have toxic levels in your body.  In mice studies where the animals were fed sodium benzoate, no adverse effects were reported, and the life expectancies of the mice were not shortened, nor was their health affected in any way.

Sounds convincing, right?  No not really because the research never tested the affect of sodium benzoate combined with Vitamin C on the health of the mice.  That is the real kicker.  That is what forms benzene which is carcinogenic.  What does carcinogenic mean?  Plainly, cancer causing.  It has also been known to destroy the DNA of the mitochondria in your cells.  Your mitochondria are also known as the ‘power centers’ of your cells.  This can lead to a number of neuro-degenerative diseases (including Parkinson’s).

Now, I suppose if you know without a shadow of a doubt that whatever you are buying with sodium benzoate does not also have Vitamin C in it, then maybe you could consider buying it.  Part of the problem is that most of the time (if not every time) I have seen it on an ingredient list, that product also contains Vitamin C, either naturally occurring or added.

I’m sure there is a lot more information out there about sodium benzoate.   Please do the research yourself to see if it is something you would consider eliminating from the ingredients you bring into your house.

In the end, when I am choosing what to buy at the store that is prepackaged I like to err on the side of caution.   If the ingredient doesn’t sound natural to me or if I’ve never heard of it, I won’t buy the product.   I will sometimes look it up when I get home, too. Then, I know if I can buy the product next shopping trip.  Generally, if I’m buying something prepackaged it’s not a necessity anyway, so it can wait.

I hope this helps you.   Check back tomorrow for the next ingredient on my list and why I avoid it.

**** Note: Upon further research, it appears that any ingredient that contains the word benzoate, is a potential threat to your health.  (Thank you Robert for asking me the question to prompt the research!)****

Why I Avoid Buying Things With Hydrdogenated Oils

Today's post will be my explanation of why our family avoids partially  hydrogenated and hydrogenated oils as pointed out in my post about the 5 ingredients we avoid.

Let me just start by saying that oils are not necessarily bad for you (at least some oils). However, when man...or woman, I'm not trying to discriminate here ;) ...comes in and changes the natural state of that oil by significantly increasing the temperature of that oil, it is now in a state that is unhealthy for human consumption.

The website, Natural News, has a wonderful article about hydrogenated oils. Here is an excerpt of it that will explain better than I ever could how the state of the oils are changed and what they do in our body:

"They take these naturally healthy oils such as palm, kernel, soybean, corn oil or coconut oil and they heat it anywhere from five hundred to one thousand degrees under several atmospheres of pressure.  They then inject a catalyst into the oil for several hours. The catalyst is typically a metal such a nickel, platinum or even aluminum. As this bubbles up into the oil the molecular structure changes and increases in density and rearranges it's molecules so that instead of a liquid at room
temperature we now have either semi-solid or solid oil. This creates either partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated oils.

The molecules in this new product are now closer to cellulose or plastic than to oil. In fact hydrogenated oil is only one molecule away from being plastic. When you eat anything containing this material, just as the oil is now thicker and more viscous (dense), so too does your blood become thicker and more viscous right along with it. The heart now has to work so much harder to pump blood throughout the system. This is one of the major ways that consuming hydrogenated oils contributes to high blood pressure.

As you can imagine, this thicker blood with this gummy substance flowing with it can easily lodge in the arteries and build up the arterial plaque.  It doesn't take anywhere near as much time as you may think for this to occur. Some studies have shown that negative health effects of eating processed foods occurs within only minutes of consuming such foods."

I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like a good thing...

Bottom line... we shouldn't be eating foods with this stuff in it.

Manufacturers put it in our foods because it makes it so that it can stay on the shelf longer and that increases their profits.

This is just a taste of why I don't like to have this in my family's diet.  If you would like to read a very detailed article on hydrogenated oils I highly recommend you read the full article quoted above. You can find it here.

Tune in tomorrow for the next ingredient on my list!

Have a great day!

I'm Behind...

At the beginning of October, I posted the top 5 ingredients that I avoid at the grocery store.  At the end of my post, I told you that I would write something up about each ingredient individually so that you could understand WHY I avoid them.

Well, over the past few months, I got a little caught up on… well, life, and haven’t posted them yet.  I apologize.  I did post on High Fructose Corn Syrup and why I avoid that ingredient.

So if you missed it, you can go back and read it if you'd like and be ready for the rest of the ingredients!

Tomorrow, I will continue on with the ingredients.

I will go in the order that I listed them in the original post, just because it makes sense (even though the order of the ingredients has nothing to do with which one is worse than the others).

The post tomorrow will be on hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils.

See you tomorrow!

A Blogtastic Extravaganza Winners!

A Blogtastic Extravaganza was super fun!  A huge thank you goes to to Jessica at My Silly Monkeys for coordinating the event!

I hope you all had fun going around to the different blogs and entering the giveaways.

Here are my winners:

The first winner is Mama Chocolate!  She won the Healthy School Days Menu AND a seat to the blogging class!

The other 2 winners who each won a seat to the blogging class are Ashley T and Becky!

I'm excited for all of you!  Hope you all have fun and learn lots in the blogging class and I know Mama Chocolate will learn more about how to feed your family healthy food with her Healthy School Days Menu!

A Blogtastic Extravaganza Giveaway!

*Sorry, but this giveaway is now closed.*

( winners are announced here)

I am participating in a blog giveaway event called A Blogtastic Extravaganza with over 100 other blogs!

You have the awesome opportunity to enter into all A Blogtastic Extravaganza giveaways from today until January 22nd 2011, at 11:59pm EST.

There are over $13,000 in prizes to be won, so after you enter to win the prizes on my blog, makes sure to see the bottom of this post so that you can click through to everyone else's blogs to enter theirs too!

So, what can you win on my blog?

I am giving away a Healthy School Days Menu (pictured above) from Dr. Mom Online (also A Blogtastic Extavaganza participant, so don't forget to go to her blog and enter her giveaway, too!).  She gives some great tips on how to make your children's week just a little bit healthier!

Also, Blogelina is giving away 3 seats to her February class: Profitable Blogging for Beginners, The Online Class.  Each class registrant receives entrance to the class, the 70 page class manual, and a free year of web hosting for their blog (an $84 value)!  Don't have a blog?  No problem!  Just gift it to someone that does!  I am sure they would be appreciative!

How do you enter, you ask?  It's so easy!

All you do is make sure you are a public follower of my blog on Google Friend Connect (on the left of this page) AND 'like' Blogelina on Facebook.  Then, leave me a comment below to let me know you have done both of these things.  (your comment is your entry, so don't forget this step!)

Want extra entries? 

(Please know that the following entries are optional!)

Do any (or all) of the following and you will get an extra entry for each one.  (of course, leaving a comment for each one you do) *Note: You must follow this blog on GFC AND 'like' Blogelina on FB before you can do the extra entries.

1. Follow @MomswithBlogs on Twitter.
2. Follow @callitnatural on Twitter.
3. Follow @drmomonline on Twitter.
4. 'Like' Dr. Mom Online on Facebook.

That's it!  Easy, right?  The first person that is selected will win the Healthy School Days Menu AND one seat for the Profitable Blogging for Beginners, The Online Class.  The next two people selected will win seats for the Profitable Blogging for Beginners, The Online Class.

Don't forget to check out all the other blogs participating!  Have fun!

Good-Bye Sweet Smart-Pot

I am in mourning.

It has been weeks now since I had to say good-bye.

My smart-pot crock-pot by Rival is no more.

I was washing her and started to put her in the drying rack as always when she slipped out of my hand and crashed to the floor shattering into countless pieces!

I'd be lying if I said I didn't shed a tear. (don't tell anyone though)

I really didn't realize how often she helped me with dinner.  She was always there for me when getting home from kids activities that ended right before dinner time leaving no time to prepare anything.  She always had food waiting for us.  She was so loyal.

And I betrayed her with my slippery fingers and let her fall to the floor!

I can only hope that she knows how much she was loved.