Three Things I Hate About Diet Coke

Three Things I Hate About Diet Coke:

1. Aspartame - nutrasweet the artificial sweetener is proabaly the most dangerous and toxic substance added to food on the market right now, it accounts for over 75% of adverse reactions reported to the FDA - my last blog entry gives a very detailed report of exactly what aspartame is, why it is bad, its effects, etc...
   
2. Sodium Benzoate - a preservative used in almost all sodas, is bad in and of itself but when it mixes with ascorbic acid (vitamin C), as that is addded to many sodas nowadays - produces benzene. Benzene is associated with leukemia and other cancers of the blood. Aside from soda, it is generally found in pollutants such as car exhaust fumes. Traces of the cancer-causing chemical benzene have been found in soft drinks, at levels up to eight times those allowed in drinking water. Although no more than one part per billion of benzene is allowed in drinking water, there are no legal restrictions on the amount present in soft drinks.
   
3. High Fructose Corn Syrup - Drinking high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), the main ingredient in most soft drinks throughout the world, increases your triglyceride levels and your LDL (bad) cholesterol. These effects only occurred in the study participants who drank fructose (HCFS)-- not glucose. Consumption of beverages containing fructose rose 135 percent between 1977 and 2001. Food and beverage manufacturers began switching their sweeteners from sucrose (table sugar) to corn syrup in the 1970s when they discovered that HFCS was not only cheaper to make, it was also much sweeter (processed fructose is nearly 20 times sweeter than table sugar), a switch that has drastically altered the American diet. Part of what makes HFCS such an unhealthy product is that it is metabolized to fat in your body far more rapidly than any other sugar, and, because most fructose is consumed in liquid form, its negative metabolic effects are significantly magnified.HFCS has also been linked to:
   

Diabetes
Obesity
Metabolic Syndrome

The delusion that fructose is an acceptable form of sugar is quite prevalent in many nutritional circles (and if you believe the new commercials on TV put out by the corn refiner assoc). In fact, nearly all simple sugars are metabolized quickly and disrupt insulin levels, which contributes to most chronic illness. Eating small amounts of whole fruit will not provide tremendous amounts of fructose and should not be a problem for most people, unless diabetes or obesity is an issue but fruit juices, sodas and other beverages sweetened with fructose should be avoided.To make matters worse, the corn that the high fructose corn syrup is metabolized from nearly all comes from genetically modified corn which is fraught with its own well documented side effects and health concerns. 

One study (dismissed by the FDA interestingly enough) involving orphans in India had the children eating GM cereal for breakfast everyday, the kid's blood was tested periodically to monitor for effects - the study had to be stopped before it was finished because shockingly - the children's blood had begun to show signs of pre-cancerous cell activity as a result of the change in diet to Genetically Modified wheat.

High fructose corn syrup is is not something that should be in your diet at all. But HFCS is the primary caloric sweetener in U.S. soft drinks. Researchers estimate that most Americans eat 132 calories of HFCS per day, while the top 20 percent of sweetener consumers eat over 300. And some, they say, eat as much as 700 calories per day of HFCS. Sodas, of course, are not the only source of HFCS (though they represent one of the main ones). This dangerous sweetener is also in many processed foods and fruit juices, so to avoid it you need to focus your diet on whole foods and, if you do purchase packaged foods, become an avid label reader. 

BUT here comes the bright side:
I know of a certain acupressure based technique that will leave you with zero desire to even look at the sugary stuff. http://www.healingwithmonika.com/