The Hippocrates Health Institute Demonstrates How Food Can Be Used as Medicine

Considered a father of Western medicine, Hippocrates advocated the healing effects of food. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

The Hippocrates Health Institute, situated in southern Florida, is one of the world's oldest complementary health centers. Dr. Brian Clement got started with the organization in 1975, and assumed directorship in 1980.

He’s also the author of a three-volume series of academic books called, Food Is Medicine: The Scientific Evidence, reflecting on the work done at the Institute over the past six decades, combined with the empirical evidence coming out of research institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Princeton, and Stanford.

Dr. Clement is the medical director of the Hippocrates Health Institute. They offer residential programs lasting anywhere from one to three weeks, sometimes even longer. This allows you to learn, absorb, and help implement a new set of lifestyle strategies at a deep and lasting level.

The Institute was founded by a woman named Anne Wigmore who, in 1952, was diagnosed with stage IV colon cancer. Her doctors told her she had about three months left to live.

“Well, thank goodness for her history,” Dr. Clement says. “In Europe, her grandmother was a village doctor. She saw her grandma, a natural doctor who used herbs and plants. She adopted that, healed herself, and reversed her cancer.”

Upon her return to Boston, Massachusetts, Wigmore decided to share her experience and help others who were suffering debilitating and lethal diseases. And so the Hippocrates Health Institute was born in Boston in 1956.

Today, six decades in business, the Institute is at the cutting edge in terms of using food and other lifestyle strategies as medicine. When Dr. Clement first joined the staff, he was sent off to Europe.

“I spent three years there, bringing back the message of plant-based raw food diets and ran the original living food center called Humlegaarden – which was started more than 100 years ago in Denmark by Dr. Kristine Nolfi, who had reversed breast cancer with raw food... I came back in 1980 and assumed the directorship,” he says.

What You Can Learn at the Hippocrates Health Institute

Presently, about half of the Institute’s patients are interested in disease prevention. The other half are quite ill. People come from all over the world to learn how to improve and regain their health at this spa-style health retreat. As I said earlier, I had a chance to personally visit the Institute for a week, and it was truly a wonderful experience.

One of the things I was particularly impressed with is the focus on raw foods, specifically sprouts.

I usually eat six to eight ounces of sunflower seed sprouts a day. Four truly powerful nutritional approaches taught at the institute are:

• Intermittent fasting and shifting from burning carbs to burning fat as your primary fuel
• Eating live, raw foods, including lots of sprouts
• Avoiding sugars, refined foods, and processed foods. They also advise avoiding all fruit juices and minimizing fruit initially
• Shifting from poor quality protein to high-quality protein

With respects to the latter, Dr. Clement explains:

“... [E]ach and every one of those four aspects are clinically researched here, and we’ve established concrete empirical evidence on how they work, biochemically, in your body, [and] high-protein diets are major culprits.

What we have seen recently, after 60 years and working with hundreds of thousands of people, is that when we reduce the amount of protein... and minimize the breakdown effect or digestion effect that your body requires to take this very dense nutrition and split it to amino acids, there’s health balance.

Our colleagues in Europe have added another dimension... glycation [and]advanced glycation end products (AGEs). In Germany, they showed us that proteins, when bonding with sugars, actually created another structure.

This structure is such an oddity, an enigma to the human biochemistry, that the immune system doesn’t know what to do with it. It runs rampant, actually causing cell death, producing free radicals.

When we bond high-protein diets, certainly high-animal protein diets (although this could happen in high-soybean diets) and sugars (not only white sugar and red beet but agave syrup and way too many soy proteins), you end up killing cells and creating free radicals. That’s what glycation and AGE’s does.”

Sprouts—Powerhouses of Nutrition

In 1992, Johns Hopkins researched natural ways to squelch cancer. A diet high in cruciferous vegetables was identified as a factor that lowered the incidence. Additional research identified broccoli as having some of the most potent anti-cancer activity. Since then, when they finally looked into sprouted broccoli seeds, researchers discovered that the phytochemical in the sprouts killed cancer dozensof times more effectively than mature broccoli!

The reason why they teach that sprouts are a core food at the Institute is because sprouts, depending on the variety, are anywhere from 10 to 30 times more nutritious than the best organic vegetables you can grow in the best organic soil in your yard.

Sunflower seed and pea sprouts tend to top the list, in terms of their nutritional profile, each being typically about 30 times more nutritious than organic vegetables. While you can sprout a variety of different beans, nuts, seeds and grains, sprouts in general have the following beneficial attributes:

• Support for cell regeneration
• Powerful sources of antioxidants, minerals, vitamins and enzymes that protect against free radical damage
• Alkalinizing effect on your body, which is thought to protect against disease, including cancer (as many tumors are acidic)
• Abundantly rich in oxygen, which can also help protect against abnormal cell growth, viruses and bacteria that cannot survive in an oxygen-rich environment

Phytonutrients, found in raw foods such as sprouts, are key for reversing disease with food. This is such a common-sense approach to health, yet the vision of so many people has been clouded by modern day living.

“I’ll never forget Ann Wigmore... This woman was purely heart and instinct. That’s why she was correct almost always,” Dr. Clement says. “I was frustrating her because I was young and insecure and was, in a way, challenging her [to explain]: “How does this reverse disease?”

She got frustrated one day and took a little organic sunflower seed, and said, “Don’t you realize if we put this to the ground, in seven weeks, it will be 12 to 15 feet-tall with thousands of seeds on it? That sunflower plant is going to be facing the east in the morning and facing the west at night. Now, don’t you think the power of the sunflower is that you’re taking hundreds and thousands of these, by eating them, and that juicing them is going to be good for you?”

It’s the light force in the food that is even more important than the nutrients and the proteins... It is so overwhelmingly obvious that, whatever food choices you make, eat large amounts of green, fresh food.”

Sprouts may in fact be one of the most obvious solutions to worldwide malnutrition and hunger due to poverty. They’re inexpensive and simple to grow, in virtually any climate when grown indoors, and can provide up to 30 times more nutrients than even organically grown vegetables! With barely any money at all, you can eat the healthiest of diets, year-round. Keeping seeds for sprouting is easy. Seeds are relatively simple to store and last for a long time. You also have to store FAR less food if you’re using seeds, as they don’t take up much space. I think it’s just a marvelous preparation strategy.

The Health Benefits of Intermittent Fasting

One of the things I teach is that, for most people, it’s far healthier to skip breakfast. Omitting breakfast, as part of an intermittent fasting schedule, can have a number of phenomenal health benefits, from improving your insulin sensitivity to shifting your body into burning more fat instead of sugar for fuel. This will help you painlessly lose weight without being hungry as you will now finally have the ability to burn fat. The Hippocrates Institute has also more or less eliminated breakfast, serving only raw vegetable juicesin the morning. This is basically intermittent fasting, even though it’s not being taught as that in the program.

Intermittent fasting, also known as “scheduled eating,” does not necessarily mean abstaining from all food for extended periods of time. Rather it refers to limiting your eating to a narrow window of time each day. Ideally, you’ll want to limit your eating to a window of about 6-8 hours, say from noon until 6 or 8 pm each day, which means you’re fasting daily for 16-18 hours. This is enough to get your body to shift into fat-burning mode.

This is a gradual process. Typically you start by not eating anything for three hours prior to going to sleep. This will give you a head start to the fasting process so if you sleep for 8 hours you’ve already fasted for 11 hours when you awake. The next step is to wait as long as you can before you start your first meal or “break” your fast. You can gradually extend the time that you have your first meal by 15 to 30 minutes a day. After several weeks you will be having your first meal at lunch. Typically, the more your body uses carbs as its primary fuel rather than fat, the longer this will take. Once you shift to fat burning mode, modern research has confirmed some of the benefits to be:

• Normalizing your insulin sensitivity, which is key for optimal health as insulin resistance is a primary contributing factor to nearly all chronic disease, from diabetes to heart disease and even cancer
• Normalizing ghrelin levels, also known as "the hunger hormone"
• Promoting human growth hormone (HGH) production, which plays an important part in health, fitness and slowing the aging process
• Lowering triglyceride levels
• Reducing inflammation and lessening free radical damage

Juice Your Vegetables Without Adding Fruit

The Hippocrates Institute also provides and promotes raw vegetable juicing—but not the juicing of fruits. The reasons for this are manifold. According to Dr. Clement:

“Seventy-five percent of raw food eaters today are sugar addicts trading white sugar for agave syrup; trading cakes for three mangoes or watermelons. You’re still a sugar addict... We’ve done empirical research on that. For 35 years, [sugar, including fruit] has been restricted here at Hippocrates in people with cancer.”

If you have cancer and are in treatment, the Institute will tell you to eliminate all sugar, fruit juices and most fruit initially. Fruit juice is clearly worse than eating the whole fruit, since you’re then getting a high dose of fructose all at once, without any of the fiber. But even excessive whole fruit can be a problem for the vast majority of people today, especially if you’re struggling with your weight, insulin resistance, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease or cancer.

Large amounts of fructose, especially for someone who’s insulin- and/or leptin-resistant, is not a good idea. Dr. Clement, however, believes that most people, with the exception of athletes, should avoid fruit.

Remember, this is his position, not mine. I am just presenting it so you can evaluate it for yourself. Personally I believe that if you are fat adapted, fruit can be beneficial, especially if consumed before or after a workout where the sugar is consumed as a fuel and does not increase glycogen stores. His argument probably makes more sense for those who are insulin and/or leptin resistant, which happens to be the vast majority of the population.

Why Large Amounts of Fruit Are Not Recommended

Some 30 years ago, Dr. Clement met a fruit cultivation specialist who informed him about some nutritional facts that few people ever consider. Eighty-five percent of the fruit available today did not exist 100 years ago. Fruit has been thoroughly changed through hybridization practices to increase sweetness, and therein lies the problem... and the answer to why it’s probably unwise for most people to eat a diet high in fruit.

For example, the honeybell orange, which is quite sweet, was spliced together about 35 years ago, mixing grapefruit with tangerine. And the popular Red Delicious apple? It’s now 50 times higher in fructose than the original apple, which was more sour than a crab apple!

“Here’s where we saw it: the average fruit today through hybridization has a minimum of 30 times more sugar on an average,” Dr. Clement says, and this is why one of humankind’s original foods is no longer appropriate in large quantities...

Our forefathers also didn’t eat processed sugar, which was primarily reserved for the aristocracy. Increasing sugar consumption over the past four or five generations has resulted in disturbed pancreatic functioning in most people. The human pancreas simply doesn’t know how to process sugars properly anymore, due to being overloaded.

“Now we have massive sugars from what I considered to be the original food of man. What could be more perfect? You eat a fruit, you spit it out, and the seed grows another tree. But now it is quite an altered fruit. Added to this, your pancreas doesn’t work well. So, now you have a problem. When we can get people off the addictive pattern of sugar and we can get them onto plant-based foods without the high-sugar content with enough glucose in it to sustain fuel of the cell, they don’t age prematurely and it works,” he says.

“I would rather have a mango than a green lettuce, because it tastes better. But a green lettuce supplies glucose for my cell without supplying additional amounts that become blood sugar, which not only creates blood sugar swings but feeds every known disease to man and create free radicals. That’s the answer... Definitively, I say that the only people who can eat – not should eat– dried fruit and a lot of bananas are people who are major athletes.”

Unripe Fruit Creates Acidity, and Most Commercially Available Fruit is Unripe...

Another interesting aspect relating to the consumption of fruit is the fact that often the fruit available at your local grocery store is not ripe, and unripe fruit, according to Dr. Clement, creates acidity in your body. (Ripe fruit is alkaline.) Sure, the fruit you buy maylook ripe, but we actually have a vastly erroneous concept of how fruit ripens.

As it turns out, you cannot commercially process ripe fruit. If you were to pack ripe oranges in Florida, for example, and ship them to another state, they’d be rotten in about a week. Hence the fruit is picked months before it’s ripe. If you’re like most people, you probably think that once a fruit turns color and softens, it’s ripening. But this is not accurate.

Dr. Clement explains that in order for a fruit to optimally ripen, it must remain attached to the branch on the tree or bush. Nutrients are continuously fed to the fruit while on the tree. The veins that feed the fruit come from the roots, which in turn extract nutrients from the soil and beneficial soil bacteria. Add to that the UV rays from the sun, causing photosynthesis to occur throughout the plant. Once you pluck the fruit, it’s no longer receiving nutrients, and the ripening process stops. Hence the nutritional value of the fruit is compromised.

“We tell people that up to 15 percent of your diet can be ripe organic fruit, even if you’re not an athlete. But once we get beyond the 15 percent, 20 percent it starts to spill over and put sugar in the blood,” Dr. Clement says.

If Eating Fruit, Consider this Food Combining Principle

I recently interviewed Wayne Pickering, better known as “The Mango Man.” He eats plenty of fruit, but appears to be quite healthy. He is a strong proponent of food combining. Food combination takes into account the area and complexity of digestion of each food, to ensure it goes through your entire digestive system with ease. One of the core principles of food combining according to Dr. Pickering is that you should not combine fruit with vegetables, as this inhibits proper digestion. So, if you’re going to eat fruit, seek to eat it by itself, and not in combination with other foods—especially not starches. Dr. Clement agrees with this approach, saying:

“Yes, this is something I have adopted... [W]e’ve had so many times, when people have gotten on the food combining, they’ve eliminated gastrointestinal problems; diverticulosis, diverticulitis, overweight, nausea, and headaches. It has a lot to do with this [principle].”

Juice, Don’t Blend, Your Veggies

Last but not least, with regards to juicing Dr. Clement makes a very interesting and important distinction. Chopping and blending your veggies with a high speed blender should not be confused with juicing as it does NOT provide you with the same health benefits as juicing. Remarkably, blending your veggies using a blender can kill up to 90 percent of the nutrients in 90 seconds, primarily due to oxidation, according to Dr. Clement. He explains:

“I had a colleague at the University of Miami set up a 29-dollar blender. He had his Vitamix. We measured the nutritional levels in several ounces of food. We put that food in the blenders. We knew what the numbers were. We blended it for 90 seconds. About 15 years ago, we found out that 90 percent of the nutrients (we were looking at vitamins A, E, C; the basic five nutrients at the top) are killed in 90 seconds of blending with a high-speed blender.”

Furthermore, when you drink—opposed to chew—the blended vegetables, your body does not produce the enzymes required for digestion of the pulp. Eighty percent of carbohydrates are digested in your mouth when you chew. Without the enzymes to break down the carbohydrates, your blended veggies begin to ferment in your intestinal tract. If the food you eat is not digesting properly, not only can painful gas, heart burn, acid reflux and other stomach problems arise, but your body will also be deprived of critical nutrients, which defeats the whole purpose of juicing in the first place.

More Information

Tens of thousands of people have already visited the Hippocrates Health Institute, and if you're interested in their services, check out their website at www.hippocratesinst.org. You can also call them at 561-623-1002. The Institute is open seven days a week.

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Oreos Are Found to Be as Addictive as Cocaine

English: Double Stuf Oreos, by Nabisco. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

When you eat refined processed sugars, they trigger production of your brain's natural opioids -- a key ingredient in the addiction process. Your brain essentially becomes addicted to stimulating the release of its own opioids as it would to morphine or heroin.

This addictive nature of sugar and processed food has again been confirmed by a psychology professor and a team of students at the College of Connecticut,1, 2who showed that Oreo cookies are just as addictive as cocaine or morphine.

The study, which was designed to investigate the potential addictiveness of high-fat/high-sugar foods, also found that eating Oreos activated more neurons in the rat brain’s pleasure center than exposure to illicit drugs did. According to professor Schroeder:

“Our research supports the theory that high-fat/ high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do. It may explain why some people can’t resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them.”

The idea for the study originated with neuroscience major Jamie Honohan, who wanted to know how the high prevalence of junk foods in low-income neighborhoods might contribute to the obesity epidemic.

Indeed, it’s quite revealing to note that, in contrast to third-world countries, in the US the poorest people have the highest obesity rates. This seeming contradiction is, I believe, a clear indication that the problem stems from the diet itself.

Something in the cheapest and most readily available foods is creating metabolic havoc, and that’s exactly what researchers keep finding. As reported by Connecticut college:

“...Oreos activated significantly more neurons than cocaine or morphine. 'This correlated well with our behavioral results and lends support to the hypothesis that high-fat/ high sugar foods can be thought of as addictive,' said Schroeder.

And that could be a problem for the general public, says Honohan. ‘Even though we associate significant health hazards in taking drugs like cocaine and morphine, high-fat/ high-sugar foods may present even more of a danger because of their accessibility and affordability,’ she said.”

Please note that I do not agree with the comment that everything that is considered high-fat is bad for you. Oreo cookies and virtually every other processed snack are bad because they use highly processed omega-6 vegetable oils, the wrong type of fat. However it is possible to make a healthy high-fat snack using oils like coconut oil.

Processed Foods Are DESIGNED to Be Addictive

Indeed, scientific research into the addictive nature of certain foods, combined with shocking “insider” exposés,3 tells us that Americans are not necessarily lacking in self control when it comes to their food consumption. Rather, food companies have perfected food concoctions that are addictive. And they know it.

Most people blindly believe that food companies will do the right thing; that they would never produce food that might be toxic or harmful. This, we’ve learned is not the case.

The food industry is well aware of its role in creating obesity, and they’re not ignorant as to the reason why Americans can’t seem to get enough junk food. They even insist on selling foods to the American market with ingredients that have been banned for health reasons in other countries...

Most processed foods are actually created to be addictive—whether we’re talking about cookies or pasta sauce—through the masterful use of addictive ingredients like salt, fat, sugar and a wide variety of proprietary flavorings.

In a previous New York Times article,4 investigative reporter Michael Moss wrote about the extraordinary science behind taste and junk food addiction, and how multinational food companies struggle to maintain their “stomach shares” in the face of mounting evidence that their foods are driving the health crisis.

In it he mentions a 1999 meeting between 11 CEOs in charge of America’s largest food companies, including Kraft, Nabisco, General Mills, Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola and Mars, where their role in the increasingly poor health of Americans was addressed head-on. Moss writes in part:

“James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury... was engaged in conversation with a group of food-science experts who were painting an increasingly grim picture of the public’s ability to cope with the industry’s formulations —

From the body’s fragile controls on overeating to the hidden power of some processed foods to make people feel hungrier still. It was time, he and a handful of others felt, to warn the C.E.O.’s that their companies may have gone too far in creating and marketing products that posed the greatest health concerns.“

SHOCKING! EU Approves Health Claim for Fructose

With everything we now know about the metabolic disaster that is fructose, it’s absolutely SHOCKING to learn that the European Union has approved a health claim for fructose,5 slated to take effect as of 2014. Many of my readers are scattered through the EU nations, and for you, understanding the ramifications of this label is crucial.

As of 2014, food manufacturers that replace at least 30 percent of the glucose and/or sucrose content in their food with fructose will be allowed to put a health claim on their product, stating that it has a positive effect on carbohydrate metabolism and insulin sensitivity.

There’s no doubt in my mind that such a health claim will promote an avalanche of chronic disease, as food manufacturers start switching from the lesser to the greater of two evils... As reported by Ingredients Network:6

“[F]ood and beverage manufacturers can expect a healthy upward surge in sales for products with fructose from the 2nd of January 2014 when the European Union’s fructose health claim comes into effect. ...[T]he fructose declaration promises to be truly ground breaking for food and beverage manufacturers. Manufacturers who substitute at least 30 percent of glucose or sucrose with fructose can now claim that

‘Consumption of foods containing fructose leads to a lower blood glucose rise compared to foods containing sucrose or glucose.’ ...fructose’s ability to emphasize fruity flavors also makes the news particularly favorable for manufacturers of beverages, fruit preparations, fruit flavored ice-cream, yogurts and more.

Since the EU’s game-changing step, validating fructose benefits, the industry’s attention has focused with increased urgency on the opportunities presented by incorporating non-GMO crystalline fructose into different food and beverages products...”

Why Fructose Is Worse for You Than Other Sugars

One of the primary problems with refined fructose is that it is isocaloric but not isometabolic. What this means is that while you can have the same amount of calories from fructose or any other nutrient, including glucose, the metabolic effect will be entirely different despite the identical calorie count.

While it is true that refined fructose creates a lower glycemic response immediately after eating it, compared to sucrose or glucose, to say that it is therefore healthier for you is a gross and seriously misleading claim that wholly ignores its overall metabolic consequences.

In short, the fact that refined fructose produces a lower immediate glycemic response is completely irrelevant, because the overall metabolic effects are far more destructive. In my view, this label is dangerous, and may set the EU up for an out-of-control spiral of chronic disease.

Refined fructose actually affects your body in ways similar to alcohol, hence the rise in non-alcoholic fatty liver disease—and, again, addiction. Fructose and ethanol both have immediate, narcotic effects associated with their dopaminergic properties. In the same way that alcohol can lead to the downward spiral of compulsive overconsumption, fructose tends to generate an insatiable and intense sensation of pleasurable sweetness, often driving us to consume far more than our body can handle; even while it damages multiple organ systems.

The EU Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies even spells out the consequences in their Opinion paper,7 while still agreeing with the proposed health claim for fructose:

“The Panel considers that in order to bear the claim, glucose or sucrose should be replaced by fructose in sugar sweetened foods or beverages. The target population is individuals who wish to reduce their post-prandial glycaemic responses. The Panel notes that high intakes of fructose may lead to metabolic complications such as dyslipidaemia, insulin resistance and increased visceral adiposity.“ [Emphasis mine]

What You Need to Know About Fructose versus Glucose Metabolism

Again, while refined fructose creates a lower glycemic response in the short term, compared to other sugars, in the long term, it causes greater metabolic havoc than sugar. This has been repeatedly demonstrated in scientific studies. One of the most recent ones, published in the journal Nature,8 again concluded that while refined fructose and glucose have the same caloric value, they are metabolized differently, and fructose causes more harm of the two. Below is a summary of the main differences between glucose and fructose metabolism, which explains why I keep repeating that fructose is by far the worst type of sugar there is:

With fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent	When you eat 120 calories of glucose, less than one calorie is stored as fat. 120 calories of fructose results in 40 calories being stored as fat. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat!
Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is "burned up" immediately after you consume it. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides, which get stored as fat	The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and causes gout
The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat, both in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes	Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain's communication with leptin, resulting in overeating
Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this	In addition to fructose's dopamine modulating activity, there appears to be afructose-opiate connection. While both glucose and fructose are capable of creating pain killing effects, researchers have found that fructose is more potent than glucose in accomplishing these effects, suggesting it may be more addictive

 http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/10/30/oreos-fructose-consumption.aspx  Visit Mercola for more information and videos on this topic.

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Dangers of Sugar Substitutes

 Cyclamate packets, Sugar substitute (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

By Dr. Mercola

With all the dire health effects associated with refined sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), many wonder what, if anything, is actually safe to use to sweeten your foods and beverages.

It’s certainly a good question. You do have to be cautious when choosing an alternative, as many sweeteners that are widely regarded as "healthy" are, in reality, anything but. A previous National Geographic article1 set out to compare eight different sugar substitutes, which fall into four general categories:

• Artificial sweeteners
• Sugar alcohols
• Natural sweeteners
• Dietary supplements

Sadly lacking from their review are any notations about adverse health effects of many of the sugar substitutes tested.

Despite copious scientific evidence of harm, artificial sweeteners, for example, are promoted in the featured article, and by “experts” in general, as safe because they “pass through your body undigested.” Needless to say, safety concerns will be front and center in this article.

The Case Against Artificial Sweeteners

Sweetener lesson 101: Avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague. While the mechanisms of harm may differ, they’re all harmful in one way or another. This includes aspartame (NutraSweet, Equal), sucralose (Splenda), saccharin(Sweet'N Low), acesulfame potassium, neotame, and others.

Twenty years ago I wasn’t sure, but now there's little doubt in my mind  that artificial sweeteners can be far worse for you than sugar and fructose, and there is plenty of scientific evidence to back up that conclusion. In fact, there’s enough evidence showing the dangers of consuming artificial sweeteners to fill an entire book -- which is exactly why I wrote Sweet Deception.

Aspartame is perhaps the most dangerous of the bunch. At least it’s one of the most widely used and has the most reports of adverse effects. There are also hundreds of scientific studies demonstrating its harmful effects.

This is why it’s so frustrating to see big companies like Coca-Cola Company purposely deceive you on this issue, which is exactly what they’re currently doing with their “public service” announcement-type ads, in which they “affirm” aspartame’s safety and benefits.

Center for Science in the Public Interest’s (CSPI) Executive Director Michael F. Jacobson issued the following statement in response to Coca-Cola’s new ad:2

“Aspartame has been found to cause cancer3—leukemia, lymphoma, and other tumors—in laboratory animals, and it shouldn’t be in the food supply. We certainly want Coca-Cola to shift its product mix toward lower- and no-calorie drinks, but aspartame’s reputation isn’t worth rehabilitating with this propaganda campaign.

The company would be better off phasing out its use of aspartame and accelerating its research into safer, natural sweeteners such as those extracted from the stevia plant.”

Don’t Fall for Coca-Cola’s Deceptive “Public Announcement” Ads

Besides pulling the wool over your eyes with regards to the lack of overall safety of aspartame, I think the FTC would be warranted to sue Coke and the other diet soda manufacturers for fraudulent advertising, seeing how:

1. There’s no scientific evidence showing that the use of diet sodas actually lead to weight loss.
On the contrary, studies have repeatedly shown that artificial sweeteners cause greater weight gain than regular sugar.4 Studies have also repeatedly linked artificial sweeteners with increased hunger. For example, one study published in the journal Physiology & Behavior in 19885 found that intense (no- or low-calorie) sweeteners can produce significant changes in appetite. Of the three sweeteners tested, aspartame produced the most pronounced effects.
2. Scientific evidence shows that aspartame actually worsens insulin sensitivityto a greater degree than sugar.
This is quite the blow for diabetics who obediently follow the recommendation to switch to diet sodas to manage their condition. Unfortunately, in large part due to misleading and deceptive advertising, many doctors and registered nutritionists are still under the illusion that artificial sweeteners are a safe and effective alternative for their diabetic patients.

Artificial sweeteners also appear to cause many of the same health effects associated with high sugar consumption.  Most recently, a report published in the journal Trends in Endocrinology & Metabolism6 highlighted the fact that diet soda drinkers suffer the same exact health problems as those who opt for regular soda, including excessive weight gain, type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease andstroke.7, 8 According to the authors:

“This paper... considers the hypothesis that consuming sweet-tasting but noncaloric or reduced-calorie food and beverages interferes with learned responses that normally contribute to glucose and energy homeostasis. Because of this interference, frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners may have the counterintuitive effect of inducing metabolic derangements.”

So the very reason anyone would consider using diet instead of sugared sweeteners has no basis in fact. Anyone using them would get the same problems as using regular sugar and expose themselves to the well documented risks of artificial sweeteners.

Be Critical of “All Natural” Sweetener Claims

With artificial sweeteners are out of the picture, let’s look at some all-natural sweeteners. Natural sweeteners such as honey and agave may seem like a healthier choice, but not only are they loaded with fructose, many are also highly processed. In that regard, you’re not gaining a thing. The health effects will be the same, since it’s the fructose that causes the harm.

Agave syrup can even be considered worse than HFCS because it has a higher fructose content than any commercial sweetener, ranging from 70 to 97 percent depending on the brand. HFCS, in comparison, averages 55 percent fructose. What’s worse, most agave "nectar" or agave "syrup" is nothing more than a laboratory-generated super-condensed fructose syrup, devoid of virtually all nutrient value.

Honey is also high in fructose, averaging around 53 percent, but contrary to agave it is completely natural in its raw form, and has many health benefits when used in moderation. Keep in mind you’re not likely to find high quality raw honey in your local grocery store. Most of the commercial Grade A honey is highly processed and of poor quality. All in all, it’s important to realize thatregardless of the source (be it HFCS, honey or agave), refined fructose:

• Tricks your body into gaining weight by fooling your metabolism, as it turns off your body's appetite-control system. Fructose does not appropriately stimulate insulin, which in turn does not suppress ghrelin (the "hunger hormone") and doesn't stimulate leptin (the "satiety hormone"), which together result in your eating more and developing insulin resistance.
• Activates a key enzyme that causes cells to store fat; this is the so-called “fat switch” revealed in Dr. Richard Johnson’s book by the same name.
• Rapidly leads to weight gain and abdominal obesity ("beer belly"), decreased HDL, increased LDL, elevated triglycerides, elevated blood sugar, and high blood pressure—i.e., classic metabolic syndrome.
• Is broken down in your liver just like alcohol, and produces many of the side effects of chronic alcohol use, including non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Interestingly enough, research has shown that soft drinks increase your risk of NAFLD independently of metabolic syndrome9.
• Over time leads to insulin resistance, which is not only an underlying factor of type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but also many cancers.

What About Sugar Alcohols?

Sugar alcohols can be identified by the commonality of “ol” at the end of their name, such as xylitol glucitol, sorbitol, maltitol, mannitol, glycerol, and lactitol. They’re not as sweet as sugar, and they do contain fewer calories, but they’re not calorie-free. So don’t get confused by the “sugar-free” label on foods containing these sweeteners. As with all foods, you need to carefully read the food labels for calorie and carbohydrate content, regardless of any claims that the food is sugar-free or low-sugar.

One reason that sugar alcohols provide fewer calories than sugar is because they’re not completely absorbed into your body. Because of this, eating too many foods containing sugar alcohols can lead to abdominal gas and diarrhea. It’s also worth noting that maltitol, a commonly used sugar alcohol, spikes blood sugar almost as much as a starchy new potato. Xylitol, in comparison, does not have a great effect on your blood sugar, so from that perspective may be a better choice.

So, in moderation, some sugar alcohols can be a better choice than highly refined sugar, fructose or artificial sweeteners. Of the various sugar alcohols, xylitol is one of the best. When it is pure, the potential side effects are minimal, and it actually comes with some benefits such as fighting tooth decay. All in all, I would say that xylitol is reasonably safe, and potentially even a mildly beneficial sweetener. (As a side note, xylitol is toxic to dogs and some other animals, so be sure to keep it out of reach of your family pets.)

Three of the Safest Sugar-Alternatives

Two of the best sugar substitutes are from the plant kingdom: Stevia and Lo Han Guo (also spelled Luo Han Kuo). Stevia, a highly sweet herb derived from the leaf of the South American stevia plant, is sold as a supplement. It’s completely safe in its natural form and can be used to sweeten most dishes and drinks.

Keep in mind that the same cannot be said for the sugar substitute Truvia, which makes use of only certain active ingredients and not the entire plant. Rebaudioside A is the agent that provides most of the sweet taste of the plant. Usually it’s thesynergistic effect of all the agents in the plant that provide the overall health effect, which oftentimes includes “built-in protection” against potentially damaging effects, but what the FDA has approved as GRAS (generally recognized as safe) are just a couple of the active ingredients, including rebaudioside A used in Truvia.

In one toxicology review,10 the researchers point out that stevioside compounds and rebaudioside A are metabolized at different rates, making it impossible to assess the risk of rebaudioside A from toxicity assessments of stevioside (which has been used as food and medicine in Japan and South America for decades or longer). Additionally, in a human metabolism study, stevioside and rebaudioside A had different pharmacokinetic results. In layman’s terms, that means that your body reacts differently to the two compounds; each compound is metabolized differently and remains in your body for different lengths of time.

Truvia may turn out to be a very good substitute to sugar, but I’d have to see more details before giving it an enthusiastic thumbs-up – for the same reason the FDA uses as the basis for their refusal to consider Stevia GRAS: there’s just not enough evidence to prove its safety. Lo Han Kuo is another natural sweetener similar to Stevia, but it's a bit more expensive and harder to find. In China, the Lo Han fruit has been used as a sweetener for centuries, and it’s about 200 times sweeter than sugar. It received FDA GRAS status in 2009.

A third alternative is to use pure glucose. You can buy pure glucose (dextrose) for about $5-7 per pound. It is only 70 percent as sweet as sucrose, so you'll end up using a bit more of it for the same amount of sweetness, making it slightly more expensive than regular sugar—but still well worth it for your health as it does not contain any fructose whatsoever. Contrary to fructose, glucose can be used directly by every cell in your body and as such is a far safer sugar alternative.

Consider Dampening Your Sweet-Tooth...

Keep in mind though that if you have insulin issues, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, or if you're overweight, you'd be best to avoid all sweeteners, including Stevia, Lo Han and dextrose, since any sweetener can decrease your insulin sensitivity. (Most important of all, remember that this goes for artificial sweeteners too!) If you're having trouble weaning yourself off sweet foods and beverages, try Turbo Tapping. It’s a clever use of the Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), specifically designed to resolve many aspects of an addiction in a concentrated period of time.

Tell Coke They're a Joke!

Obesity and related metabolic diseases are serious public health problems in the United States, and you are being sorely misled by companies pretending to have a solution that, in reality, only worsen the problem. I strongly urge you to let the Coca-Cola Company know how you feel by telling them to stop their deceptive marketing of soda products. Especially their fake “public announcement” ads for aspartame.

Join me in taking a stand against false advertising and let your voice be heard. If you’re on twitter, send a tweet to #CokeCEO to let the Coca-Cola Company know you are not happy with their deceptive advertising. If you’re on Facebook, please share your thoughts with them on their Facebook Page. Please also email the Coca-Cola Company to let them know how you feel!

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