[Grovenet] Artificial Sweetners

[Meredith Bliss]

On Tuesday 13 November 2007 17:15, Carol Morgan wrote:
> ------ Original Message ------
> 'natural is better' thing has been around quite a while, from  Rousseau and
> Thoreau to Wells and of course the big push starting when today's boomers
> were teens.  But it has always seemed to me to be exactly the opposite,
> that if something was meant to do something to living things that it would
> have more ways it could do things to us, known and unknown. 

I don't understand what you're saying here!

> I will possibly 
> write more about that, but before I do, for those of you that follow this
> as a principle, what is your major reasoning?  What are some of the main
> reasons that that makes sense to you?  

I certainly wouldn't say that "anything natural is better" (like poison 
hemlock, for example?) but my bias is always towards "natural" products as 
that is what our physiology evolved to handle. The world is full of natural 
toxins but most of us are well equipped physiologically to deal with them. 
Those systems are pretty remarkable in their ability to handle even novel 
compounds that never existed before, but trans fats may be an exception. And 
for the most part, dietary studies don't give clear results. Even large 
studies like the nurses study mentioned in the article you quoted are 
statistically flawed. Many of the results from that study were found to be 
wrong when subjected to carefully controlled studies. 

You seem to take comfort in the idea that artificial sweeteners are "designed 
not to interact with the systems of our body in any real way" so that they 
have "less... capacity to affect it to the worse." Your faith in chemical 
engineering is touching, but I remain suspicious. A slight impact of a 
chemical consumed by millions of people can have a huge public health impact, 
even though its effect is hard to detect in a few hundred lab mice.

> Incidentally, the early 90's was the only period of time when I gained more
> weight than I should have.  I substituted my milk to skim and did all of
> that, and in 10 years I had put on 20 pounds.  It was hard to loose, too,
> since my main diet strategy has been appetite and portion control, which is
> best over long term but isn't quick. When I finally gave in that low fat
> wasn't good at all, it finally dropped off.  And I never did Atkins, I just
> went back to my pre-90's diet.  

I think most people now recognize that it's a matter of calories in vs. 
calories burned: if you cut out the fat but add more calories as carbs, the 
result is weight gain.

And while I'm at it, you earlier stated that "Oh, and sorry, Stevia is vile. 
It is going nowhere." I don't find it vile, and it's going in my coffee 
(another natural poison). Not sure what else you may mean by "going nowhere." 
 
Take care,
	--Bud

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Just happy to be here, but speaking 
only for myself!
Meredith Bliss --- www.rdrop.com/~mbliss
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