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Artificial Sweeteners or Hunky Firemen?

I think it has happened to all moms – you sprint through your morning routine liberally pouring milk in your kids’ bottles, cups and cereal when you realize that there is but a drop left for your beloved coffee. If you’re like me you devise a clever plan to combine all morning responsibilities: caring for your child(ren), walking the dog, buying milk and most desperately getting coffee, because coffee without milk is like a fire truck speeding past you and no hunky firemen. Both are as essential to life as breathing.

I huffed myself up the shortest route and steepest hill in town with Cirque du Soleil-like agility to interrupt the dog from sniffing and haul the oversize stroller up the hill.  A few fist pumps later, I approached my caffeine oasis.  I consider myself a decent mother but I’m no martyr. Coffee first, then buy milk, give the baby a snack and a finale of scooping the dog’s business. I pour the self-serve coffee into a deliciously large cup, empty in the milk and reach for the sugar. I am confronted by a mound of pink, yellow and blue packets. I innocently ask the waitress for sugar. She looked puzzled, rolled her eyes in the direction of the three available options and told me there is none. You really don’t have regular sugar? When did artificial sweeteners become conventional replacements for sugar? How are they available at every neighborhood coffee shop? Maintaining eye contact, I defiantly chugged the coffee sans sweetener

and stormed off.

That night I couldn’t get the incident out of my head. Some would insist I needed to get a life but cut me some slack, Bravo was running Top Chef reruns. I really didn’t know much about the potential danger of sugar substitutes, but have always thought there was a fat chance anything diet and calorie-free was healthy.

With my sweatpants held high, the little guy in bed and the big guy asleep on the couch, I began to investigate. What I discovered wasn’t comical at all. The multi–billion dollar sweetener industry is contaminated with an overabundance of sugar-coated research, creative labeling and bitter information.

I’ve highlighted the most popular sweeteners in order of most potentially hazardous to least harmful. 

Sucralose (Splenda)