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Weigh down: artificial sweeteners

As you have noticed, we suggest diet sodas and artificially sweetened tea. These noncaloric drinks may be used in place of sugared beverages to help your blood sugar levels drop normally so that you will be able to detect hunger. The artificial sweetener called aspartame has come under fire in past years for allegedly causing side effects in some people.

Aspartame is among the most thoroughly tested and screened food products on the market today. The Federal Food and Drug Administration has issued approval for aspartame twenty-six times. The American Council on Science and Health unequivocally endorses its safety.

Aspartame is made up of two amino acids. An amino acid is just one of the smallest units of a protein molecule. Many different amino acids in different combinations make up the proteins you eat. The amino acids in aspartame—phenylalanine and aspartic acid—are found naturally in many foods. For example, if you eat a hamburger patty, you will ingest much more aspartame than you would drink from a two-liter bottle of diet soda. If you believe you get headaches from diet sodas, and if the aspartame/headache theory is correct, then you should get a migraine from one hamburger patty! However, research has shown no such adverse effects, even after repeated double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials. One test done at Duke University on people who claimed they experienced aspartame-in-duced headaches showed the group who took aspartame actually had fewer headaches than the control group who took placebos.

Headaches can be caused by many things, including stress and sinus infections. (Even if you do not feel stuffy in your nose, the sinus cavities could have a small infection that causes headaches.) It could be that you are hungry. A diet drink should not give you a headache because of a common protein molecule it contains. However, if you guzzle a cold drink too fast, then you might get a headache. Research currently being conducted is checking out other possible causes of these claims.

Saccharin, on the other hand, is different because it is a man-made substitute. It is not found naturally in any foods and has caused cancer in laboratory animals when given in very large doses. This five-carbon unit is chemically similar to table sugar, but the tongue and brain are not as easily fooled by this man-made sugar substitute. That is why it leaves a stronger aftertaste in your mouth. Saccharin has been banned in Europe for years. It has had the U.S. Surgeon General's warning on it since the 1970s: "Use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin, which has been determined to cause cancer in laboratory animals."

Be slow to put your hope in food claims—that they cure you or harm you. There is so much conflicting evidence.

Placebo effects are powerful. A person who believes a pill will make him stronger or more healthy—or, vice versa, that a substance will harm him—will be affected by that belief.

One example I remember from years ago was where a very large study was done on the claim that vitamin C cured the common cold. A thousand people were put on vitamin C and another thousand were put on an orange powdered pill (a placebo). Not even the person or the interviewer knew who was on what so that they could not bias the report. The people with the lowest number of colds were on the placebo!

It is good to be wise regarding wellness claims made about specific foods these days. For example, government researchers might be a great resource for objective information about foods, whereas a food manufacturer might exaggerate its product's benefits for certain diseases or good health. A doctor selling pills or honey at his front counter might tend to exaggerate their medicinal benefits. Claims that certain food concoctions can cure cancer, arthritis, or headaches should be closely scrutinized. Just as you cannot swallow gelatin tablets (powder made from horses' hooves) and make this very incomplete protein go to your fingernails to strengthen them, you cannot make certain foods you eat directly affect some isolated cancer cells. Put your hope in God—not food concoctions. Believe me, if there were some foods that cured some disease, we would know about it. You could not stop that kind of news.

The point is to be slow to jump on the bandwagon. One month we hear that oatmeal is beneficial in lowering cholesterol, and the next month we find out that long-term research contradicts the short-term findings. Researchers may have stock in food industries, and pharmaceuticals all have vested financial interests in claiming certain findings, so be accurate with your volume of food and do not be overly optimistic with a food claim.

In conclusion, your body was made with great wisdom. You mainly need to know how much food you need. That is the main sensitivity to good health. What you need is so overlapped in each food group that what you eat is not complicated or something to worry about. It is universally accepted to have breakfast foods that differ from lunch and supper foods in the course of one day. This familiar acceptance of variety lets you know that God has programmed our systems to have biological feedback that cues us to a variety even within a twenty-four-hour period.

There are no "trigger foods" or foods that are capable of controlling you. You are free now to eat regular food the rest of your life. You will be in control and you will eat a variety. If you are not convinced, do this little experiment:

Try eating chocolate for breakfast, lunch and supper for several days in a row. Eat chocolate for breakfast while everyone else is eating buttered biscuits with eggs and bacon. Now, the next time you are hungry, you can eat chocolate while everyone else at the table is eating hamburgers and salty French fries. For supper, you eat chocolate again while everyone is eating salad with blue cheese dressing and grilled salmon. In my years of counselling, I have never known anyone who could desire only chocolate for three days in a row. On that routine, even the thought of chocolate will make you nauseated (biological feedback), you will have diarrhea (the body's way to try to protect you), and you may not desire chocolate again for weeks (biological feedback to protect you). Wake up and use your new internal control. You can do it!

To give you a better idea of the variety of food we are free to enjoy, I have included a typical three days' menu of my own on the facing page.

Remember, you are free from man-made rules. So you do not have to follow this menu; it is just an example. God may have created you to desire something totally different. Think about it: if He made us all have the same tastes in food, our favorite food would soon run out. Is He not a genius?

God intended for us to enjoy all foods. I love both broccoli and Haagen-Dazs ice cream, and I feel no guilt for whatever my body desires. I have been eating this way since 1978 and I am still in great health, with hard nails and healthy hair—all by following the ingenious plan of God.

There is much confusion in regard to what gives you optimum health and longevity. Not many people can argue the fact that the single most related factor to longevity is thinness and, vice versa, the single most related factor to early death or accelerated aging is overeating. Medicine has advanced in many areas of treatment of certain diseases and yet has remained flat in others. Caution should be used in new and unfounded claims of food and its relation to cures of diseases. One thing is for sure—going to God is always good.

It is interesting to note that when people came to be healed from certain diseases in the Old and New Testaments, there was never a common denominator of what was done (dipping seven times in the Jordan River, a paste of spit and mud put on the eyes, touching the hem of Jesus' garment, etc.), but the common denominator was that they all went to the Father. We need to do the same.

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