Baking with stevia poses some challenges because, other than sweetening, it doesn’t have the same chemical properties of sugar, such as caramelizing when heated or becoming chewy in cookies. Also, because you use so little stevia, it may throw off the traditional dry to wet ingredient ratio if you try to substitute stevia. So you may need to experiment a bit with your recipes, or you can try some of the delicious options that I created in the last chapter of this book.
If you have a sweet tooth, opt for a piece of fruit or sweeten your beverages or foods with natural stevia (avoid products with maltodextrin or other added sweeteners).
If you’re thinking that aspartame or another artificial sweetener is a better option than sugar, think again. Artificial sweeteners may have fewer calories than the real thing, but they are anything but healthy and have no place in a health-supporting diet. They’re not just bad for you; they’re linked to many serious illnesses and should never have been allowed in our food supply.
Only one year after aspartame was approved by the FDA, its own task force learned that some of the original data showcasing aspartame’s safety had been falsified to hide results showing that animals fed aspartame had developed seizures and brain tumors.9 The artificial sweetener was never recalled. Aspartame has also been linked to the formation of various types of cancer, including brain cancer. There is also a 43 percent increased risk of experiencing a stroke or heart attack when a person drinks more than one diet soda daily.
According to the authors of the book The Hundred-Year Lie, when a diet drink containing aspartame is stored at 85 degrees Fahrenheit for a week or longer, “There is no aspartame left in the soft drinks, just the components it breaks down into, like formaldehyde, formic acid, and diketopiperazine, a chemical which can cause brain tumors. All of these substances are known to be toxic to humans.”10 Combine these ingredients with a leaky gut, which you’ll learn more about later in this book, and you have a recipe for inflammation in the body. That’s because these chemicals can hijack the body’s normal process for absorbing nutrients through the lining of the gut, but when the gut lining is damaged, as is often the case in allergy sufferers, then these toxic chemicals can gain direct access to the bloodstream, where they can cause further damage and inflammation—another underlying factor for allergies.
Allergies are just the start of how aspartame is damaging to the body. Ironically, considering its name and reputation as a “diet” drink, drinking diet soda is more likely to make a person overweight or obese. It is linked to a 34 percent increase of metabolic syndrome, along with its telling symptoms of high cholesterol and abdominal obesity.11 Just two cans of diet soda daily have been linked to a 500 percent increase in waist size.12 By skipping aspartame, you’re likely to lose weight if you’re overweight. And because a Harvard University study found that drinking diet soda daily doubles a person’s risk of kidney disease, by eliminating this beverage you’ll have a reduced incidence of kidney disease as well.13 You’ll even maintain stronger teeth, as diet soda is extremely acidic and has been linked to dental enamel erosion.14
Aspartame isn’t the only artificial sweetener that poses a threat to health. Saccharin and sucralose should be avoided as well.
Saccharin, also known as Sweet’N Low, Sweet Twin, and Necta Sweet, is touted as a safe sugar substitute, but it is actually a coal tar derivative. When it was first researched to cause bladder tumors in rats, it was still allowed to stay in the marketplace due to consumer demand as long as it carried a warning label that it may be harmful to health. Experts still consider saccharin a “probable carcinogen”15 that also causes breathing difficulties, headaches, skin conditions, and diarrhea in some people.
Sucralose, or Splenda, is not a good option either. Although it is widely touted as a natural sweetener, it was created in a laboratory by altering sugar molecules in a way that could not appear in nature. It was barely tested before being launched with massive marketing campaigns as a supposedly healthy alternative to sugar. According to research by Dr. Joseph Mercola, the FDA only conducted two human studies on sucralose prior to its approval for use in food. The longest study lasted a mere four days and exclusively examined sucralose for its effects on tooth decay, not any other health effects. Additionally, when sucralose was tested to determine its absorption in the body, only eight men were studied.
Besides insufficient or skewed testing, sucralose is simply not the natural sweetener the manufacturer claims it is. It may start as a sugar molecule, but that’s the end of the similarities between sugar and sucralose. Three chlorine molecules are added to each sugar molecule, which, according to Dr. Mercola, means sucralose “has been altered to the point that it’s actually closer to DDT and Agent Orange than sugar.”16
Sucralose has been linked with many serious conditions, including the following:
• allergic reactions such as facial swelling and swelling of the eyelids, tongue, throat, or lips
• allergic skin reactions such as itching, swelling, redness, weeping, crusting, rashes, eruptions, or hives
• anxiety
• blood sugar increases
• blurred vision
• breathing problems, including shortness of breath, coughing, chest tightness, and wheezing
• depression
• dizziness
• gastrointestinal complaints, including diarrhea, vomiting, nausea, bloating, gas, or pain
• headaches
• heart palpitations
• itchy, swollen, watery, or bloodshot eyes
• joint pains
• mental fog
• migraines
• seizures
• sinus congestion, runny nose, or sneezing
• weight gain
You’ll notice that many of the symptoms actually mimic environmental allergy symptoms. It’s essential to eliminate this artificial sweetener and other artificial ingredients from your diet to restore your immune system health and eliminate allergies.
OTHER ADDITIVES TO SUBTRACT FROM YOUR DIET
There are hundreds of additives in packaged, processed, and prepared foods—what I call the Three Ps. Many of these additives put a strain on the body and actually contribute to low-grade inflammation and other conditions linked to allergies. Some of the worst culprits include monosodium glutamate (MSG) and carrageenan.
MSG is linked to inflammation, hormonal imbalances, headaches, and many other symptoms. It is almost always found in processed, prepared, and packaged foods, including soups, spice mixtures, infant formulas, soy “meat” products, baby foods, bottled sauces, salad dressings, croutons, protein powders, and vaccines. Sadly, it is rarely listed as MSG or monosodium glutamate on the labels of foods. Instead, it appears in the guise of the following:
• hydrolyzed vegetable protein
• hydrolyzed protein
• hydrolyzed plant protein
•