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Lessons from Jon Barron
Our Desire to Eat Sweets    In this week's excerpt from Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, Jon Barron acknowledges our fundamental desire to eat sweets.
 "There's no denying that, as a species, humans have a sweet tooth. Trying to suppress it doesn't work, so, in some way, we have to accommodate it. Most sweeteners (sugar, maple syrup, honey, rice syrup, blackstrap molasses) have similar effects on the body when used at equivalent levels of sweetness. The more natural alternatives do have the advantage of containing supporting nutrients, which have been removed from refined sweeteners such as table sugar. So, if you use the alternatives (and you should), you still need to limit the amount.
The sugar alcohols (mannitol, maltitol, xylitol, and sorbitol) provide another "natural" way to go. Think of sugar alcohols as sweet-tasting alcohols that are incompletely absorbed in the small intestines so that they produce virtually no glycemic response and are low in calories. This makes them popular sweeteners among diabetics and people on low-carbohydrate diets. On the down side, they are expensive and may cause intestinal distress. Erythritol is the best of the bunch—it is 70 percent as sweet as table sugar, yet it is virtually non-caloric, does not affect blood sugar, does not cause tooth decay, and tends not to cause the same gastric side effects as the other alcohol sugars.
Which brings us to the artificial sweeteners, aspartame and sucralose. Quite simply, don't go there. Aspartame has been associated with everything from tumors to tremors to blindness. And sucralose is based on a false premise: that because it's a totally artificial molecule, your body can't recognize it and passes it out unused. We're talking about all the sweetness of sugar, clean taste, and no downside—what more could you ask for?
Unfortunately, the truth is that about 15 percent of the sucralose you consume does not pass out of the body, and side effects are already being reported, including a significant reduction in the weight of the thymus after just twenty-eight days of use. This has profound implications for the long-term viability of your immune system.
Finally, let's talk about lo han and stevia. Lo han is a non-caloric, lowglycemic sweetener made from the lo han fruit (lo han kuo). It has all kinds of positive attributes and one huge negative—its taste, which is very pronounced. Stevia has a glycemic index rating of zero and is virtually noncaloric. It has a definite aftertaste, but compared to lo han is remarkably clean tasting. It has one major downside; the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will not approve its use as a sweetener; it can only be used in supplements.
Why? Stevia has undergone numerous toxicity tests, not one of which has shown any harmful effects. It has stood the test of time, having been used for centuries in South America with no indication of harmful side effects. And thousands of tons of stevia have been consumed in Japan (where stevia is the alternative sweetener of choice) since the mid-1970s, again with no evidence of side effects. Today, stevia is cultivated and used in foods throughout East Asia, including China (for over 20 years), Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Malaysia. It can also be found in use in Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Israel. But throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe, the health authorities would rather you use aspartame and sucaralose."
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