Artificial sweetener cleared of cancer link

[HollyElise]

...usually it's apples on my walks, and in the fall, i can pick them off the wild apple trees along the way!

I just want it to be my choice what i eat! Yesterday i bought for my class Maple Creme Sandwich Cookies. Totally artificial, and totally worth it! But the food companies are just so dang sneeeeeky now!

This is a good one:

Have you seen "Natural Flavored Water" ...?

I'm not kidding. This is what natural flavored water means to them: Water, (snort!... amazing, hunh? yeah, surprised me, too), also a lot of chemical ingredients i can't even begin to understand that go on for a paragraph, real orange flavoring (probably taken from the rind and other orange juice bi-products that would otherwise be thrown out), Nutrasweet....

and, Oila! You have "natural flavored water." YUM.

WHAT ARE THEY DOING TO US?!

For all the controversy Arnold Schwarzennagger generates in general, I have to applaud him heartily for taking a stand on junk food in the public schools! BRAVO Arnie!:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...NGS9I4T4F1.DTL

Junk food and unhealthy drinks are to be banned from vending machines and school lunchrooms in the state of California, and hopefully other states will follow soon. It's an effort to address child obesity and "to establish lifelong healthy eating patterns."

[Peter_Martin]

I was always under the impression that using artificial sweeteners was another factor that might increase your likelihood of developing senile dementia. I wasn't aware of the cancer link (I've heard several people in the UK make a link between the artificial sweeteners and dementia anyway.) The only reason that I wonder if it might be true is that every person that I have known to use them as a sugar replacement have gone onto develop dementia......... Not scientific I accept.

[HollyElise]

Well, i've known people with dementia who never touched the stuff.

But we did use to have a member here on this board who swore Nutrasweet was responsible for her M.S.

[Not_Just_DNA]

HollyElise- I had no idea so many elementary schools had vending machines. As much as I respect parental rights, I think as a taxpayer funding schools I am glad to see them go. If I'm going to fund the school the least I can have a say in is that the kids should have some reasonable nutrtion to at least concentrate on their schoolwork while there. Most kids I've been around have enough trouble just sitting still when not pumped up on caffeine. In fact a few years ago I saw a program about a school for troubled teens in which every student there had behavior problems. One thing the school focused on was nutrition. The lunches were quite nutritious, and they were allowed to only drink milk or water. The outcome was quite startling, as the kids interviewed talked about how they felt different, they felt less aggressive, less 'wired'. In fact the school itself had very few issues with behavior, and these were the 'bad' kids so to speak. I wish I could remember where it was and more about it as it was really interesting.

[HollyElise]

Yes!!! They eliminated SUGAR i bet! I have taught youth and i had a morning photography class where a couple of the kids would bring gobs of candy and candy bars to class to have at 10 a.m.... it was like watching junkies! And they were always the ones with the shortest attention spans! Personally i have a hunch that this "epidemic" of ADHD (attention deficit) can be explained largely by high sugar diets.

But as for the vending machines in school... the way they got a foothold in schools to begin with is the vending machine companies PAY the schools to rent space there (and you know how desperate schools are for money). It's the same with all advertising in schools. Until just a couple of years ago, cigarette companies were allowed to "fund" school athletics, but you know what they did? Their cigarette logos would be plastered everywhere! The cigarette companies had targetted teenagers as the only "growth market" they had, so they wanted to blitz them with advertizing in high school and middle school. Thank goodness it is now illegal in the U.S. for cigarette companies to do this!