Okay, here’s the question: which should of the following should you avoid, and which is generally okay: (1) sucralose, and (2) salad dressing?
Most of you would probably guess that sucralose is not good for you, while salad dressing presents no problems. And most of you would be wrong! And you thought you were being good by ordering the “Lite” Italian dressing…
Let’s start with salad dressing. What’s up with that? I’m being good and having a salad, why can’t I add a little flavor? Aside from the fact that I said so (that should be enough in and of itself, right?), if you look at the ingredients list, most dressings contain vegetable and/or soybean oil. These oils contain high amounts of Omega-6′s, which are pro-inflammatory. Here’s a previous article I wrote specifically on Omega-6′s. So basically, smothering your salad with Ranch dressing is like going for a run and then stopping for a Big Mac at McDonalds to reward yourself for being healthy. Use your heads, people.
Now, on to sucralose. For those of you who don’t know what it is, it’s an artificial sweetener that’s about 600 times as sweet as table sugar, created by chlorination of sucrose (formal name for table sugar). I know that doesn’t sound good on the surface, but the literature and studies on sucralose suggest that there are no health risks posed by intake of the substance, since most of it is not absorbed in the GI tract and is instead excreted in the stool. Here’s a great article by Charles Poliquin debunking some of the claims against sucralose.
So what’s the main point of this article? Basically, I wanted to demonstrate that what’s popularly pushed as being healthy or what’s being criticized as unhealthy might not be like that at all. Often times it’s the result of big companies paying people to push their products (just look at milk!). You need to do your research when it comes to these things. The studies are out there; you just have to find them. Or you could just, you know, read Health Heralds. Just sayin’.
