This issue has been bothering me for some time and I don’t want to stir up any major debates or anything, but I figure we want to make sure our kids are healthy and will live long, healthy lives. What we do to our bodies is one thing, but we really need to watch what our kids ingest. I am no saint when it comes to eating bad things, but there are still certain things I will be sure my children will not eat or drink.

Below I have links to information regarding Splenda and Aspartame. After I realized about 10 years ago that I was allergic or had reactions to Aspartame, I was very adamant about making sure I didn’t have any. So, of course, when new artificial sweeteners came out, I did my research on them.
First, there are many dangers to Aspartame (also known as NutriSweet), but less and less foods are using this in favor of Splenda. Did you know that Aspartame can make you hungry? Splenda is also known as Sucralose. Sucralose is created by taking sugar and adding in chlorine molecules to make it not metabolized by our bodies, in turn causing us to not get any calories from it. So, first, you are taking in chlorine molecules and second, your body is not processing the sucralose that you are ingesting and also it was found that your body will absorb it and not eliminate this chemical.

The reason I am concerned for our kids is that the company that manufactures Splenda is advertising it to be used for you AND your kids. I think this can cause long term effects for your kids (not including what it does to you) and don’t recommend allowing your kids to have it. Unfortunately, it is being slipped in to items more and more and you may not realize it’s in the products you buy. They don’t always list the Splenda logo on items and some items are not labeled as diet.
For example, I bought the Viactiv Vitamin soft chews and it listed sucralose as one ingredient.
I discovered recently that the Capri Sun Roarin’ Waters packs have Splenda and high fructose corn syrup in them. They advertise Capri Sun as having no artificial sweeteners, but that’s definitely an artificial additive. All Capri Sun has high fructose corn syrup too which is also a created sweetener and also addictive from what I hear. And of course, any diet sodas have either Splenda or Nutri-Sweet in them.

PLEASE CHECK THE LABELS when you buy items for your kids. All it takes is to be aware of what they are having to keep them healthy in the long run.

Here are a couple of links discussing these sweeteners:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/12/03/sucralose-dangers.aspx

http://www.vitalearth.org/Aspartame_Deception.htm