There are a lot of myths about artificial sweeteners. The main one is that they’re actually better for you than regular sugar. Low-calorie sweeteners have been around for decades now, and we’re finally at a point where we’ve studied them enough to understand roughly how they work and what effect they have on our bodies.
A new study presented at the 2018 Experimental Biology meeting has re-raised all these issues and also re-confirmed what researchers have been thinking for years: artificial sweeteners might actually cause obesity, not prevent it.
Researchers at Purdue University’s Nutrition Science department in Lafayette, Indiana took a rainbow of common foods and put them under the microscope to determine just how much dye manufacturers put in some of their most popular products. Their findings were published in the Medical Journal Clinical Pediatrics last month.
Laura Stevens, lead researcher of the study, says that as expected many bright red and orange foods contain high amounts of dye, however there were a few items that surprised her.
“Finding red dye in cherry pie filling was pretty odd, you’d would think the cherries would make it red enough.”
She also found that some brands of pickles have blue and yellow dyes and that even white icing contains artificial color.
Tests have been conducted in the past looking for links between consumption of food dye and behavioral issues in children. Stevens says the tests, conducted in the ’70s and ’80s, used a baseline of 27 milligrams of mixed dyes ”“ around half the amount of dye found in an 8 oz. serving of Burst Cherry Kool-Aid.
The obesity epidemic continues relentlessly across the globe, despite the increasing attention being paid to it. The latest CDC statistics (as of 2016) show that 39.6% of adult Americans are obese, with every state having a rate >20%. This is an increase from 2011 – 34.9%. In fact, the trend has accelerated. The same is true world-wide. As of 2016 there were 650 million obese adults worldwide. This is no longer a problem of just industrialized nations, and obesity can occur alongside malnutrition. The figures have tripled since 1975.
In 1907, Anna H. Sturla boarded a ferry, slipped on a banana peel, and demanded $250 in compensation from the boat’s operators. Three doctors had examined her, she claimed, and told her she needed an operation. She received $150—a significant sum at the time, although less than the $500 she received after her first banana-peel incident, a fall on the train-station steps at 125th Street and Park Avenue.
“Not six months went by after that,” a New York Times reporter wrote, “before Mrs. Sturla was once more in trouble with these arch-foes of hers, banana peels.” In total, Anna Sturla received $2,950 from 17 accidents in four years. In 11 cases, Sturla blamed banana peels. When the Times wrote about her, Sturla was on trial for making fraudulent complaints.
Usually if I have a bananna peal or an apple core in the woods, I'll toss it somewhere away from the a trail or a campsite, or bury it in the woods. It probably feeds wildlife, but so be it.