ExRx.net

I was in walmart the other day and looking at their selection of yogurt. I am not a big fan of plain yogurt, but I don't mind it sweetened. And I obviously don't want all the sugar that comes with that so I looked and sure enough there is some yogurt flavored or sweetened with aspartame and/or splenda. Here's the problem...they are all lowfat! Anyone know of a place to get FULL fat yogurt NOT flavored with sugar, but rather the fake stuff? Yogurt is really the only dairy I can eat on a semi-regular basis...its a way for me to satisify a craving for carbs at the end of the day that's not a cupcake or something. With the aspartame stuff its only about 8 grams of sugar per container, compared to around 40 with a regular one.

Get the old fashioned real yogurt and add your own fruit.

Yuck I'd say aspartame is more poisonous than sugar...

I've never run across any full fat yogurt swettened with an artificial sweetner, but I imagine if you wanted it sweetened, you could buy the full fat version and add splenda or other - cal/carb sweetner. Personally, I like tzaziki,which is basically a thick plain yogurt, dolled up with lemon juice, garlic, minced onion, sliced cucimbers and some herbs. It's a great condiment on meat, veg, etc. I recently found some in Sam's Club that had Feta cheese thrown into the mix. Really good.
Tim

First problem is that is an urban legend. Try reading snopes.com, you will probably learn a lot of new things. Second problem sugar free yogurt is sweetened with splenda. The third problem is that sugar is actually the main cause of all diseases of civilization. Fourth problem is that even sugar is not poisonous. Poisonous means it causes a bad or fatal chemical reaction in the body. What actually happens with sugar is that it ruins your insulin sensitivity leading to diabetes and obesity. It gets your endocrine system out of whack, creates triglycerides and a certain type of low density cholesterol in your blood which cause heart disease. It also cause inflammation in the arteries as well as increasing free radicals. These particles will oxidize cells, which causes mutation, every time this happens you are spinning the wheel of cancer. It's not as bad as smoking, but it sure isn't good. The more you eat the worse your chances.

big tobacco 50's and 60's = big food today.

Ok perhaps the word "poison" was too severe. But are you really saying you think the harmful nature of aspartame consumption is a myth? The FDA says it won't cause cancer, well, fine, but what about the way that it screws with your appetite as mentioned on http://www.mercola.com/article/aspartame/symptoms.htm

(Unfortunately I do consume Acesulfame K on a regular basis, since it's in seemingly every protein supplement, it's hard to avoid.)

That study is junk science. Relation does not prove causation. Just because people who eat junk food and drink diet soda does not mean the diet soda caused it. People who eat a lot of junk food do so because of their insulin levels and since they are fat, they often switch to diet soda to try to lose weight. This is not a proper study done with proper control and variable groups. Besides that it was about a sweet taste and not specifically aspartame.

These people are really reaching. All this sort of thing tends to be a ploy by the sugar industry. There was one study done to see if aspartame causes headaches, however the placebo group had a more headaches than the aspartame group.

I assure you it is absolutely positively 100% pure unadulterated bull$h1t!

I agree with Ironman,

the Aspartame scare is a load of BS! If it wasn't why would an entore section of the NHS in Scotland ban sugar loaded drinks and replace them with "diet" drinks with aspartame and other sweeteners in them? A decision made by a fairly large group of highly educated doctors AND scientists had input and the overwhelming majority decided to ban the sugary drinks!

I've been swapping diet drinks for the full sugar ones for a few years now and the only urban legend that may apply isa slightly higher craving for carbs, but that's because I've cut out so much sugar! I just replace the sugar I crave with better carbs and feel better overall anyway!

Also a lot of the psuedo-research done on aspartame used a population that was already using the sweetener. Who uses them the most? Diabetics! What do diabetics have a higher chance of getting than other people? Cancer! It's a biased sample that will always lead to biased results, wouldn't surprise me if the Sugar Cane industry paid for the psuedo-research!!!

John

You both seem to basically be saying aspartame is ok because refined sugar is worse. You could say the same thing about bleached flour. That's not a compelling argument though.

To me, this is a compelling reason to stay away from the artificial chemicals whenever I can: http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... eight-gain - doesn't seem like BS to me. Seems perfectly valid, and in fact, not all that surprising.

(And that's not to say I'm advocating lots of sugar instead. I haven't had a soda in like 8 years, and my extracted fruit juice consumption is minimal...)

I think they need to rethink their studies. Because when I lost around 30 lbs at one point, all I basically did was switch 3 full sugared sodas a day to 3 diet sodas a day and the weight came off pretty easily. I hear all the time about people saying diet's no better for losing weight than regular soda, yet I know of two other guys who I am friends with that made a similar change and lost around the same amount of weight (actually one lost around 70 lbs). Sure the 70 lb guy exercised more than he did before, but the guy who lost around the same as me did not exercise at all. So everytime I read an article about how diet soda is no better or is linked to weight gain, I laugh. The only reason it might not be is just because people who drink diet think they can overcompensate with food. This is not the diet soda's fault at all, its the moronic drinker.

That being said, I do not know the clear aspects of its health properties. If it's healthy, awesome, if its not, well then I'll die of a stroke or whatever it causes later in life than obesity. So until then I'd rather live my life not being overweight which soda will get to you at some point in your life.

You're a lightweight. I used to drink 7-10 cans of sugar soda every day.

But why replace one bad thing with another bad thing? To the original post, plain yogurt is pretty sweet as it is. Milk is naturally sweet. There's no need to add artificial garbage to it.

Also I'd like to revise and extend my remarks regarding protein and Acesulfame K. Actually the Casein I buy has sucralose (whether that's better or worse, who knows) and actually I recently found ON Natural Whey which doesn't have any artificial sweetener, though it does have 3g sugar per 24g protein. I used to mix pre-workout protein with V8 in order to get a little sugar, but might stop that with the 6g I'd get from the ONNW. :-/

Wrong. We are saying it is ok because it is ok. It has nothing to do with sugar or any other substance you can think of edible or otherwise. It is not conditional or relative. It just is. The research does not support any of the anecdotes.

And no it is not perfectly valid. Reread my last post. It is not talking about aspartame, it is just talking about "sweet taste". This was also done with rats, how do we know they didn't just eat more because they liked the taste of the artificial better? Besides that, what if it does make you eat more. That doesn't matter. That does not determine your weight gain or loss. This is very poor inconclusive junk science.

What's that?

Not sure what you mean by "determine", but how much you eat is certainly a factor in your body weight. You seem to be willing to dismiss any studies that point out health downsides to artificial chemical sweeteners because of a believed bias due to the power of the food industry lobby. I don't disagree that the food industry has a vested interest in addiction to poor diet, similar, as you say, to tobacco in the 50s. But that's not a reason to dismiss these studies that find issues with artificial chemical sweeteners.