Shane Ellison M. Sc. January 4, 2007 NewsWithViews.com

If there were a contest for the best example of total disregard for human life the victor would be McNeil Nutritionals - makers of Splenda. Manufacturers of Vioxx and Lipitor would tie for a very distant second.

McNeil Nutritionals is the undisputed drug-pushing champion for disguising their drug Splenda as a sweetener. Regardless of its drug qualities and potential for side-effects, McNeil is dead set on putting it on every kitchen table in America. Apparently, Vioxx and Lipitor makers can't stoop so low as to deceptively masquerade their drug as a candy of sort. There is no question that their products are drugs and by definition come with negative side-effects. Rather than sell directly to the consumer, these losers have to go through the painful process of using doctors to prescribe their dangerous goods.

A keen student in corporate drug dealing, McNeil learned from aspartame and saccharine pushers that if a drug tastes sweet then let the masses eat it in their cake. First though, you have to create a facade of natural health. They did this using a cute trade name that kind of sounds like splendid and packaged it in pretty colors. Hypnotized, the masses were duped instantly. As unquestionably as a dog humps your leg, millions of diabetics (and non-diabetics) blindly eat sucralose under the trade name Splenda in place of real sugar (sucrose).

Splenda was strategically released on April fools day in 1998. This day is reserved worldwide for hoaxes and practical jokes on friends and family, the aim of which is to embarrass the gullible. McNeil certainly succeeded.

The splendid Splenda hoax is costing gullible Americans $187 million annually.[1] While many people "wonder" about the safety of Splenda they rarely question it. Despite its' many "unknowns" and inherent dangers, Splenda demand has grown faster than its supply. No longer do I have to question my faith in fellow Man. He is not a total idiot, just a gullible one. McNeil jokesters are laughing all the way to the bank.

Splenda is not as harmless as McNeil wants you to believe. A mixture of sucralose, maltodextrine and dextrose (a detrimental simple sugar), each of the not-so-splendid Splenda ingredients has downfalls. Aside from the fact that it really isn't "sugar and calorie free," here is one big reason to avoid the deceitful mix.Think April fools day:

Splenda contains a potential poison

Splenda contains the drug sucralose. This chemical is 600 times sweeter than sugar. To make sucralose, chlorine is used. Chlorine has a split personality. It can be harmless or it can be life threatening.

In combo with sodium, chlorine forms a harmless "ionic bond" to yield table salt. Sucralose makers often highlight this worthless fact to defend its' safety. Apparently, they missed the second day of Chemistry 101 - the day they teach "covalent" bonds.

When used with carbon, the chlorine atom in sucralose forms a "covalent" bond. The end result is the historically deadly "organochlorine" or simply: a Really-Nasty Form of Chlorine (RNFOC).

Unlike ionic bonds, covalently bound chlorines are a big no-no for the human body. They yield insecticides, pesticides, and herbicides - not something you want in the lunch box of your precious child. It's therefore no surprise that the originators of sucralose, chemists Hough and Phadnis, were attempting to design new insecticides when they discovered it! It wasn't until the young Phadnis accidentally tasted his new "insecticide" that he learned it was sweet. And because sugars are more profitable than insecticides, the whole insecticide idea got canned and a new sweetener called Splenda got packaged.

To hide its' origin, Splenda pushers assert that sucralose is "made from sugar so it tastes like sugar." Sucralose is as close to sugar as WindexT is to ocean water.

The RNFOC poses a real and present danger to all Splenda users. It is risky because the RNFOC confers a molecule with a set of super powers that wreak havoc on the human body. For example, Agent Orange, used in the U.S Army's herbicidal warfare program, is a RNFOC. Exposure can lead to Hodgkin's lymphoma and non-Hodgkins lymphoma as well as diabetes and various forms of cancer! Other shocking examples are the war gas phosgene, chlordane and lindane. [2] The RNFOC is lethal because it allows poisons to be fat soluble while rendering the natural defense mechanisms of the body helpless.

A poison that is fat soluble is akin to a bomb exploding internally. It invades every nook and cranny of the body. Cell walls and DNA - the genetic map of human life - become nothing more than potential casualties of war when exposed. Sucralose is only 25% water soluble.[3] Which means a vast majority of it may explode internally. In general, this results in weakened immune function, irregular heart beat, agitation, shortness of breath, skin rashes, headaches, liver and kidney damage, birth defects, cancer, cancer and more cancer - for generations![1]

McNeil asserts that their studies prove it to be safe for everyone, even children. That's little assurance. Learning from the Vioxx debacle (and many others highlighted in my book Health Myths Exposed) which killed tens of thousands, we know that studies can be bought and results fabricated.

Some things are worth dying for. Splenda is not one of them. What people think of as a food is a drug or slow poison - little distinction there. It wouldn't be wise to bet your health on it. If safe, sucralose would be the first molecule in human history that contained a RNFOC fit for human consumption. This fact alone makes sucralose questionable for use as a sweetener, if not instantly detrimental to our health. Only time will tell. Until then, Ill stick to the safe and naturally occurring stevia plant to satisfy my occasional sweet tooth in 2007.

Be forewarned though, as long as drugs can be legally disguised as sweeteners, watch out for drugs being disguised as vitamins.Oh wait, they are already doing that - think Lipitor.

Footnotes:

1, Joseph Mercola, Kendra Pearsall. Sweet Deception. Nelson Books. ISBN: 0785221794. Copyright 2006.
2, Agent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_orange
3, Caroline W. Sham. Splenda - A Safe and Sweet Alternative to Sugar. Nutrition Bytes. 2005. Vol. 10. Issue 2. Article 5.
(c) 2007 Shane Ellison - All Rights Reserved