Artificial sweeteners are no longer just in diet or diabetic foods. Most gums and breath mints, yogurts, and even fruit drinks, have been targeted. Although they may be an effective tool in controlling blood sugars for a diabetic, they may not be the answer for the general public, especially those trying to lose weight.

Mathematically, sugar substitutes should reduce our caloric intake but there appears to be a glitch – they can be such powerful sweeteners, they may actually create a desire for sweets.

So someone could have a diet cola at lunch, which seems innocent, but they may start to crave another sugar hit by mid-afternoon. Some individuals seem to be more sensitive to this than others.

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I emailed Ribena on a whim a couple of months ago because I was concerned about the sugar and sweetener content of their products, namely low sugar Ribena containing Aspartame, Acesulfame K and Sucralose and dilutable Ribena containing glucose-fructose syrup (which I had believed was high fructose corn syrup until this reply). Unfortunately I do not have the original text I wrote to them, but the response is below. The important stuff starts about half way down, if you want to avoid the padding.

There is much debate about the safety of artificial sweeteners, paying particular attention to Aspartame. Ribena’s response does not reassure me to the safety of this sweetener in the slightest. I am happy to find out that they do not use HFCS in their dilutable drink but I will continue to do my best to avoid all products containing Aspartame. If you’re interested in finding out why, I highly recommend watching ‘Sweet Misery, A Poisoned World’ (embedded at the bottom of this post, how convenient!).

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