As Dr. Janet Hull writes in her July newsletter, eating sucralose--brand name Splenda--is like ingesting tiny amounts of chlorinated pesticides. If this sounds unappealing to you, it certainly doesn't to Splenda's marketing team, who say they've "done a great job of redefining sweetness."

Splenda, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1988 as a tabletop sweetener and sweetener for an array of other products, is a chlorocarbon. Chlorocarbons are known to cause organ, genetic and reproductive damage, which may explain why Splenda has been found to shrink the thymus gland--a foundation of the immune system--by 40 percent.

According to Dr. Hull, sucralose also causes:

• Swelling of the liver and kidneys
• Calcification of the kidney
• Fertility issues in male rates
• Gastrointestinal problems in pregnant rats

It is especially important to stop using Splenda immediately if you experience kidney pain, cramping, swelling, an irritated bladder, or blood in your urine, she says. It is also interesting to note the information taken directly from a statement from the manufacturer of Splenda:

'Sucralose is made from sugar, but is derived from sucrose (sugar) through a process that selectively substitutes three atoms of chlorine for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sucrose molecule. No artificial sweetener made in the laboratory is going to be neither natural to the body nor safer than unprocessed sugar.'

Splenda is approximately 600 times sweeter than sugar, but the sweetness is forced, not like a natural sugar the body uses for fuel, says Dr. Hull. And although corporations say Splenda is safe, they have said the same thing about aspartame, which is now linked to disease and obesity. They also claim that the chlorine atoms in Splenda are altered and therefore safe, yet it's known that any animal that eats chlorine (especially on a regular basis) is at risk of cancer.

The corporate researchers go on further to say that sucralose is the most tested food additive in history. They stated, verbatim, the same thing about aspartame and, according to Dr. Hull, consumers are witnessing the same state of affairs in many ways.

Dr. Janet Hull Newsletter July 2004