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Saying no to sweet poison

My health journey through sugar and its artificial twin

January 1, 2026

The holidays are over and we have all had our overfill of turkey stuffing and Christmas cake. Endless chocolate treats and sugary snacks have passed our lips, through our stomachs and out the other end! Oh what a delightful experience! 

Food is associated with celebration, so we indulge our hedonism. But are we damaging ourselves by satisfying short-term desires with long-term consequences? Aren’t some of us fooling ourselves that the copious amounts of sugar we just ate and continue to eat can’t really be all that bad? 

It’s true—our Christmas celebrations came complete with sugary delights, the kind that only a killjoy would dare to refuse. Even in addiction recovery literature, one piece of advice to counteract the desire for alcohol is to always have a sweet treat around to satisfy our fancy and ward off cravings for booze.

Regardless, we enter the new year with a gnawing sense of guilt. We notice our clothes no longer fit us like they used to. We seem to be continuously lethargic. Our doctor has given us some bad news about our health and suggests we quit sugar.

But how?

According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian in 2015 consumed about 106 grams of total sugar per day. The primary sources of added sugar were desserts and sweets, followed by beverages. Unlike our neighbours to the south, there has been a downward trend of sugar consumption by the majority of Canadian consumers, but according to the World Health Organization, many of us still indulge ourselves in way too much of this delightful little crystal.

If we look back to the 1700s, the average person consumed just five grams of sugar per day. By the 1800s, that number had risen to more than 22  grams. And in the first decade of the 20th century, sugar consumption in some Western countries had skyrocketed to 112 grams a day, or 26 teaspoons. This dramatic rise was fuelled by the industrialization of food production and the ever-growing availability of sugar for everyday consumers.

Unlike the fructose found naturally in fruit, which comes with fibre, vitamins and minerals, white table sugar offers nothing but empty calories. Most of us already get plenty of naturally occurring sugars — fructose from fruit, lactose from dairy and glucose from starchy foods like bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. 

In the book Sugar Shock, Carol Prager and Samantha Cassetty explain that added sugar can trigger rapid spikes in blood sugar, producing a brief burst of energy followed by fatigue, which can sour your mood. Meanwhile, 80 per cent of the 600,000 consumer packaged foods in the U.S. contain added sugar. Dr. Robert Lustig, a longtime critic of the sugar industry, points out that our ancestors encountered sugar only rarely, making today’s constant availability not just excessive, but highly unnatural.

So maybe it’s time to switch to artificial sweeteners. But before you do, consider some facts about them that I personally found alarming and deeply concerning.

I have Type 2 diabetes and decided to replace white sugar with Splenda, thinking it would be a safe alternative. But I quickly realized I had become addicted to the sucralose, consuming several packets a day. Soon, I developed a persistent cough whenever I ate or drank, as well as embarrassing fecal incontinence that forced me to always stay near a bathroom. I also developed gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD), a condition where the stomach produces excess acid. All of these issues arose while I was consuming large amounts of Splenda.

On my hunt for answers to my health issues, something prompted me to research the adverse side effects of artificial sweeteners. I learned that many, including aspartame, saccharin and sucralose — typically found in diet sodas, sugar-free foods and tabletop sweeteners — can alter the gut microbiota, leading to diarrhea and gut inflammation. They can also weaken the lower esophageal sphincter (LES), a key muscle that prevents stomach acid from flowing back into the esophagus. When the LES doesn’t close properly, it can cause heartburn and coughing.

After months of persistent discomfort, I realized that Splenda might be contributing to these frustrating and serious health problems.

I immediately went on an elimination diet and stopped consuming sucralose. Almost immediately, my fecal incontinence disappeared, and the persistent, annoying cough I had whenever I ate or drank vanished as well.

It felt nothing short of miraculous. Whereas before I would decline restaurant invitations, afraid of choking or embarrassing myself, I was finally free — cured of these debilitating symptoms.

If you think artificial sweeteners are safe for diabetics, I would strongly challenge that assumption. The public has long been led to believe that they don’t raise blood sugar or trigger insulin responses. But emerging research suggests that some artificial sweeteners may negatively impact glucose metabolism by altering the gut microbiome, potentially disrupting insulin sensitivity and contributing to a higher risk of Type 2 diabetes — though the evidence is not yet conclusive and more long‑term human studies are needed.

Diabetes aside, sugar substitutes also affected my taste and appetite. They contain synthetic chemicals, and research on their long-term effects on the body and brain is limited at best. These sweeteners altered my tolerance for sweetness; manufacturers engineered them to be far sweeter than sugar, so that naturally sweet foods like fruit began to lose its appeal. Even table sugar no longer satisfied my sweet tooth.

I’ve come to believe that natural sugars are far less harmful than artificial sweeteners, which are lab-made chemicals up to 650 times sweeter than table sugar.

So maybe white table sugar doesn’t seem quite so bad when compared to artificial sweeteners. I became addicted to Splenda much like an alcoholic, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend consuming 20 packets a day (of either sweetener or sugar!). Like many alcoholics, I needed complete abstinence, and since eliminating it resolved my troubling health issues, it’s been easier to stay away. Even natural alternatives like Stevia (extracted from the leaves of a plant from South America) hold little appeal, with their strange aftertastes. I’d much rather enjoy a banana.