Are the articificial sweeteners in sugar-free soft drinks harmful to your health? 

I am more concerned about the other stuff we get in our diets, pesticides, herbicides, alcohol, pharmaceutical drugs, fast food, high caffeine energy drinks and way too many calories.

If you use low calorie sweeteners remember that while they don’t add calories to your diet, they don’t add anything good either.

So go ahead and replace a regular drink with a diet drink, but don’t use them to replace healthy drinks such as water. A sweet tooth can be trained to require less sugar.

The goal with artificial sweeteners is to use them to reduce the amount of sugar and energy in the diet, and then gradually cut them out as your tastes and preferences change.

The strength of a sugar addiction is just as strong as a heroin addiction and in New Zealand, there’s a sugar hit at every corner dairy.

Refined cane sugar or corn syrup are what I call ‘nutrient robbers’, they’re lacking in the very minerals we require to metabolise them properly.

Fresh fruit, on the other hand comes with all the fibre, antioxidants and vitamins intact. Precisely the right size sugar hit for the human body.

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