I’m about to go off an a tangent here. Just a little warning in case you are an anti-tangent kind of person. It’s regarding artificial sweeteners. I found out many, many years ago that when these small substances enter my body, it doesn’t react well. Headaches, nausea, sore joints…it’s not a pretty list. I can’t even ride in the car with someone chewing sugar free gum.
I became used to reading labels, and when we lived in the states, I pretty much knew what to avoid. Moving here I carried those same ideas of what I could eat and what I couldn’t. Well, I should have read the labels. Now, 2 1/2 years later I understand why I’ve experienced unexplained nausea and frequent headaches. It wasn’t anything I couldn’t live with, but annoying, to be sure.
I discovered that most of the products I was buying contained artificial sweeteners, without any kind of warning on the label. Things like jam, yogurt, potato chips, ketchup…
I just wish the food companies would be a little more sensitive to those of us with these allergies and put more warnings on their labels. Maybe that’s too much to ask. I don’t know. What I do know is that anything that can produce this kind of reaction in people can’t be good. I’m not going to go around telling people not to eat sugar free products but I do think it’s wise to educate ourselves on the dangers of such products. For a list of artificial sweeteners, click here. There’s tons of articles on the web if you want to google the topic.
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