Elizabeth Hanna says she was fired by the American Diabetes Association after refusing to approve recipes heaped with the additive made by a major donor
Elizabeth Hanna says she was fired by the American Diabetes Association after refusing to approve recipes heaped with the additive made by a major donor
Elizabeth Hanna had a simple job: help people with diabetes figure out what to eat. Anyone with common sense knows this should probably not entail foods that might increase people’s risk of getting diabetes. But that’s not necessarily the thinking at the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the world’s leading diabetes research and patient advocacy group, which also receives millions of dollars from sponsors in the pharmaceutical, food and agricultural industries.
According to a lawsuit Hanna recently filed against the ADA, the organization – which endorses recipes and food plans on its website and on the websites of “partner” food brands – tried to get her to greenlight recipes that she believed flew in the face of the ADA’s mission. These included recipes like a “cucumber and onion salad” made with a third of a cup of Splenda granulated artificial sweetener, “autumnal sheet-pan veggies” with a quarter cup of Splenda monk fruit sweetener and a “cranberry almond spinach salad” with a quarter cup of Splenda monkfruit sweetener.
Guess which company gave more than $1m to the ADA in 2022? Splenda.
This really feels like those awful receipe books that companies put out in the 1950s and 1960s. Like Jello salads and such. This used to be a pretty common thing and it's a bit surprising to see it appear again.
It's not uncommon for a dressing to have sugar in it I guess. I'll put maybe a teaspoon of sugar in a homemade vinaigrette sometimes, but that's all. A third of a cup sounds disgusting.
I was about to say. A third of a cup is more than the ENTIRE VOLUME OF DRESSING I'd consider putting in a salad... that would serve four people.
Maybe a teaspoon of sugar to balance the acidic flavours in the dressing. Maybe.
Looking at that recipe, it reads like "quick pickles" which are normally made with a hot mixture of white vinegar and sugar (and admittedly quite a lot of sugar), but in those the critical step is you drain the pickled vegetables before serving, so the actual amount of sugar retained by the food is still relatively low. No mention of draining before serving here though, so perhaps it is just artificially-sweetened cucumber and vinegar soup? Blergh.
These included recipes like a “cucumber and onion salad” made with a third of a cup of Splenda granulated artificial sweetener, “autumnal sheet-pan veggies” with a quarter cup of Splenda monk fruit sweetener and a “cranberry almond spinach salad” with a quarter cup of Splenda monkfruit sweetener.
It never ceased to amaze me how Schitt's Creek gifs always 100% encapsulate my feelings every time I see them used. I can't articulate my own emotions as well as David and Alexis can for me.
Many Splenda products are mixed with filler, some are mostly maltodextrin, some are even mixed with regular sugar, so that they can be more easily measured.
This is another example of greed/capitalism/failure of institutions. I firmly believe this type of behavior is what leads to people losing trust in institutions and science. Why people turn to conspiracy theories and all natural anti-vaxx terrain.
Yes, but that's not what the piece is talking about either. We've gone from stick to the facts, to while I have you here, let me interest you in this product...
There is a very real issue of not focusing on preventative measure and education and instead raking it in by way of hocking products. Conflict of interest is a real thing and not much money to be made by way of education and preventative teachings. But thats what gives openings to Joe Rogan types instead to hock their teachings.
But as someone who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes three years ago, I can attest that the dietary and medicinal guidance one gets from doctors and the ADA can be worse than the condition. The result is what the former head of the World Health Organization has called “a slow-motion disaster”, that led to the deaths of 2 million people in 2019.
As someone under the treatment of American medicine for decades, I have to agree; doctors don’t know everything.
Ack. I hate sweet salad dressing, think that just from a culinary standpoint she was right to push back on these. Training your palate to enjoy other flavors would go a long way to getting a lower sugar diet.
I also fucking hate the taste of monkfruit and stevia, they are most foul.
But if her argument is that the sweet tasting non caloric sweeteners directly promote diabetes, like they act like sugar, I think this has been disproven several times over.
I'm on keto so I use the occasional stevia or monk-fruit sweetener when I'm craving something sweet, and the fact that she was fired for not approving those recipes make the sweeteners feel much more suss. And they were already kind of suss to begin with, so like... what are they not telling us ?
I'm mostly amazed at the amount! I'm in the same boat as you. I very rarely use it, but when I do, I use like a few granules in my hand because it's so sweet.
It seems the WHO guidelines are not without controversy, they relied on observational studies that are extremely vulnerable to reverse causation. The few RCTs that have been done indicate that sweeteners work just fine, but the WHO thought they weren't long enough.
As a type 2 diabetic myself having managed my condition well now for over a decade, there's no other way to put this: The ADA's guidelines and recommendations are fucking garbage. And advice I've received from doctors hasn't been much better, since they're generally following the aforementioned guidelines.
Splenda does not increase risk of diabetes. It's not unhealthy. This article is nonsense. My favorite salad dressing uses a quarter cup of splenda, it's fine.
Some study done a while ago said that eating things that are sweet, but with no caloric value, make you crave other caloricly dense sweet things, which can lead to an increase in diabetes risk. The key ingredient to that increase, is eating sugary things, not eating splenda.