Sugar and sweetener

"Confirmation bias" is a tendency of people to favour information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. I am probably guilty of this when it comes to my research on the harmful effects of sugar. I read with interest some further confirmatory stories this week, including this one linking sugar with the effect of cholesterol's ability to cause heart disease. 
http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/19/world-renown-heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease/

"Without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped. The biggest culprits of chronic inflammation are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many processed foods."

While acknowledging my confirmation bias, I still find this compelling.

The new villain getting a lot of bad press is fruit juice due to the sugar content:

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/sep/07/smoothies-fruit-juices-new-health-risk

But I got to thinking, one of the ways that I, and many others, reduce sugar intake is by switching to artificial sweeteners. I put them in my coffee and I drink low-calorie soft drinks. So I thought I should balance the equation a little by looking at some of the effects of sweetener on the body.

There are many types of sweetener available. The most common ones are saccharin, aspartame and sucralose. Critics of artificial sweeteners say that they cause a variety of health problems, ranging from cancer to depression to headaches.

Studies dating to the 1970s linked saccharin to bladder cancer in laboratory rats. Because of those studies, saccharin once carried a warning label that it may be hazardous to your health. But according to the National Cancer Institute and other health agencies, there's no sound scientific evidence that any of the artificial sweeteners approved for use in the U.S. cause cancer or other serious health problems. And numerous research studies confirm that artificial sweeteners are generally safe in limited quantities, even for pregnant women. As a result of the newer studies, the warning label for saccharin was dropped.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/artificial-sweeteners/MY00073

But the debate rages on, mainly because no long-term studies on humans have been conducted, and many of those short-term studies that have been conducted have been funded by the sweetener industry. The biggest villain appears to be aspartame, which has been shown to trigger headaches and depression in those susceptible.

http://www.onhealth.com/artificial_sweeteners/page8.htm#aspartamecon

We probably don't know the reality from the hype, and I will hopefully view popular research with at least a pinch of scepticism. From a personal perspective, I will continue to cut out sugar wherever possible, preferably without replacing it with an artificial sweetener if I can. But I won't worry too much about getting cancer from aspartame, I think the risk of me getting cancer from being massively overweight is much higher, not to mention the cigarette habit!