I'm on the preop diet and as I look into my new eating guidelines etc... I'm curious if the amount of sodium that is in a lot of the soups, or sugar free puddings, etc has an effect on any of you? Also, is it good to be only be having sugar free products on a regular basis because it contains aspartame?

Normally, I don't eat a lot of processed foods therefore don't intake a lot of sodium and I cut out splenda etc from my diet a few yrs ago... so I feel a little backtracked if that makes sense.

Nope, but you can't tell that to the fans of diet drinks, chewing gum etc. I think they have ostrich syndrome.

One think on my list of things to do is be around to see the legal wrangles when people start to sue the large drinks corporates to get compo for their cancers that result from our little sugar free friend :-)

Should be a hell of a bun fight, kind of like the one going on with the tobacco companies (tobacco used to be recommended by doctors as a good way to reduce stress and prevent stomach ulcers - totally safe of course...apparently.,...NOT) The aspartame one will be done by the young adults who were given it as kids by their parents.

Low fat, diet stuff sucks. They take out the fat and replace it with sugar or they take out the sugar and replace it with chemicals that are suspected of being carcinogenic...it's ok to get dead so long as you don't get fat!! What a message!!

Eating good quality un-refined carbohydrates, good lean Protein and drinking Water would solve most peoples problems but we want to eat rubbish and then when we get fat we eat more rubbish to try and fix it.

Just my humble opinion of course. I don't let my kids (13 & 14) eat or drink anything with aspartame in it. This way I hope I will never have to lie and say 'I wasn't warned' or 'no one told me' or 'I had no idea' because I do.

I won't leave my kids to deal with the health damage that I believe will result from ingesting large quantities of drinks and other foods containing aspartame, long term.

I look forward to the day when either I get to say 'I told you so' or my children get to say 'mum was right'.

In case you can't tell it makes me really mad!! but it is good to know I am not the only one with serious concerns about it all :-) good on ya Soulcsista01 and good luck with your journey and you may have guessed that I don't eat diet/low fat/processed and would only do so to save my life.

Ooohhhh!! why did you have to go and start me off :-)

I agree, and I wouldnt eat that crap. I make Soup myself, rarely eat canned soup and I refuse to eat artificially sweetened products.

there's losing weight and there's health and the two dont necessarily go together. I didnt have to do a pre op diet, I was lucky, not sure how I would have handled that because shakes are full of artificial sweetener. But I guess its a means to an end and wont hurt you short term. But longer term banded, I dont eat many processed foods.

Jachut I agree! I actually have read a lot of your posts because you started as a low BMIer like myself..and I'm 5'3/200lbs and besides weight I'm completely healthy! Definetly after my liquids phase I will cut artificial sweetener back out of my diet and watch my sodium intake!

From what I've read Splendra has less of a chemical reaction in your body than Equal (aspartame) does. So I have stopped using Equal for my coffee (I have a large coffee probably twice a week). I don't buy diet soda anymore and since ice cream really has never been an issue for me I don't buy the low fat/sugar free versions of that either. One recommendation I would make is to buy Mrs Dash seasonings as they don't contain salt. If you look at other brands of mixed herbs salt is the first ingrediant. Not so good!

If you are careful 90% of the time about the amount of sweeteners and salt you use than the other 10% probably won't be a huge issue. My mother was on blood pressure medication most of my child hood so she did not add salt to food at all. So I tend to be more sensative to salt than most people. There are times however like work lunches etc that you will eat salty food. Not much you can do.

If for example you want to have real suger in your coffe in stead of Splendra that's okay. Just remember those are very real calories. Here in NE when you go to Dunkin Donuts and say Regular Sugar that used to mean 2 teaspoons. Today they take a large spoon (has to hold at least 1 tablespoon) and give you two scoops. That's 6 teaspoons of sugar=90 calories in a cup of coffee; where as getting it black is like 5 cal. My mother always says if you liked coffee you would drink it black (my dad was a cream and two sugar kind of guy!). I worked at a company that had free coffee (super cheap BAD kind). I stopped drinking it becuase I had to add milk to it (I normally dont add milk) to get it down it was so terrible. If you have to add calories the free is not so good.

I understand your concerns--but while the preop and immediate postop diets often do require artificially-sweetened or higher-sodium products than you might ordinarily choose, banded living in general does not have to.

I do use artificially sweetened products some, but never exceed what is traditionally thought of as a low-sodium diet, unless I eat out. Even then, my intake is well within recommended levels.

One of my favorite Protein supplements is unsweetened and flavorless. It bumps up my protein without adding stuff I don't want. That's helpful. (When I was doing the preop diet, it also was a nice change of pace from sweet, which got cloying after a few days. The unflavored stuff in broth was great.)

I think it's wise to be cautious, but don't think you need to feel as though you're backtracking; once you're a bit out of the gate, you will be able to resume a whole foods lifestyle in which you choose or avoid the foods you want.

Betsy, what was your favorite flavorless protein brand?

I like PURE unflavored whey protein isolate from bariatriceating.com. It's really, really good.