Is Snacking on Plain, Sugar-Free Jello Ok?

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Chicago, IL hello JJ, please help me win this bet. I love snacking on plain sugar free jello. My husband claims gelatin has zero nutritional value and I think he's wrong since it's always offered in hospitals. I would love to know your opinion. This is jj, Virgin, four time New.

York Times best selling author, celebrity nutrition.

Expert and fitness hall of famer. I've been on a lifelong quest for answers to the toughest health questions and now I'm sharing what I found with you. Welcome to Ask the Health Expert effort. Gabriela from Instagram asks, hello jj, please help me win this bet. I love snacking on plain sugar free jello. My husband claims gelatin has zero nutritional value and I think he's wrong since it is always offered in hospitals. I'd love to know your opinion. Many thanks, Gabriela. Okay, Gabriela, thank you so much for sending this in. I might sound like I'm picking on you a bit here, but I'm picking on hospitals and I'll tell you about it when I come right back with the answer. So stay with me.

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Okay, there's so many parts of this question that we have to unpack. So what do we have to unpack in this question? We have to unpack snacking. We have to unpack artificial sweeteners, sugar free. And. And we also have to unpack that. If it's in a hospital, it must be healthy. Okay, there we go. Like, there's all the issues here. I'm like, oh, my goodness. So you can imagine as I was reading this, I'm like, gabriela, first of all, just because it's being served in a hospital does not mean it's healthy. I will tell you something that was very interesting. My son, many of you probably know the story. It's detailed in the book Warrior mom, was in the hospital for four and a half months. He was a victim of a hit and run and left for dead in the street. And I literally had to put signs up. I carted in all his food. I had a nutribullet in there. I was making him smoothies as soon as he got his feeding tube out. And I was bringing him food in from Whole Foods. And why was I doing this if hospital food was healthy? Well, because it wasn't. I mean, literally, they were giving him like. Well, they weren't, because one of the first words he said when he started to speak again because he'd been in a coma was disgusting. And I'm like, there's my son. But it was like white bread, white flour. And they literally wanted to give him ensure and crystal light. Like, my son has a traumatic brain injury. We are not giving him an artificial sweetener. So I really want to kind of blow past that because just because they're serving in the hospital does not necessarily mean it's the best thing for you. Okay, so that's the step one, step two now. And there's four parts to this. Then there's of course. What about gelatin? I'll get to that. Last you've got. I love snacking on plain sugar free jello. Now I'm going to pick apart both snacking and plain sugar free jello because it's not plain, it's sugar free. That means it's got artificial sweeteners added into it. Artificial sweeteners, in my opinion, should be outlawed. There's just nothing good about them. Now, I'm not talking about natural, natural things that can sweeten without calories, like stevia or monk fruit. I'm talking about artificially created sweeteners that have been found to wreak havoc on our metabolism. In fact, one of the things they found about Splenda sucralose is it can change your gut microbiome to make you more glucose intolerant, which is probably why we're seeing a 33% increase in risk of diabetes with people who are drinking diet sodas. Besides the fact, let's just be honest, when you eat sweet, what do you want more of? Sweet. So last thing we need to do is fire up our sweet tooth, right? So when you're snacking on artificial sweeteners, you're doing two things that are challenging. First, you're using artificial sweeteners that can create all sorts of problems like caloric dysregulation, amplifying your sweet tooth, changing your gut microbiome neurotoxicity. But the other part is when you are snacking, you're eating. And even if you think, oh, I'm not eating here because I'm getting no calories, no, but you're getting artificial sweeteners that can still start to create this issue of raising insulin. Remember, when we eat, we raise blood sugar and we raise insulin. Blood sugar responds quickly, insulin does not. And so blood sugar comes up, insulin comes up, brings blood sugar back down, insulin stays up. If you're snacking all the time, you're keeping insulin up. And if you're keeping insulin up, you're getting inflamed and you're basically locking the doors to your fat cells so your body cannot use stored fat for fuel. You are now a sugar burner, not a fat burner, which I talk about in the sugar impact diet. And that's not what you want to. You want to be a fat burner. So I'm blowing up the sugar free, and I'm blowing up the snacking. You really want to make sure you're eating by the virgin diet, sugar impact diet plate, where you're getting good quality protein Clean protein, healthy fats and fiber from non starchy vegetables and slow, low carbs, because that trifecta is the best for blood sugar balance and satiety. That's what we want to do. And then you can stop the snacking. And then you'll be able to get your blood sugar where it should be so that you're not increasing your risk of dementia. If your blood Sugar is elevated 5x the time, the risk of dementia. So then you'll be able to burn off stored fat for fuel. Then you'll be able to do more intermittent fasting, which is going to help with longevity. The benefits go on and on and on. So we want to make sure you're doing that. And then finally, let's just unpack gelatin. All right, so gelatin's the one piece. Like if you were eating plain gelatin that had zero flavor, which I don't know why you would be doing, that's one thing. But there's a better option. So gelatin is the degraded form of collagen. The collagen in gelatin is broken down when you eat it, so it probably won't go directly to your joints. One of the big benefits of collagen, of course, hair, skin, nails, your joints. But there's some evidence that gelatin could ease that joint pain. There's been some studies on it, but I look at it and go, why not just take some collagen? And I have this collagen, we call it All Systems Glow Collagen. With my new, by the way, I got a makeover on my products. So if you've been seeing, you're like, who is this? That's the new me. That's my fresh new look. And we're having a huge contest, so stay tuned on that. But that collagen, throw some in your smoothie. I throw some in my smoothie every day. That's an easy way to do that. So the deal's with us. No more sugar free, no more snacking. And you want to boost your collagen, get collagen and throw it in your smoothie. All right, there you go. Gabriela, thank you for that question. I loved it so much. Thank you.

This is JJ with Ask the Health Expert.

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