Artificial Sweeteners

[fluffy]

I think, according to what I've been reading and hearing lately, that if there is any one thing that would benefit your health most by cutting back on it would have to be refined sugar. The list of potentially damaging effects of chronically high blood sugar is long. And scary. But I do like a little something sweet tasting in my morning coffee. Some products have (or so we're told) been tested and retested and re-retested but they never really want to tell you just who is doing the testing. I can see that the sugar industry would have a huge stake in down-playing the health risks of too much sugar, and likewise each of the producers of the artificial products would have you believe that their product is best. Health care pros have told me to steer away from saccharine and cyclamates. Testing on sucralose (Splenda) is suspiciously scarce. The health food set raves about stevia. What's a body to do?

[Glacier]

I trust nature's sweeteners any day over man-made ones. The key is to use sugar in moderation. A little sugar is not going to hurt you. Honey is the sugar of choice in our household (never tried it in my coffee though).

[fluffy]

I trust nature's sweeteners any day over man-made ones. The key is to use sugar in moderation. A little sugar is not going to hurt you. Honey is the sugar of choice in our household (never tried it in my coffee though).

It's pretty tasty if you like honey. Drank honey in coffee for years up north.

[Bsuds]

I prefer Splenda, I have read bad things about Stevia ( I could be wrong on that as I don't quite remember specifics)

[Poindexter]

Honey tastes like hell in a coffee, sorry. It's great as a replacement with tea or sprinkled on top of your grapefruit in the morning but nothing replaces white sugar in a coffee.

As for which artificial sweetener is best, depends on your use. Heres a good site:

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/ ... ekey=56790

[Bsuds]

This article has some concerns with Stevia.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea ... le1333389/

[kgcayenne]

Why not just recondition oneself to prefer naturally-occuring sugars?

[Bsuds]

Why not just recondition oneself to prefer naturally-occuring sugars?

Because many of the naturally occurring sugars are not healthy for someone with type2 Diabetes.

[ILLEffect]

For the most part, I try to buy unsweetened products and I got used to simply not adding sugar or sweetener to most things. For tea/coffee, I do add in Splenda. I haven't used regular white (or brown for that matter) sugar in 4 1/2 years (since being diagnosed with type 1 insulin dependent diabetes). It took awhile to get used to not using sugar and to get used to the taste of things that I used to put sugar in, but now I actually prefer no sugar. I should dig out my diabetic cook book and post some of the diabetic friendly recipes, they are actually really good (my favourite is the "no-sugar-sugar-cookies").

[Homeownertoo]

Honey tastes like hell in a coffee, sorry. It's great as a replacement with tea or sprinkled on top of your grapefruit in the morning but nothing replaces white sugar in a coffee.

As for which artificial sweetener is best, depends on your use. Heres a good site:

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/ ... ekey=56790

While I usually take my coffee black, when I want it sweet my sweetener of choice is sweetened condensed milk Vietnamese-style. Don't know anything about splenda and stevia though I'm suspicious of such altered products.

[grammafreddy]

I have heard wonderful things about a product called "Just Like Sugar". I had some sample packs but gave them to a friend who is diabetic. She loved them, too.

Here's their website: http://www.justlikesugar.ca/

Here's where it is available (or maybe get more info from them)

(Kelowna) Mission Park Vitamins #14 3151 Lakeshore Road V1W 3S9 Tel: 250-763-3016

(Kelowna) Nature’s Fare Natural Foods 120-1876 Cooper Road Orchard Plaza V1Y 9N6 Tel: 250-762-8636

(Penticton) Nature’s Fare Natural Foods 104-2210 Main Street V2A 5H8 Tel: 250-492-7763

(Pentiction) Whole Foods Market 103-1770 Main Street V2A 5G8 Tel: 250-493-2855

(Vernon) Lifestyle Natural Foods 4900 27th Street V1T 7G7 Tel: 250-545-0255

(Vernon) Nature’s Fare Natural Foods 104-3400 30th Avenue V1T 2E2 Tel: 250-260-1117

(Vernon) Simply Delicious Natural & Gourmet Grocer 3419 31st Avenue V1T 2H6 Tel: 250-542-7500

[Imagination]

As much as I love sugar I also do better if I avoid it (my insulin is already wonky). I've tried Stevia and am not convinced by their statements but mostly it just has a licorice aftertaste I don't like at all (and I do usually like licorice but not this one) so I avoid the stuff. I do like Splenda as everything I have read says it's one of the better ones and my blood glucose tests don't seem to mind (some thinking believes that insulin can be set off by artificial sweeteners in much the same way the real thing does it. Call it Pavlov's dog response or whatever but it's never bothered me although I will fully admit I know full well I would be better off without any sweeteners...it's just not quite as much fun.). The big bonus for me is Splenda is proven not to change when heated (as all the others do and aspartame is now seen as almost poison when heated as it turned out to be the culprit in the Gulf War illness that surfaced in US troops from their diet Coke getting over heated). Splenda also holds it's sweetness when heated while others can go a bit bitter and is one of the few artificial sweeteners that can replace sugar 1:1 in baking without any problems to the taste or texture of a recipe.

To me it's the lesser of the evils that allows me some sweet things although I do agree once you get off sugars you can learn to lose your taste for it, but it's pretty hard to go without forever unless you have some sort of will of steel.

As for honey vs sugar, white or brown, corn or beet or cane, naturally occurring or added, it doesn't matter. Sugar is sugar as your body sees it and all of it, any form, causes the same problems be it cholesterol or obesity or feeding cancer or anything else you can mention. The only thing makes any difference at all to what you body might do with it is what it is eaten with as things like proteins will slow down how fast your body processes it and that can impact what your body does with it. The glycemic index is all about this concept and it's worth understanding especially after the latest news reports (http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100420/sugar_100420/20100420?hub=TopStoriesV2) because those reports are only the very tip of a very large iceberg and you can bet (or hope, please let the public in on this) the rest will be coming out slowly but surely as people get on board and the sugar lobby can't stop the process. So far they have been very successful at just that as this is actually been well known for a long time but the media etc. have all stayed quiet (except for a handful of brave souls who were getting the word out).

Believe me, if you want to cut sugar out you have to go beyond whatever it is you add to coffee or tea or cereal and hit it on every level because it is the total amount of sugars you eat, not just the added sugars alone. Once you eliminate all the hidden sugars and avoid the more loaded foods (and I mean the ones where it comes naturally, choosing berries over banana for instance) then adding a tsp of sugar to something when you really want some is really no big deal (providing you are not having insulin issues). You have to remember that banana can have the equivalent of 9 tsp of sugar, 2 pieces of normal old bread could have 4+, a glass of low fat milk 3 tsp so you get to appreciate how that can work out to a lot of extra sugar every day and where you can cut so you can have some in your coffee if you really like real sugar.

If you want to start tallying, just start reading labels for sugars and remember 4 grms on a label is equal to 1 tsp. When you add up what you might typically ingest just in stuff that is labelled (meaning not from whole, as they are in nature food) you can get the picture. For the whole foods you have to refer to something like the glycemic index. Warning, never assume when it comes to foods (especially those labelled 'healthy' as they are often the worst offenders since they think people want no fat). Pick up just about anything in the grocery store that is in a bottle, box, or whatever and read the label. It's just a real learning experience to see it's in things you'd never expect to see it in. I had to do that when instructed not to eat anything unless it's sugar content was 0 - 2 grm/serving. After spending 2 hours just reading labels at the store I thought I was being reduced to meat and ice cubes because they sure like to put sugar in things.

Meanwhile, if you want sugar in your coffee you could just kill one glass of orange juice (21 gm of sugar, so 5 tsp of sugar in one glass) and have a fresh orange (17 gm of sugar, so 4 tsp) and you can have your cup of coffee with sugar. Switch Special K to eating Cheerios and you can have 2 more tsp in your coffee.

[Lady tehMa]

Health food store Stevia has a slightly licorice aftertaste, which I actually like. This "Truvia" stuff is altered Stevia, not so sure I'd trust a product that has been "tweaked" by big business.

[Homeownertoo]

Thanks for the info, Imagination.

[UnknownResident]

Stevia is nothing to be worried about, zero calories, it doesn't do anything to your blood sugar levels, simply because it's not sugar. The reason why people try to make us scared of stevia is because it's an herb that grows very well in South America, and is so potent, it could potentially shut down the sugar and artificial sweetener industries. The two studies that people like to use to backup their claims that stevia is bad for you, the authors of those studies will tell you that they were done very poorly and that stevia has no harmful effects.

Do you even know what splenda is? Splenda is the product of insecticide research. Here's how you make splenda, you drop the hydrogen out of a sugar molecule and you add chlorine. Chlorine is a class one carcinogen (cancer causer). Chlorine, doesn't exist in it's free form anywhere in nature, you have to artificial make it. Anyways they add this chlorine to a sugar molecule and force it to bond with carbon, which makes whats called a chlorocarbon, which is toxic. The carbon acts as a delivery system to deliver that chlorine into the cells. That's why it works as an insecticide .

Other chlorocarbons are DDT an insecticide banned in North America due to severe toxicity, chlordane another insecticide banned in 1998 due to harm to humans and the environment, PCBs used as electrical insulators and heat regulators banned in many countries because it can't break down in the environment or food chain, mustard gas... nuff said.. Then you have sucralose (splenda) the only chlorocarbon ever used for human consumption. How long before we figure out that it's toxic? You're eating a chemical.

It's not natural. Now is splenda safe? I don't know, and no one else does either, that's the problem. There's only been 5 human tested studies ever done and the longest one was 13 weeks.

When it comes to honey, unfiltered and uncooked honey is fine. Be careful with raw honey, they are allowed to heat that to 130 degrees, above 117 and it loses all the good stuff in it.