Sugar Substitutes

Part of my problem with dieting is I crave the sweet stuff. I am a sugar addict.

I like colas. I like sweet foods. Cakes, pies, cookies, chocolate. I try very hard not to eat them and behave myself and act like an adult but, raised as I was with no dietary guidance, it is sometimes difficult to know what is the correct choice. Generally speaking, not eating it is the correct choice, but it is not the choice I like.

What I crave is sucrose, apparently. White table sugar. Yum, yum. According to Wikipedia, there are lots of different kinds of sugars. White refined sugar is probably the worst, but I imagine all of it is suspect.

I do not drink diet drinks because of aspartame. Here is a pro-aspartame website. It will tell you how safe it is.

I lately have been chewing sugar free gum with it in it, though, something I need to stop doing.

Here is a website that tells you how terrible this drug is. It lists 92 different problems that aspartame can cause, including MS, lupus, cancer, vision problems, and death.

Personally, I think this is a loathsome chemical, foisted on the public, oddly enough, by Donald Rumsfield (check this FDA site for some interesting comments about this). Call me a biased liberal, but I feel sure that anything Rumsfield had a hand in simply cannot be good for me.

The 'net is full of reports about asparatame and the illnesses is reportedly causes. Just type it in.

I know when I drink a soft drink with aspartame, it makes me lightheaded and I feel funny. It makes my limbs tingle after I've been drinking it for any period of time, kind of a neuropathy, or something. So I don't drink diet drinks. (I don't notice the same effect from chewing gum, however.)

The government says aspartame does no harm. Since I tend to believe little the government tells me, I guess you can figure what I think about this. I think the stuff is poison.

Excuse me while I throw out my gum since I seem to have forgotten this until now.

Then there is saccharin. This sweetener drug has been around well over 100 years but it is supposed to cause cancer. I don't like the aftertaste and don't use that, either.

Saccharin is only on the market because in 1977 Congress overrode the FDA and forced it to approve it. Check it out at this FDA website. Trust those folks on Capital Hill, yes?

I have tried fructose, and found it wanting. This is also found in most foods as high fructose corn syrup, although Wikipedia is quick to point out there are differences between fructose and high fructose corn syrup.

Splenda is sucralose, and it leaves a taste like chlorine in my mouth. I couldn't figure this out until I looked up stuff about it, and discovered it is sugar turned into a chemical that is, guess what, chlorine. Go to http://splenda.com for the corporate smiley site about it if you want the Disney spiel.

This sweetener also supposedly causes thymus problems and possibly cancer and other problems. It has become quite popular at a very alarming rate. At least it is alarming to me.

There are books about the toxicity of sucralose, and many websites. Just type it in a search engine and be amazed.

I once tried Stevia and it sent shivers all through my body. I have hesitated to try it again. However, of all sweeteners (other than white table sugar), this is the one that I think is the best to use.

Stevia is about 300 times sweeter than sugar. It supposedly has been used for 1000 years in Paraguay. The FDA cracked down on it in 1995, supposedly at the behest of the sugar industry, and Monsanto (Monsanto is a giant food company that apparently exists to make money from foods, regardless of the potential for poison, for anyone who doesn't know that, which I suspect is many Americans).

Stevia is now widely available in the U.S. Information on side effects is conflicting and it depends on who sponsored the research, of course. Research by the aspartame companies shows it is bad; stevia sellers say it is good. I would not use Truvia, which is a sweetener derivative of stevia.

One notation found that stevia makes your body process sugar a lot quicker. At http://sweetleaf.com there is some information, but it is a corporate site and doesn't say much. It does say there have been 1000 tests and it's found to be safe.

Japan apparently has banned most sweeteners except for stevia and sugar.

Craving sweets has been time consuming for me while I try to look all this up. Mostly what I found on things other than stevia is very alarming. I hope it makes others think, too, because indeed these are chemicals. Why should we add chemicals to our bodies?