The question this week comes from a Mr. Jeff W. and it reads:
My doctor recently diagnosed me with type 2 diabetes. I know it is important to watch my sugar intake. Is sugarless candy really sugarless?
Yes it is possible to make sugary sweets without the sugar. The magic trick is to use artificial sweeteners. Dun dun dun now the question is: to add artificial sweeteners to your diet or not?
There are many options for many different kinds of artificial sweeteners. There is sucralose, aspartame, saccharin, acesulfame K, neotame, and the stevia plant. Each is made differently and each has a different amount of sweet.
Positives:
Less Calories-so good news if you’re trying to lose weight.
They are super sweet so it takes a small amount to get the intended taste.
Negatives:
They are fake, kind of like the hormones they put in mass produced beef or pesticides on apples. (That might have been a little bit of a biased comparison, but I can’t hide my apprehension about using these substances).
Strange aftertastes in some.
There is a possibility that there will still be carbohydrates in the sugarless food and those have to be taken into account when figuring out your blood sugars. You’ll probably have to worry about this more with baked goods, not so much a sugarless peppermint candy.
And basically there simply hasn’t been enough sound research done to completely support or reject the absolute safety of these products. I’m guessing we’ll find out in a few years exactly what affect these substances have on human bodies.
I bet that if you just try to cut out sweet from your diet, you’ll find that you eventually get use to not having that flavor on your taste buds. If you are a soda (yes that is what I call what some people call “pop”) drinker I challenge you to give it up for 3 months. After your 3 months have been complete drink one. I bet you’ll find that your taste buds are super shocked, almost to the point of dislike.
But don’t take my word for it (Anybody use to watch Reading Rainbow?),
Meagan
