Sweeteners?? Confused

[delete011608]

Hello ladies,

I've been really trying to improve my diet and am going on three weeks straight without having any refined sugar in my diet. I've kept it to 20 grams of sugar per day with the only sugar coming from fruit, milk, etc. I am still using my splenda in my coffee, over my oatmeal, etc. Is this okay or should I also give up the sweetener. Thanks for your input.

[Donica]

Personally, I use stevia in place of sugar as a natural herbal sweetener. I've read too many things about Splenda that put that sweetener in the red zone in my mind... If your goal is simply to reduce the amount of sugar in your diet, then eliminating refined sugar is certainly a big step; but depending on what your less general goals are (weight loss, mass-gaining, etc.) your decision to consume more or less of other forms of sugar--like from fruit--will certainly come into play and affect them, and when you should consume them.

[abcreations]

I would give up all artificial sweeteners. If you just have to have a little sweet you can always use honey. Local honey is the best. If you can get stevia try that to.

[twinnett]

A little splenda in your coffee is fine, in my opinion! I use stevia most of the time though

[vanillabn]

There's a lot of controversy in regards to artificial sweetners, I think So it's really up to you. I use splenda in my coffee, but for other stuff, if I felt the need to use sweetener I try to use Stevia. For things like oatmeal, I started out using splenda, but have slowly changed, and now I only use raspberries/blueberries for sweetness.

[freebirdmac]

Unless you're diabetic or really go crazy with the sugar, there's nothing wrong with using the real thing on your oatmeal and in your coffee. It should be insignificant compared to the rest of your diet.

[MauiZos]

The problem with artificial sweeteners is that your body looses the natural association between the taste of sweet and high calories. 2 things happen:

1) Your leptin production gets suppressed. This is the hormone that makes you feel full and controls your appetite. Normally you taste sweet things and your body will start immediately producing leptin to signal you to cut off eating the calories. After a while your body learns sweetness does not equal high calories so when you do eat you'll never get the signal that you've had enough. A lot of artifical sweeteners will make you feel endlessly hungry.

2) Normally you taste sweetness and your body will produce insulin along with the leptin because it thinks it will have to clean up the sugar out of your blood. When there isn't a big sugar influx, the insulin does its job anyway, squeezing every drop of energy out of the food you do eat and leaving you drained with that "crash" feeling.

A dash of splenda here or there is not a big deal, but heavily relying on artifical sweeteners can have a big effect.