Artificial sweetener is everywhere. Calorie conscious individuals, such as myself, long gave up sugar — it’s how many calories for how many tablespoons? No thanks! — not wanting to “waste points” on sweet tea, sugar in coffee, etc. And why drink sugar when the alternative was even sweeter, and advertised as zero calories? ZERO!
But the price we pay for our zero calorie sugar hit is a high one. I always knew, in the back of my mind, that consuming chemical substances, or really anything with “artificial” in the title, was risky business. As I like to say: something is going to kill me. Might as well be Diet Coke and coffee.
What I never quite connected was how artificial sweetener might be adversely affecting my weight. Because a chemical substance, naturally, is not food. And it’s not nutritious.
Last month, I read The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss and as much as I abhor fad diets (and Idiot’s Guide books), I found many of the points fascinating and illuminating. There’s a complex interplay between what we eat/drink/do and how our body processes them and signals hormones. A lot of hormones related to weight loss/body can be and are messed up by processed foods, poor diet, stress, toxins etc.
And artificial sweeteners are, simply, bad news. Aspartame, specifically, more commonly known as Equal (at least as far as little packets are concerned), breaks down into several chemical substances that our bodies may not react well to, including methanol, formaldehyde and then formic acid. Yes, aspartame is ‘safe,’ but it can and does interfere with hormones — and that can lead to weight GAIN, despite the “zero calorie” benefit. Subconsciously, I knew this. I knew I was ingesting chemicals, and I was OK with it. But I thought it was helping me maintain a healthy weight. But if it’s actively keeping me from losing weight? Deal breaker.
So I’ve decided to wean myself off Aspartame. My coffee habit has escalated to 1-2 cups a day (and 2 Equal packets per cup), plus I drink diet soda 2-3 times a week — that’s more aspartame than I am comfortable with, and certainly enough to potentially hinder my weight loss efforts. What good is eating “healthy,” including not consuming high fructose corn syrup, if I’m still ingesting something that messes up my body’s natural process? Yes, yes, I’m going from Aspartame to Splenda, but it’s a long process. Sucralose, aka Splenda, also can affect hormones and weight loss, but it is a “lesser of evils” compared to Aspartame, chemically. My next step is to switch from Splenda to something else — most likely Sugar in the Raw (but I’m still researching).
This is the first but not the last change that I will make inspired by the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Hormone Weight Loss. Yes, I’m vaguely embarrassed to follow advice from a book from the Complete Idiot’s series, but the base logic of hormone weight loss theory makes sense to me — if you fill your body with chemicals (plus toxins, which is a whole other topic), stress it out and eat crappy food, your hormones (including insulin… hellooooo diabetes!) will get off-kilter and that messes with metabolism. I’m doing a lot of things right, and was doing so before I read the book (I am not, nor have I ever been, pre-diabetic, thankfully!), but I can identify a few areas where it’s worth experimenting and making changes.
Watch this space!
Are you hooked on artificial sweeteners? Or, have you successfully ditched them? Let’s talk sugar!
Wooo yay!! A key to health is always to eat less processed things. It’s better to have one teaspoon of sugar than two of aspartame.
Btw, a few months ago I started taking my coffee completely black (no sugar or creamer). Try that! Coffee ups your metabolism and without the sweeteners and cream can actually be good for you.
Yeah, it’s one of those things that I’ve known was bad… but just was so truculent about giving up. It’ll be a slow process, but hopefully I can stay strong LOL.
Re: black coffee. I know I should… I’m just such a wuss. I love it super sweet with lots of milk
I’ve been increasingly discouraged by the studies done on both sucralose and agave nectar – my sugar substitutes of choice (mostly because aspartame gives me wicked headaches). I only ever use them in tea or coffee, but I’ve started transitioning to small amounts of raw honey or sugar in an effort to reduce my intake. I’m with you that I can’t do black coffee, but since I’ve started using a french press, as opposed to an auto drip, I’ve found that I can take it a little less sweet because the overall flavor profile (admittedly influenced by the coffee grounds) is smoother and less bitter.
I was so frustrated when I heard that agave wasn’t a good solution — I’ve used it in the past. I’m going from Equal to Splenda instead of Equal to agave b/c of it
I don’t have much to say other than that I agree that French Press coffee is amazing and easier to drink with less sugar. I drink mine without milk most of the time, too, which is something I don’t do with regular coffee. I’ve heard honey is good in coffee (though for some reason I’ve been too chicken to try it) and it’s incredibly good for you.
Another advantage to kicking sugar substitutes? Natural sweeteners (honey, sugar, brown sugar, whatever) just taste BETTER!
I’ve somehow made the switch from sugar/sugar substitutes to drinking regular coffee with skim milk. Which is better AND cheaper! But for tea I use Truvia, which is supposedly a natural sweetener from the stevia plant. It’s pretty sweet so you don’t need to use a whole lot.
I’ve always been pretty lucky when it comes to artificial sweeteners. I grew up in a household where one appreciated the flavor of the food itself (e.g., coffee), added natural sweetener, or decided that this was not a food for you.
Also, with all artificial sweeteners, I taste a flat sweet initial taste followed by bitterness. For me, nothing about an artificial sweetener has ever been just as good as a natural sweetener (at least tastebud-wise). I long ago learned to make peace with “no sweetener added” food or else to accept the additional calories as part of the food itself.
I’ve been drinking my coffee black since I was 8 (which probably brings its own set of issues…), so artificial sweeteners are really only an issue for me in three circumstances. I’ll have a diet soda instead of a coffee when I am driving and drowsy later in the day. I’ll also have diet soda either as a mixer with alcohol, or as an alternative if I am driving. In two of those three situations, I figure safe driving is more important than long term health and in the third, I’m clearly not all that concerned about healthy behavior anyway.
I’d suggest trying to cut down on amount as well as switching types of sweeteners, though. I think the less sweet stuff you eat, the sweeter the stuff you do eat tastes. Which does mean occasionally things taste ridiculously sweet and off that really shouldn’t, but overall is probably a good thing. Also, avoiding Starbucks coffee. That shit is just disgusting black.
Wow, that’s bad ass. I started drinking coffee when I was in high school, light with extra sugar. It was in college that both the cream and sugar in my coffee started to decrease.
You might want to look into Stevia. Truvia and Sun Crystals are both good. I have found that using these sweeteners does not give me the physical responses that aspartame and sucralose did. These are probably just conditioning on my part, but using a lot of those sweeteners does make me feel unwell.
The purer stevia products can leave an aftertaste but, for me anyway, it is a matter of using very little sweetener. I sweeten a whole gallon of iced tea with just 3 teaspoons of stevia.
About ten years ago I decided to cut all sugar from my tea, and resorted to sweeteners instead. I basically sat around for the next eight years using Splenda, waiting for Stevia, which I’d learn of from The Encyclopedia of Healing Foods by Dr Michael Murray and Dr Joseph Pizzorno with Lara Pizzorno, MA, LMT. Of Stevia, they say: “Our top choice for a non calorie sweetener is stevia, a natural sweetener extracted from the Stevia rebaudiana plant… contents a molecule known as stevioside that is three hundred times sweeter than sugar…used around the world for its incredible sweetening properties. Preliminary studies show that stevia lowers blood glucose levels and blood pressure – two effects of prime importance in dealing with diabetes.”
Apart from that, it is also proven to NOT be carcinogenic, unlike other sweeteners.
When I found it on my supermarket shelves I actually started jumping up and down happily, because I knew that this meant I would be able to find it not only in Australia but its availability was probably due to it being FDA approved in the US and hopefully that will extend to the UK. No more Equal or Splenda!
Okay so I realise I sound a bit like a nut, but basically stevia is much better than any other sweetener. At first, it has a strange sort of fruitiness to it – almost like artificial grape flavour but I adjusted to it very quickly. It’s a tiny bit more expensive – like a cent per serving but that only amounts to about $5 extra a year (I use 2 stevia tabs a day)