Anyone else concerned about artificial sweeteners and eat al

HealthyChanges2010

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion of course, but I really encourage everyone to read this article, and watch this lecture, however long.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=4271246&page=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Looking forward to it after seeing the one Fiona shared!

therobinator

I personally just don't see the need to put anything fake into my body. I am not all high and mighty and won't tell anyone else not to do it, but that's just my choice. If I want something to be sweet, I will use regular, real sugar (which in and of itself really is a processed food). Similarly, most packaged, canned or prepared foods contain too many unpronouncable ingredients and way too much salf, so I generally skip them, too. That's not to say I won't eat this stuff once in a while, but I will never make a lifestyle out of it or use them to boost weight loss. If I can't do it naturally, then there's something very wrong.

The downside to all of this is that 99.9% of coupons that people can get for groceries are for packaged/prepared foods.....so when my husband and I go food shopping, since we mainly get fresh produce and meats, we generally can't even use coupons. And that stinks. For example, we went last night, bought food for an entire week, and the only packaged foods we got were Chobani yogurts, a box of cereal, some chicken stock, and some Hostess 100 calorie packs....and even some of that stuff doesn't even have "weird ingredients" in it.

Juliane_

I try to avoid them as much as possible, I have read that they make you crave more sweets. But whatever works in the short term to get started on healthy habits, but in the long run the goal should be to eliminate these ingredients from your diet.

I think this is true. I personally find myself going on less sugar/junk food binges when I don't eat the artificial stuff and/or sugar.

I personally do not drink a lot of soda. Better yet, I hardly if ever drink soda anymore. I don't miss it or need it at all. If I do, it's because there's hardly an option. So that's really on very very rare occasions. If I have to choose between artificial and real stuff I try to stick to real stuff. I try to avoid HFCS as well. Who wants to eat corn all day?

My main sweetener is Stevia. So far the best tasting stevia I have found is NuStevia. I also have a Liquid stevia with singing dog vanilla extract from NuNaturals. It tastes pretty darn good as a sweetener to my plain Fage Yogurt 0%. It gives it a vanilla-sweet taste that's pretty good. Stevia takes some getting used to though and after a while, the same amount of sugar you needed for a recipe will be too too sweet so you end up needing less sugar. I know this because I baked my fiancee a dessert cake we call arepa. I have made that recipe before with the same ingredients and this time around I couldn't stand how sweet it was.

My main drinks are tea (I carry some in my purse w/ stevia packets), unsweetened almond milk, and water. I also have some tropicana trop 50 in my fridge. I'll have like 4 oz of that with my dinner.

bluehorsesjp

I still drink my diet coke and use Truvia, that wont be changing any time soon

Why not?