The truth about sugar subsitutes

janicepeele

:happy: RAW SUGAR IS GOOD

WinterBlue

Raw sugar is good....however i also understand the frustration of those with Diabetes when it comes to substituting sugar. As mentioned by others on here i too use Truvia because I think it is better than the other sugar substitutes. However I am not sure how great it is...I know the erythritol is okay but the questions is rebiana...aka stevia plant. I guess at some point FDA didn't think it was all that great because it could cause cancer. having a borderline A1C and trying to bring it down, i try to stay away from added sugar...but even that is hard, but if I was to add table sugar to the things I used truvia for I would probably be diabetic.

on the other end of the spectrum...and this is just looking at it from a reality point of view...you would really have to walk around in your own personal bubble to avoid ANY chemical. unfortunately we no longer live in caveman days where chemicals are not used in everything and polluting the air we breathe. On top of that there are so many factors contributing to cancer. you may not smoke, be an alcoholic, lay out in the sun, or do drugs or even use any artificial products but could still get cancer. Here's another way to look at it someone who smokes for many years may not get cancer but the second hand smokers may end up with it. Someone that sleeps around carelessly may not get an STI but the person that has unprotected sex once ends up with it. If only life was fair then i think our efforts would make sense...while that doesn't stop me from trying i don't go overboard.

That being said...in the back of my mind I have been trying to eliminate sugar subs from my diet...that may mean having less tea as I love sweet tea in the winter, but I am okay with that. It's a slow transition as I once used to be a splenda addict.

iuew

I too am miffed about how the anti vaccine crusade has been going. Where whooping cough was hardly a blip in the news, it's on the uprise again probably due to the fact that people who have refused to have their children vaccinated have them playing together. That's a guess, but I do know that they've alerted my daughter's school a few times to watch for symptoms.

it's amazing how many people still believe in Wakefield's "work" even after it was shown to be a fraud. the Lancet even retracted his publication.

TheDevastator

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=6&ved=0CEgQFjAF&url=http://jn.nutrition.org/content/113/8/1600.full.pdf&ei=oog3T6rXCKOgiQLoq6CDCg&usg=AFQjCNHjvSmmkAF977CGG8ptPvccAyFQCg

Thanks for the study.
First off, what kind of parents put their 1 year old kids into a study to test the safety of a sweetener?
From that study I learned that methanol content is about 10% of the aspartame amount.
so 1 can of Diet coke has about 180 mg of aspartame and 18 mg of methanol.
according to the study the methanol of a liter of soda flavored with aspartame is 56 mg per liter. They used some source in french to list that the average fruit juice is 140 mg per liter although I know that is really really high. Another french site said tomato and orange juice were about 60 mg per liter.

According to the study the methanol content of drinking a can of Diet Coke is a little less than that of 12 oz of tomato or orange juice so it seems that the methanol content of aspartame is nothing to get worried about.

The thing that still concerns me is that it didn't say anything about methanol showing up in the blood after drinking juice.

I still choose to avoid aspartame but I don't really use that many sweeteners as it is. I prefer organic raw honey, stevia, yacon syrup and brown rice syrup.

kennethmgreen

On another note, re: natural foods, the primary mechanism for weight loss there is not their inherent healthiness (don't get me wrong, natural foods are great, and I definitely advocate eating them), but rather the difference in thermic effect of food between "natural" and "processed" foods. In short, you get more usable calories from processed foods than from "natural" foods. Basically, if two people have a maintenance diet of 2000 calories/day on natural food, and one of them starts eating 2000 calories/day of processed foods, the processed foods eater will actually be running somewhere around a 200 calorie/day surplus, which will result in them gaining something like 2 pounds a month.

I am confused by the statement above. I'm not challenging it - you seem to have more knowledge of this subject than I do. But I am baffled by the logic written above (at least the way I'm reading it).

How can two people (with the same calorie requirements) both consume 2000 calories and only one person run at a 200 calorie surplus?

wackyfunster

On another note, re: natural foods, the primary mechanism for weight loss there is not their inherent healthiness (don't get me wrong, natural foods are great, and I definitely advocate eating them), but rather the difference in thermic effect of food between "natural" and "processed" foods. In short, you get more usable calories from processed foods than from "natural" foods. Basically, if two people have a maintenance diet of 2000 calories/day on natural food, and one of them starts eating 2000 calories/day of processed foods, the processed foods eater will actually be running somewhere around a 200 calorie/day surplus, which will result in them gaining something like 2 pounds a month.

I am confused by the statement above. I'm not challenging it - you seem to have more knowledge of this subject than I do. But I am baffled by the logic written above (at least the way I'm reading it).

How can two people (with the same calorie requirements) both consume 2000 calories and only one person run at a 200 calorie surplus?

Basically, the process of converting food to usable energy itself consumes energy. This is what is known as the Thermic Effect of Food. The amount of energy required depends on multiple factors. This makes a huge difference in terms of actual net caloric intake. E.g. protein has a TEF of ~30%, which means that in terms of usable energy, protein is more like 3 calories per gram, rather than 4. Fat has a TEF of 2-3%, which is negligible. In addition, studies have found (sorry for not quoting sources, I'll try and dig up the studies when I have the time), that processed foods have a lower TEF than whole foods. IIRC, the one study where they broke it down showed around a 10% total TEF for some random sandwich that consisted of processed meat, american cheese, and white bread, vs. 20% total TEF for a whole food sandwich with the same caloric and macronutrient breakdown. Self-reported satiety was also higher in the group that ate the whole food sandwich.

Given the negligible TEF of fat, and the already quite high TEF of protein, I suspect that most of the difference lies in refined carbohydrates. That is pure speculation on my part though. In any case, when taken in the context of a daily caloric intake of e.g. 2000 calories, that 10% difference ends up being huge over time, which is what I based my earlier comment on.

I hope this makes things more clear!

Edit: Here is the sandwich study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2897733/