Sugar or sugar substitute?
eblakes93
Posts: 372 Member
Hi everyone,
I'm making my back-to-college grocery list and I want a box of sugar packets so I don't have to measure my sugar for coffee/tea/hot chocolate. I'm lazy :P haha What are your favorite brands of sugar or sugar substitute packets?
I'm making my back-to-college grocery list and I want a box of sugar packets so I don't have to measure my sugar for coffee/tea/hot chocolate. I'm lazy :P haha What are your favorite brands of sugar or sugar substitute packets?
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Replies
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splenda or stevia0
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With much practice, I learned how to limit my sugar intake. There are so many different opinions on it so If I need to use some, I just stick with "sugar in the raw", when I need to use sugar, or I use honey. I personally hate the taste of splenda/sweet n low stuff. I have a heard different opinions of honey vs agave... stevia plant extract vs "store bought stevia" vs "stevia in liquid form"...so at this point who freaking knows.:sad:
And oh yeah there is the whole "stay away from artificial sweetner" disclaimer that I hear too....so as I stated who freaking knows what to believe at this point.:sad:0 -
Stay away from refined sugar and artificial sweetners including splenda..you would surprised that a lot of foods have hidden sugar...other than the word 'sugar' , look for these ingredients to avoid: dextrose, glucose, fructose, sucrolose, maltodextrin, basically anything ending in 'ose' , and maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, corn sweetners, nectar, cane crystals, fruit juice concentrate, these ingredients are just sugar in Ur body. If you go to your food cabinet or your shoppin list, and look at your so called healthy foods, and look at the ingredients, you will find alot of them have the bad sugar ingredients.
And there is extensive research on why artificial sweetners are bad available on the internet if you want to know the science behind it-
instead.try Xylitol or stevia sweet drops. organic honey
but stay away from Stevia in the raw- its toxic to your body0 -
I use stevia or splenda, they were approved by my nutritionist so I use them. I still don't use much, Im not much on overly sweet things.0
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Stay away from refined sugar and artificial sweetners including splenda..you would surprised that a lot of foods have hidden sugar...other than the word 'sugar' , look for these ingredients to avoid: dextrose, glucose, fructose, sucrolose, maltodextrin, basically anything ending in 'ose' , and maltodextrin, high fructose corn syrup, corn sweetners, nectar, cane crystals, fruit juice concentrate, these ingredients are just sugar in Ur body. If you go to your food cabinet or your shoppin list, and look at your so called healthy foods, and look at the ingredients, you will find alot of them have the bad sugar ingredients.
And there is extensive research on why artificial sweetners are bad available on the internet if you want to know the science behind it-
instead.try Xylitol or stevia sweet drops. organic honey
but stay away from Stevia in the raw- its toxic to your body
There is nothing that has really been proven to say that artificial sweeteners are bad. Use them if that's what you want to use. I use them and don't have issues with them. I have yet to see any real proof that they will cause me to get cancer or grow a second head. Some people have issues with them but not everyone has to avoid them.
Xylitol is a processed artificial sweetener. It is a sugar alcohol and harms many people. Stevia drops and truvia drops are not guaranteed to be safe.
Where did you get that stevia in the raw is toxic to your body? I have yet to hear this one. If stevia in the raw is toxic than all stevia will be.
OP, use whatever you prefer and fits into your budget and calories. I personally use sweeteners and sometimes real sugar. I don't use them often at all because most things are great without sugar. Ultimately, pick whatever you prefer.0 -
we have a beekeeper as a next door neighbor, so all I usually use is honey, or raw sugar. I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, never have, so I never use them.
use what's accessible to you - whether its "real" sugar or artificial. I understand using the packs for easy measuring - smart thinking! I hate having to measure all the little things sometimes.0 -
My absolute favorite sweetener is dark amber maple syrup, but that's probably because I live in the north east, where it's easy to get year-round.
Other sweeteners I've used that aren't refined sugar (which I only use for some baking because of the way it reacts with other ingredients) are lavender honey (although any kind is fine) and Splenda Essentails* with the occasional nip of dark brown sugar instead of regular for that molasses-y flavor!
* PLEASE NOTE! Splenda is NOT a calorie-free sweetener; in fact none of the ones on supermarket shelves are! According to FDA regulations, any food item with less than 5 calories a serving can be legally labelled zero calories! Splenda and other such sweeteners have about 4 calories per serving (because one gram of carbs is approximately 4 calories) unless a different amount is stated on the packaging. The reason I prefer Essentials over regular Splenda is because those 4 calories are attributed to a gram of fiber instead of just regular sugar carbs.
Also note that while there is no conclusive evidence that artificial sweeteners are necessarily harmful to humans, there are a lot of people who have an intolerance to these sweeteners; most commonly aspartame. So, if you have any sort of symptoms that could be attributed to an allergic reaction after eating any artificial sweetener, stop eating it (duh) and talk to your doctor, just as with any reaction to any other food!0 -
Im sorry but Stevia tastes nasty and tastes nothing like Sugar so in my opinion I go without - I just mainly drink herbal tea or on occasional might treat myself to tea with real sugar (low variety)
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I use no sugar or sugar subs these days. BUT, I used to use agave in my coffee. IMO, it works better than honey for coffee because it doesn't have a flavor...honey has that...honey flavor :-) Honey is for hot tea when you have a sore throat.0
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Personally I would just use unrefined sugar packets. I don't trust the artificial sweeteners in sugar substitute, and unrefined sugar is at least a *little* healthier.0
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Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.0 -
Once in awhile I use Agave Nectar or Stevia leaf.
My body could never tolerate artificial sugar.0 -
I use Agave, it's lower on the glycemic index which means it breaks down into your blood stream slower so you don't get a sugar rush. It is also 25% sweeter so you use less. Also if you get your own still you can make tequila out of it.0
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I used to use sugar, then sweet n low, then splenda, the stevia... now I am sugar and artificial sugar/sweetener-free. It isn't good for you. Do some research. Raw honey is the best natural sweetener for your body and mind. If you ever get a chance to read IT STARTS WITH FOOD, read their section on sugar.0
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Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.0 -
Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.
It's gotta be tough, realising that I was clearly replying to a whole range of people who were saying things like "I dont trust artificial sweetners"0 -
Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.
It's gotta be tough, realising that I was clearly replying to a whole range of people who were saying things like "I dont trust artificial sweetners"
What does it matter if someone doesn't trust artificial sweeteners? Personally I'm from the "If I can't pronounce it, I won't eat it" group.
It's the same thing as the whole "which is better - butter or margarine" crap.0 -
we have a beekeeper as a next door neighbor, so all I usually use is honey, or raw sugar. I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners, never have, so I never use them.
use what's accessible to you - whether its "real" sugar or artificial. I understand using the packs for easy measuring - smart thinking! I hate having to measure all the little things sometimes.
I do this and swap sugar with local honey, cause I get whupped by allergies. Other than that, I'm a real sugar kinda guy0 -
I like splenda. I usually grab a few extra packets every time I go to Starbucks, and then I never have to buy my own
I've also weaned myself off of additional sweet stuff for the most part. When I first started, I was a cream + 2 sugars in my coffee kind of girl. I slowly decreased both the cream and sugar and over time I got used to it. Now I almost always drink black coffee (unless of course it's bad coffee, then you need the sugar to cover up the bitter taste! Haha)0 -
Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
Agreed. I use both. I have artificial in my drinks (when I have soda or tea) just 'cause I have a mindset that I'm not going to drink my calories.0 -
Im sorry but Stevia tastes nasty and tastes nothing like Sugar ...
I haven't noticed that. I love using stevia to sweeten things. Maybe it's the brand you're using. Some of them have various additives. Depending on how it's processed, I've heard it can be kind of bitter.0 -
Artificial sweeteners taste nasty and give me Horrible headaches! I started using Agave, which doesn't taste bad, but the sugar and calorie count is WAY higher then organic sugar. I'm switching back to sugar n the raw or organic sugar. Sugar in the raw comes in easy to calculate packets.0
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No man made sweetener here. We only use the real stuff in our house.0
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On one of the shows, Dr.Oz had this one woman who craves sugar and was gaining weight and looked terrible. She changed from that to agave nectar and loves it. She lost weight from that. It's more natural for our body and healthier.
4H Club at one of the Country Fairs I went to in Florida and it was April this year, did a scientific research on artificial sweeteners. I wished I stayed longer and took pictures but I remembered that stevia and sugar in the raw were better in the long run than splenda, sweet and low, and equal. Splenda, Sweet & Low, and Equal leads to cancer and some other health issues in the long run.
In the magazine that my husband subscribes to called Beverly International, it is a bodybuilding magazine and bodybuilders are very militaristic in what to consume and what not and they had this AD in that magazine, Sugar in the Raw and Stevia. They won't advertise those in their magazines if they are not good for the bodybuilders.
I'm interested in proven facts and do research from reliable sources and I thought I'd add where I saw that from to help you decide which one you prefer and feel comfortable consuming.
I live in the South and my family prefers the real sugar. I use that to make sweet tea but I know it's not good for me. My dad would tell me when I was little that real sugar is man made and is bad for me. I believe him.
Anyway, so far, stevia, agave nectar, and sugar in the raw are your best bet in staying healthy and losing weight.0 -
Oh Lordy,,... I use Splenda. It's ♥ in a small, easy to carry, sugar free packet !0
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You do know all vitamins and minerals pretty much have unpronounceable names, right? Oh sure, they have "brand names" like vitamin a or vitamin e, but the actual name is ridiculously hard to pronounce.Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.
It's gotta be tough, realising that I was clearly replying to a whole range of people who were saying things like "I dont trust artificial sweetners"
What does it matter if someone doesn't trust artificial sweeteners? Personally I'm from the "If I can't pronounce it, I won't eat it" group.
It's the same thing as the whole "which is better - butter or margarine" crap.
Kinda like aspartame and sweet-n-low, or sucralose and Splenda. Would you eat something called malus domesticus? How about punica granatam? How about thunnus alalunga? Those are commonly known as apple, pomegranate, and tuna, respectively.
To answer the OP's question, I just use sugar. I'm not really picky about brand, and I use different types for different things when cooking, but just plain old granulated sugar for sweetening drinks. Sometimes I'll use honey, but that's pretty much only with green tea.
I generally use artificial sweeteners only in diet sodas, just because I don't have a use for them in the house, nothing wrong with them, as long as you don't have an allergy.0 -
Ha, hate to tell you this, but bodybuilding magazines only care about making money, not what's good for bodybuilders. They will advertise whatever product pays them. In fact, bodybuilding (and most fitness magazines actually) are where most of the ridiculous myths that a lot of us try our best to debunk with science actually come from.On one of the shows, Dr.Oz had this one woman who craves sugar and was gaining weight and looked terrible. She changed from that to agave nectar and loves it. She lost weight from that. It's more natural for our body and healthier.
4H Club at one of the Country Fairs I went to in Florida and it was April this year, did a scientific research on artificial sweeteners. I wished I stayed longer and took pictures but I remembered that stevia and sugar in the raw were better in the long run than splenda, sweet and low, and equal. Splenda, Sweet & Low, and Equal leads to cancer and some other health issues in the long run.
In the magazine that my husband subscribes to called Beverly International, it is a bodybuilding magazine and bodybuilders are very militaristic in what to consume and what not and they had this AD in that magazine, Sugar in the Raw and Stevia. They won't advertise those in their magazines if they are not good for the bodybuilders.
I'm interested in proven facts and do research from reliable sources and I thought I'd add where I saw that from to help you decide which one you prefer and feel comfortable consuming.
I live in the South and my family prefers the real sugar. I use that to make sweet tea but I know it's not good for me. My dad would tell me when I was little that real sugar is man made and is bad for me. I believe him.
Anyway, so far, stevia, agave nectar, and sugar in the raw are your best bet in staying healthy and losing weight.
As for artificial sweeteners causing cancer, there's no study that's ever shown that, even using 100 times the recommended dosage (which is far more than a person will ever consume in a day, as even the recommended safe dosage is roughly 2,500 to 4,000mg a day*, which is the equivalent of 14 to 22 cans of diet soda a day. The research used dosages of 100 times that, so the equivalent of 1400-2200 cans of diet soda a day, and could find no relation between aspartame and cancer.
*The actual acceptable daily intake for aspartame is 50mg per kilogram of body weight in the USA. I picked arbitrary weights of 50 and 80 kg for purposes of illustration. I figured that was a pretty good range from someone very small, to someone of around average size. If you weigh more or less, your intake would vary accordingly, but even then, as an 84.5kg person, my daily intake limit would actually be higher than the numbers stated, but i don't even come anywhere near the lower number, and I'm willing to bet 99.99% of people on this planet wouldn't even come near it either.
Edited for typos.0 -
You do know all vitamins and minerals pretty much have unpronounceable names, right? Oh sure, they have "brand names" like vitamin a or vitamin e, but the actual name is ridiculously hard to pronounce.Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.
It's gotta be tough, realising that I was clearly replying to a whole range of people who were saying things like "I dont trust artificial sweetners"
What does it matter if someone doesn't trust artificial sweeteners? Personally I'm from the "If I can't pronounce it, I won't eat it" group.
It's the same thing as the whole "which is better - butter or margarine" crap.
Kinda like aspartame and sweet-n-low, or sucralose and Splenda. Would you eat something called malus domesticus? How about punica granatam? How about thunnus alalunga? Those are commonly known as apple, pomegranate, and tuna, respectively.
Really? You're pulling the botanical and subgenus/species card on an artificial sweetener thread? I couldn't care less what the scientific name of apples & tuna are - they're natural. All I was getting at is that a chemically derrived sweetener with compounds including something resembling a Canadian zip code isn't something I want to put in my body.0 -
In college, I stopped adding sugar to coffee and I usually don't add sweeteners to coffee and tea. You can save yourself a lot of calories right there if you can eliminate it.0
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Huh? Aspartame is aspartic acid, a naturally occuring amino acid that's in every protein source that exists on Earth, and phenylalanine, an essential amino acid that is also found in pretty much all protein sources. Nothing that resembles a zip code. The only thing that makes it "artificial" is the fact that manufacturers get the amino acids and combine them together, rather than extracting them from say, chicken (which incidentally, contains the rough equivalent of 24 cans of diet sodas' worth of aspartame.)
You do know all vitamins and minerals pretty much have unpronounceable names, right? Oh sure, they have "brand names" like vitamin a or vitamin e, but the actual name is ridiculously hard to pronounce.Sugar is fine
Artificial Sweeteners are fine.
Stop this madness.
It's gotta be tough, railing against invisible demons all the time. Your post has nothing to do with OPs question.
It's gotta be tough, realising that I was clearly replying to a whole range of people who were saying things like "I dont trust artificial sweetners"
What does it matter if someone doesn't trust artificial sweeteners? Personally I'm from the "If I can't pronounce it, I won't eat it" group.
It's the same thing as the whole "which is better - butter or margarine" crap.
Kinda like aspartame and sweet-n-low, or sucralose and Splenda. Would you eat something called malus domesticus? How about punica granatam? How about thunnus alalunga? Those are commonly known as apple, pomegranate, and tuna, respectively.
Really? You're pulling the botanical and subgenus/species card on an artificial sweetener thread? I couldn't care less what the scientific name of apples & tuna are - they're natural. All I was getting at is that a chemically derrived sweetener with compounds including something resembling a Canadian zip code isn't something I want to put in my body.
Besides, you said nothing about natural vs artificial, you said you don't eat things you can't pronounce. I was merely pointing out the absurdity of that statement. Better to just say you'd prefer not to eat artificial foods.0
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