Switching to Splenda

I use a measuring spoon to measure my sugar......I was having one teaspoon on my morning cereal when I started MFP almost 3 weeks ago.....Last Monday I cut it back to 3/4 of a teaspoon....another week or so then I will cut back a bit more...........

I'm not opposed to artificial sweeteners, but real sugar is only 15 calories per teaspoon. If you have one coffee a day, and put in two teaspoons, switching to Splenda isn't going to make any drastic difference. Over the course of one year, that would equal three pounds.

Now, if you're like my brother, who has been known to add 16 packets of sugar to his big gulp coffee... that's another story. :happy:

Yep. I drink 2 cups a day and have weaned myself down to a half teaspoon of real sugar per cup so the extra 15 calories a day is completely worth it to me now. Artificial sweeteners taste nasty to me. I also don't drink any other calories in my day though - only water and seltzer.

not sure why people think that Stevia is called "natural". It is an extract of a plant. Does that make it natural?
It is a highly processed material.

This is stevia.....
The diterpene known as Steviol is the aglycone of stevia's sweet glycosides, which are constructed by replacing steviol's carboxyl hydrogen atom (at the bottom of the figure) with glucose to form an ester, and replacing the hydroxyl hydrogen (at the top of the figure in the infobox) with combinations of glucose and rhamnose. The two primary compounds, stevioside and rebaudioside A, use only glucose: Stevioside has two linked glucose molecules at the hydroxyl site, whereas rebaudioside A has three, with the middle glucose of the triplet connected to the central steviol structure.

In terms of weight fraction, the four major steviol glycosides found in the stevia plant tissue are:

5–10% stevioside (250–300X of sugar)
2–4% rebaudioside A — most sweet (350–450X of sugar) and least bitter
1–2% rebaudioside C
½–1% dulcoside A.

Rebaudioside B, D, and E may also be present in minute quantities; however, it is suspected that rebaudioside B is a byproduct of the isolation technique.[2] The two majority compounds stevioside and rebaudioside, primarily responsible for the sweet taste of stevia leaves, were first isolated by two French chemists in 1931.[3]

I used to be a big fan of Splenda; I started using a lot it when I had gestational diabetes with my first 2 pregnancies and just continued after that.

I eventually developed some annoying physical symptoms - joint aches, frequent headaches, tingling fingers and lips. I was afraid that I had MS or something.

I had read about side effects of Splenda a while back and figured it was alarmist and blew it off. I remembered the articles again when the symptoms really started to get to me.

I switched to the Stevia drops and stopped buying things with Splenda (like ice creams). The symptoms went away almost immediately. I really like the Stevia and use it in my coffee at home (at work I just use 1 tsp sugar) and for other things like oatmeal, etc. It looks expensive at first but you use so little that it ends up being affordable.

I think the drops taste better than the powdered form.

I know that most people are able to use Splenda without problems. I was really surprised by my reaction to it and wanted to let you all know about it, in case you happen to be sensitive to it as well.