Coffee sweetener saga continues

[kjpepper]

Hmm. I think my body knows it's being duped.

So yeah, I posted a little bit ago about the accidental no sugar creamer episode, right? But decided to go with it as it had splenda rather than something else in it? Well, the same is also true of the cocoa packets at state street, which I occasionally pour into my coffee cause it tastes yummy and generally has about the same amount of sugar I normally pour in anyway. They've got no sugar ones there as well. So we secretly swapped my normal coffee with Taster's Choice enhanced with artificial sweetener. Lets see the results.

The pros is that taste-wise, I can barely tell the difference. The con... I'm pretty sure that what's currently happening is that since everything still tastes the same, all systems are go for my morning sugar high. Which never comes cause there's no sugar. So all my brain receptors are all "...well, crap." Cue weirdly fuzzy not quite headache.

So, that's pretty much confirming that my body knows a fake when it gets one and I should just stick to real sugar (but not HFCS, definitely going to work on killing my intake of that entirely) and work on gradually reducing my intake of it. Aka, do it the hard way like I've always professed and not cheat with the fake stuff. Problem is, like most of the market for this stuff, I'm lazy and I like my sweets. Oh the dilemma. Do I stick to my quasi moralistic crusade against artificial junk food/sweetener? (I know, "artificial junk food" is kinda redundant, but for those of you well familiar with my tirades against diet soda** of all stripes, it should make sense coming from me.) Or do I give in and climb atop the bandwagon of the little yellow packet cause I've got better things to do than to suffer through black coffee for my daily functioning?

Bah.

** though I do have to forgive my Diet Coke swigging friends a little bit, seeing that I recently learned why Diet Coke drinkers tend to hate regular coke so much - it's not just a matter of sweetener replacement: they're two completely different soda formulas. Diet Coke is actually similar to the New Coke formula they tried to release in the early eighties to much public bitchitude - and both formulas were a result of Coke trying to taste more like Pepsi. The things you learn on Wikipedia.

Comments

[mermaidblue.livejournal.com]

There's a new sweetener out called Truvia I think but it is made from stevia a natural sweetener that doesn't have the insulin effects of sugar itself. It migiht be an alternative that let's you have natural sweetener without the calories.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

maybe? I tried stevia once or twice, I didn't really like how it tasted.

[mermaidblue.livejournal.com]

I haven't tried it yet, but Coke it apparently going to switch to it for all their sweeteners so they must think it tastes ok.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

yeah, I really would not want to be an Equal or Nutrasweet executive right now with how rapidly they're losing market share.

of course, that just makes me want to point and laugh, but that's just cause I'm a bad bad person who doesn't like aspartame.

[reme.livejournal.com]

the thing about stevia is that it's SO super sweet you really only need a couple of grains of it to do the job. i was using stevia in everything a couple years ago and i could totally go through an entire day on one packet of the stuff.

[johannah-rose.livejournal.com]

They should put much much less in the packets, then. I've found that stevia has kind of an aftertaste that I'm not too fond of.

I like Splenda. It tastes pretty good, rarely has an aftertaste, and makes all the world good.

[harinezumi.livejournal.com]

I recently started buying real-sugar Mexicokes from Costco, and now the standard HFCS-based Coke/Pepsi tastes almost as nasty to me as the artificially sweetened diet crap. Also, Coke in properly shaped glass bottles with non-twist-off caps is pretty awesome, even if it does feel like cheating on Pepsi.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

Wait, Costco sells sugar coke? O_o ...there's one of those in Springfield... hmmm.

[harinezumi.livejournal.com]

It does here in the Northwest, at least.

[johannah-rose.livejournal.com]

You can also get sugar coke around Passover. It has a yellow top.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

I wonder what's so non-kosher about corn syrup? I mean, other than its inherent evil...

[johannah-rose.livejournal.com]

It's not non-kosher, but its not kosher for passover, another category entirely.

[11th-letter.livejournal.com]

It's made from corn, a grain, therefore not allowed during Passover.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

a-haaaaaaa thx 4 clearing that up.

[reme.livejournal.com]

could you do a half-and-half sort of formulation?

i didn't know that about diet coke, but it makes perfect sense. my housesitter left half a 2 liter bottle of regular coke in my fridge and when i got back from vacation i tried to choke it down but failed miserably.

[johannah-rose.livejournal.com]

Is there a reason that you are against artificial sweeteners?

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

it used to be cause of all the random problems associated with aspartame, but those are mostly unfounded, so I'm just being a snobby asshole about it openly now.

Pretty much I'm against "diet" or "fat free" food in general because I believe it's cheating. If you want/need to cut your sugar/calorie consumption, just cut your sugar/calorie consumption and don't eat so much of the crap you're not supposed to, like soda or candy or whatever, don't just swap out the sugar for some chemical and act like that that entire pint of ice cream magically doesn't count anymore. It's mostly the attitude of "oh, it doesn't have any sugar/fat in it, therefore it's okay." Gah.

And yeah... I'm pretty rabid about this, and have been called to task about it it a lot especially with folks who are diabetic/allergic to caffeine. I'm firmly of the opinion that caffeine free diet soda is an abomination made to profit off the fact that people won't suck up and deal with the fact that they cant/shouldn't have real soda anymore, and it shouldn't exist.

Hey, at least I can now say, "no, actually I've tried it, and... still no."

[johannah-rose.livejournal.com]

Soda is not my preferred drink. That being said, water can get boring and flavor is nice. I try to avoid aspartame for a few reasons, the biggest of which is that it is not a non-nutritive sweetener.

Non-nutritive sweeteners, like saccharin and sucralose leave the body in the same form in which they entered. If you drink saccharin, there is saccharin, in the exact same form, in your urine. It undergoes no changes inside your body, which is why your body won't react with it (absorb calories, reuqire insulin). Aspartame breaks down inside the body. We may not yet know precisely what it does to you, but I'm sure it does something. I have a cousin who was told by her oncologist that her brain cancer was caused by the amount of aspartame she drinks.

Your idea seems to boil down to a general feeling that people who are on a diet or have diabetes should suffer for it.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

pretty much, yeah. Told you I take flak for it a lot.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

I understand another problem with diet soda especially is actually genetic--some people have a gene that makes the artificial sweetener in it taste absolutely vile, while others can't taste it at all. Sort of like the gene that makes cilantro taste like soap for some people.

[kjpepper.livejournal.com]

heh. I'm wondering if I'm one of those people? Tab and diet coke both taste like battery acid to me. Or at least, what I imagine battery acid would taste like before my tongue disintegrated.

[harinezumi.livejournal.com]

Nah, battery acid is the taste of Red Bull and various other less-than-expertly concocted energy drinks. Diet soda is something far nastier, more akin to vomited-up cough syrup.

The genetic angle would explain how a sizable section of the population do manage to stomach this stuff, though. One of those genetic things I would never have thought of as not being universal, like sneezing when I see bright lights.