Sugar and More Sugar

Gretchen Becker Living With It Author, Humorist, wildlyfluctuating.blogspot.com Gretchen Becker studied biology for 8 years at Radcliffe/Harvard,... Send Message Subscribe: Gretchen Becker

Monday, March 09, 2009
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Saccharin, aspartame, sucralose. Which sugar substitute is best? It used to be that we didn't have much choice. When we went to the supermarket, we could find various formulations of saccharin, and then aspartame and more recently, sucralose. Stevia, which comes from a South American plant, has bee...

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Great information!
BoulderDiabetic
Monday, March 09, 2009 at 12:27 PM

Gretchen,

I appreciate your information and review here and at wildlyfluctuating.com. I like the Stevita "spoonable stevia" blend of stevia and erythritol myself. I wonder if it's possible to find out what are the mystery "natural" flavors in Truvia. If it's natural, why not disclose their identity? I know that in some products "natural" means derived from things we wouldn't want to eat, like MSG, or that red food coloring in hot dogs and tofu dogs derived from squished beetles. I have been experimenting with using erythritol in low carb puddings and flax seed bread and cake formulations with good success. Due to your tip, I'll now try it in frozen desserts as well.

Having just recently visited the Denver ADA sponsored "Diabetes Expo" I was shocked to see how the sponsoring food suppliers were promoting many "low glycemic" and "gluten free" products as diabetic friendly, where these products contain many combinations of sugar, disruptive alcohol sugars and other high carbohydrate ingredients. It's scary to consider how sales driven corporate marketing departments continue to influence the public's knowledge base with misinformed and misleading beliefs about foods.

Thanks again to you and David Mendosa for giving us another view of the diabetes landscape to navigate from. I hope that you will continue to write informative (and humorous) pieces to keep us all on a better track.

Sincerely,

Barry from Boulder

re: Great information!
Gretchen Becker
Monday, March 09, 2009 at 12:46 PM

Hi Barry,

There are several other sweeteners being sold on the Internet that I haven't seen in local stores, and I didn't include them in the review because I was focusing on what you can find at your supermarket (except for erythritol, which I've never found there). One of them also had "natural flavors" and when I corresponded with them to find out what they were, they said it was "proprietary information."

Another sweetener listed the ingredients, and they didn't include anything that would produce a sweet taste. Their site had an article by a food chemist, with a link to his e-mail, so I wrote to him. He said he hadn't given them permission to use his article. He also said that some compound that can be extracted from orange peels will give a sweet taste when it's hydrogenated. Because these compounds haven't been approved by the FDA for use as sweeteners, the manufacturers might be trying to get around the rules by listing "natural flavorings" or "orange peel extract."

I once saw something labeled as containing "natural flavoring" and asked what it was and it turned out to be sugar.

re: re: Great information!
BoulderDiabetic
Monday, March 09, 2009 at 12:58 PM

Whoa! Natural flavoring as SUGAR! Outrageous. And, hydrogenated anything makes me worried about it's negative effect on our inflammatory and T cell systems, even if it seems to innocently come from citrus peels...

FYI, I buy my erythritol directly from my favorite health food store, "Vitamin Cottage". I think David Mendosa got his at "WholePaycheck" (WholeFoods).

Thanks again.

-Barry from Boulder

re: re: re: Great information!
Gretchen Becker
Monday, March 09, 2009 at 01:14 PM

Barry that "sugar listed as natural flavoring" was on some sausage sold at a local sausage shop. It's possible that it wouldn't be permitted with larger commercial products but I don't trust anyone in this respect.

What about agave syrup?
skeeto
Thursday, April 02, 2009 at 02:47 PM

Allegedly it has a low "glycemic index" - but I didn't see it mentioned here.

btw I was diagnosed with Diabetes 2 yesterday and just trying to find my way.

re: What about agave syrup?
Gretchen Becker
Thursday, April 02, 2009 at 09:02 PM

In my opinion, agave syrup is a ripoff. It's basically fructose that happens to come from the agave plant, but they don't tell you that. Fructose is what people are trying to avoid in high-fructose corn syrup.