The more I read about them, the more it sounds like it is a bad idea to use artificial sweeteners. Are you trying to cut back on using them?
For a long time, diet soda was my go-to drink. Since they usually have 0 calories, I thoughtit was pretty much harmless. Maybe it is harmless; it seems that we still know so little about these sweeteners. But, even if suspicions of carcinogenic properties or other negative health effects are unfounded, some studies still report that people who use more artificial sweeteners such as aspartame gain weight compared to those who don’t. I’ve heard this phenomenon explained a few different ways, never so clearly that I can claim to totally understand it; however, my working explanation is that artificial sweeteners are usually sweeter than real sugar and reset your sweetness “threshold” to expect more from other foods in general (even when you are eating other things).
This is a short article about sweeteners. I’m glad that honey made the list of “good guys.” Real sugar is listed as one of the “bad guys,” but I guess it depends on your point of view – I would argue that using a small amount of real sugar is better than loading up on artificial sweeteners. The point in the article is that we get plenty of sugar from various sources, which is also true. A fried of mine recommended using 1 packet of “Sugar in the raw” with coffee, which sounds like a good medium to me.
I’ve basically quit diet soda altogether for several months, and it has been surprisingly easy. One contribution was that carrying all those bottles back from the grocery was a pain in terms of their weight and number of shopping bags. For a while, I tried instant powder drinks, like Crystal Light tea, but eventually I started to appreciate that they also had an artificial taste and switched entirely to water. Lately I have been drinking more coffee, usually black. Perhaps too much caffeine is also not good, but at least they say that coffee has a lot of antioxidants and reduces your risk of some cancers. What do you think about artificial sweeteners?
