Rude Awakening - Sugar Free, What Does it Mean - Continued

I've never really believed in substitutes. Why would you eat the fake version over the real version? I eat vegetarian on occasion and I've always wondered why all vegetable protein is flavored and molded to look like meat?

Anyway, the sugar free thing is what brought me to this idea again. I was contemplating sugar free substitutes for desserts and looked into what is in them if there is no sugar. Well, it turns out there are things like Splenda in them which is a sugar substitute. Some of these have a pretty bad reputation and after doing some reading, I've decided that no, there will be no sugar substitutes. If I'm not going to have sugar, I'm not going to have something "sugar like".

I'm going all natural baby!

The reason this is a rude awakening is because I've been drinking Hansen's Diest soda because it is calorie free. I never really looked at it that closely because all I cared about was the calories. Well, it's made with Splenda. Damn. I love this stuff but I'm not excited about the Splenda.

More research has led me to see that this is really my goal:

Replace refined sugars with natural sugars



Get in the habit of reading labels and avoid products made with white sugar, corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, dextrose, fructose, and ALL artificial sweeteners. Instead use natural sweeteners, including pure maple syrup, molasses, stevia, Rapadura (dehydrated cane sugar juice) or raw unfiltered honey. Many health food stores offer products made with natural sweeteners, like cookies and ice cream, and even licorice, although it is better to make your own. Use this step to help you become acquainted with all the natural alternatives to replace refined sugar products.


This comes from a great article called Replacing Refined Sugars with Natural Sugars One Step At a Time by Lori Lipinski. Her article goes through the stages of a day on sugar and some of the health concerns we should be aware of.

Sugar has absolutely no nutritional value whatsoever. Not only does it totally lack nutrients, but when you eat sugar it actually robs your body of nutrients-- vitamins, minerals and even enzymes.

Sure sugar may be temporarily pleasing to the taste buds, but the rest of the body suffers for it. The sad thing is that most people are not aware of the devastating effects that excess sugar consumption has on the body.


Yikes, I knew it wasn't really all that good for me but I had no idea it was this bad. I may have to go more than 31 days after the trial. We'll see what happens.


Try the Calorie Counter at MyFoodDiary.com



2 comments

Blogger said...

If you *really* want to know the ugly on sugar, Gary Taubes has a book called Good Calories Bad Calories on the subject.

To be totally self promoting, here's my blog post on the book: http://tinyurl.com/87atz8.

Rebecca said...

Self promotion welcome!
I'll have to check out that book, it sounds interesting.

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