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Splenda .... is it so good?

gbswales

Well-Known Member
Messages
103
Loads of the low carb recipes in here and in the cook book I just bought seem to say that Splenda is "the" substitute for sugar - my first reaction was that it was so much more expensive but that if it enabled me to re-introduce some things that I like eating (have a nice recipe for courgette cake I am about to try) it was worth the extra cost.

However I have been coming across a lot of sites on the web warning people against splenda and suggesting that some of the claims about it are achieved because of loopholes in legislation rather than it actually being low calorie/carbohydrate. Of course I know that for almost everything that we ever eat there will be a web page somewhere warning about the dangers but I wondered what other people feel. A lot of these sites reccomend stevia but seem to suggest that cooking with this is not as easy as splenda - also if I felt splenda was a high price - stevia seems like liquid gold!

I try and use common sense - alcahol for example is poisen but only when consumed in large amounts, my concern with Splenda is the same as with Aspertame, that you have no idea how much you are consuming in bought products and even if you did how much is safe?

Yesterday I enjoyed low carb pancakes (yes cooked using splenda) together with some delicious low cal/carb maple syrup my son brought back from the US (havent spoilt things by looking at the ingredients yet :roll: ) - it was like someone had opened a door in my depressing diet of meat, fish, green veg and peanuts - Now I am left wondering if I should slam the door shut again.

Before anyone tells me my body will adjust to the changed diet - no it wont - I gave up smoking 22 years ago, no one around me smokes, and yet hardly a day goes by without me wishing I could light up again.
 
My take on sweetener is this, sugar is hardly a necessary food group. If I'm sweetening something it is probably a treat rather than a staple.

Fructose does not have the same impact on blood sugar as glucose as it does not require insulin, you may want to consider using that instead of sugar. however, fructose has other disavantages as th eliver turns it in to triglicerides.

As far as the other sweeteners go, harm is a relative thing. I'm willing to risk a bit of the trots as it is something I do infrequently and I'm not using that much.

Different sweeteners have different aftertastes and some say that Splenda goes best with tart recipies. I use Perfect Sweet (xylitol) and Splenda and am considering Zsweet.

If you are making a cake, I'd be more concerned about using wheat flour than the sweetener :?

I have developed a few sweet low carb treats - I get carb cravings at certain times of the month. I have a low carb chocolate cake using ground almonds, a mascapone cheese based coffee dessert and a chocolate dessert, things with berries and cream and greek yoghurt, and most recently a baked lemon custard macaroon tart

I have also experimented with chococlate and M&S Dark Swiss has relatively few carbs for a chocolate, as does G&B dark, both are around 70% cocoa solids.
 
A lot of the anti-Splenda sites carp on about the presence of chlorine in the Splenda[suralose] molecule. They imply that it will in some way escape and poison you. that's a load of bunk and a total misrepresentation of chemical bonding. the chlorine in the Splenda molecule is a smaller proportion and much more firmly bound[co-valent bond] than the chlorine in salt, where 1 in 2 of the ions is chloride and the bonding is ionic.
There's no science behind this, but very possibly money from the American manufacturers of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Which is almost universal in American made foods and toxic.
We don't get much HFCS in the EU, the sugar growers stopped that import. However Sucrose[cane /beet sugar] can be pretty toxic too.
 
Just bear in mind that fructose, alcohol and fats are all metabolised in a similar way.

So spread your treats out so that you don't have too much of any of those at a time.
 
Romola said:
Just bear in mind that fructose, alcohol and fats are all metabolised in a similar way.

So spread your treats out so that you don't have too much of any of those at a time.
Click to expand...

Agree with the fructose and alcohol parts, but my trig have plummeted since upping my fat intake, my LDL has fallen to and my HDL increased. If these numbers change then I'll look at my fat intake but for now it seems to be working.
 
By the way I've stayed away from all sweeteners, don't want to get used to having sweet things! Though I've never had a particularly sweet tooth anyway!
 
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