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Sugar substitutes

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Sugworth

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I have always enjoyed the occasional pudding but have been without since being diagnosed T2 last year and deciding to low carb. I grow apples and rhubarb so wish to use them. I have been looking at sugar substitutes, but, they all appear to be high carbs! Any recommendations?

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There are a range of sugar substitutes in supermarkets, in powdered form, sold in jars, usually 75 gr.
Prices differ, Tesco's own is £1.00, Canderel, Stevia, and others, a bit more expensive. Take your pick.
They can be used by the spoonful, I use them in desserts, or can be used in baking.

Find them in the sugar section.
 
Ever so slightly off topic I know but I was away for the weekend at the bsh xtreme show. I went to get a brew and saw that they had packet sweetners of granulated sweet and low. I had already read about these and the they should be avioded so I looked on the ingerdients list and sure enough they was dexterose and a nother sugar/glucose derivertive in it . I did point this out to the staff whom seemed singuarly unconcerned. Luckly I had my own sweeteners with me .
 
Sugworth said:
I have been looking at sugar substitutes, but, they all appear to be high carbs! Any recommendations?
Click to expand...

I use Truvia which also has high carbs, 99g per 100g of Truvia. But, they are indigestibile carbs, which is why it is zero calorie, so they don't count. It won't get converted into blood glucose. There are many different types of carbs. Some simple carbs start to get broken down into sugars whilst you chew the food, from enzymes in your saliva. Most are digested in your stomache, using different enzymes. More complex carbs can be partially digested and some are not really digested but broken down by bacteria in your lower intestine. Typically these give you wind and you'll find those types of carbs in pulses, beans etc. Some types of carbohydrates, some parts of the cereal husks for example, are not digestible at all. They tend to be cellulose based and you need to have more than one stomache to digest them, like a cow.
 
The ones I use are high carb, but very low weight, so in usage they're not adding too much for me.
 
All sweeteners are high carb, but because they're not very dense a teaspoon of Splenda (for E.g) is much lighter than a teaspoon of sugar.
 
Sugworth said:
Thanks for the info. Looks like it is ok to use any one of them! Thanks again.
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Most are OK but there are different types and they work in different ways. Saccharin tablets are very different from Sucralose for example, which is not really a sugar anymore. Many of the others are sugar alcohols. Some can cause quite bad stomache upsets because they are only partially digested and some, like Aspartame (Nutra-Sweet) are unsuitable for people with PKU as the amino acid found in it can accumulate to dangerous levels. For a quick summary see:

http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbea ... 033005.htm

Thorntons do a range of diabetic chocolates, chocolate bars and sweets and all taste very nice. However, as many people on this forum will testify, eat sparingly otherwise you'll spend a lot of time in the bathroom and a considerable amount of time in discomfort too. They look the same, they taste the same but they most certainly are not the same.
 
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