Sweet but not sugar

So many folks said that they appreciated the Sugar Sugar post the other day that I will follow it up with some of the substitutes I have found and used to overcome cravings and continue to enjoy some foods.

Your mileage may will vary.

Bread
Plain bread has an amazing amount of sugar in it and, depending on how processed it is, almost no fiber or protein. I LOVE my toasted, peanut butter sammich so I needed to find something.

To make sure that I have a balance of fiber AND taste in the bread without a lot of sugar I have found many (all?) of Dave’s Killer Breads to be a good balance. For a wholesome bread it actually has amazing staying power on the shelf too – which kinda makes me wonder about preservatives. Another time.

Sweet drinks
This is a tough one because there are lot of diet drinks but they nearly always involve something artificial as a sweetener. The only artificial sweetener I can stand is Splenda, which is based on sucralose. They say it’s safe but one of the differences between sucralose and sucrose (regular sugar) is the replacement of hydrogen and oxygen with chlorine. (had to look that one up)

Hmmm, I think I’ll use it only if I don’t have another option. And, for what it’s worth, the less sugar I have, the less often ‘no other option’ occurs – I’m getting accustomed to having less sugar.

However…I have a competing problem. You may recall a couple of posts about a condition which represents THIS!

and feels like THIS!

This condition-whose-name-only-brings-pangs-of-pain-and-shall-therefore-NOT-be-uttered requires me to drink a lot of water. That and I bike/sweat a lot – in fact [gulp, gulp] ahhhhhh – and if there is one thing that makes me drink plenty of liquid it is a sweetish taste which ensures I will come back to the well.

[tangent]
Ya know, there is a good reason for why humans tend to like sugar; evolutionarily speaking, sugar tends to be associated with more calories, which happens to tend to be associated with survival. Don’t blame yourself, really. Sugar is freakin’ awesome when you get down to it. I mean we are where we are in this world in part because of sugar; and dogs, and thumbs, and frontal cortex’s, and women, and cool knee joints, and our proximity to the sun etc etc…

In a nutshell, it’s not your ‘fault’ sugar tastes so amazing – it just is.
[end tangent]

So, in order to ensure I get more water I found I need to doctor it up a bit.

Recently I found an excellent solution that recently received my naturopaths stamp of approval.

Kool-aid mix, (or RealLemon lemon juice) and stevia. I don’t really like stevia on most things, like coffee or tea or even in baked goods, because I tend to get a pretty wicked, bitter aftertaste that usually overwhelms the sweet intent. It might be the particular stevia products I bought but when I mixed TruVia (stevia based brand) and even other Stevia based sweeteners with kool-aid I didn’t sense any aftertaste and it only required 6 little coffee packets for a two quart batch of kool-aid.

It really tasted delicious and the bitter flavor was either too weak or overwhelmed by the “sour” of the lemon/kool-aid.
A great part of stevia is that it is a naturally occurring thing extracted from the root of something or other. I’m going by memory on most of this and not gonna look it all up – call me lazy. Since stevia isn’t my favorite I don’t recall the details about it’s origins.

Either way, “naturally occurring” sounds better to me than “chlorine enhancement”.

Recently I’ve heard of* a safe and sane Gatorade replacement I am eager to try called ReCharge. (*Naturopath!)

Sugar Alcohols
One thing I learned in like, week 2 of my cold-turkey sugar-fast from a couple years back is that Malitol has a serious deleterious affect (effect?) on my gastrointestinal systems. Without going into details, let’s just say that the pack of Malitol-sweetened licorice I ate in one night resulted in a net loss. Hard stop.

Or would that be a gross loss?

Anywhoooo.
It turns out (thanks to my research on Wikipedia back in the day) that ALL sugar alcohols aren’t absorbed by your intestines in the same way as sugar is: Malitol, Xylitol, Sorbitol, Damnitol, and all the rest (okay I made that last one up)…it turns out they all create varying degrees of distress for your intestines in even moderate quantities. I am sure each person is different and granted I did chow down a super-dose that first time thinking I had found the panacea but I use these sugar-alcohols only sparingly if at all because for me – let’s just say they don’t sit well.

Did I say ALL?
I’m happy I don’t tend to quit looking for the panacea because along the way, during my quest for the sweet and holy grail of sugar-substitutes I quite stumbled into what turns out to be a sugar alcohol that isn’t the same as all the rest. Here’s a mouthful for ya – Erythritol.

[technical tangent]
Officially pronounced as əˈriTHrəˌtôl, but who reads that mess?
I think I’m right in saying eh-RITH-ri-tall.
[end technical tangent]

So Erythritol is just bloody unbelievable.

• It is naturally derived from fruit sugars via fermentation or manufactured for mass-consumption by fermenting glucose.
• It IS absorbed by our intestines; no laxative effect, no bloating or gas from the Roman Feast which your intestinal bacterial colonies may have with the other sugar alcohols.
• And crazy of crazies, this stuff actually starves oral bacteria (probably most or even all sugar-eating bacteria) so it actually PROMOTES oral health. The jury is still out on what other good bacteria it may starve in our bodies. Probably a good reason NOT to eat it by the spoonful.

It isn’t cheap but it can be purchased in bulk, even on Amazon, and you can get a brand called Sweet Simplicity which I have used a LOT for coffee, sprinkled on pancakes, and even baked cookies with it.

Except for it’s price this represents my ultimate victory in non-sugar, natural, sweeteners.

Better For you but still Sugar
At Ouijimaya I found Coconut Sugar – a lot like regular brown sugar but with a really low glycemic index and because it is based on coconuts and only lightly processed it also has all kinds of goodies like potassium, zinc, magnesium, etc. Odd to think of having brown sugar be part of your vitamin regimen – but there it is.

And holy moly – this stuff is GREAT in coffee.

And last but definitely not least – Chocolate
Got your attention didn’t it.
Well don’t get tooooo fired up but I know chocolate is a biggie (Hi Schmub!) and so it deserves special attention.

I was told early on (naturopath again) that I could use dark chocolates as a sweetener in things like trail mix and so I tried it and it was good.

I started out on something like 50-60% dark chocolate and it was kinda bitter, but it salved the craving for chocolate quite well and now, after two years on a mostly low-sugar diet…

[sweet memory tangent]
There was that one time when MyMermaid made me gingersnaps the old fashioned way – I think I ate 18 cookies in about 18 minutes and finished off the last 18 the next day, hot out of the oven like that. OMG.
[end sweet memory tangent]

…I am now quite capable of having 85% Cacao chocolate bars (like Theo) during a movie and except for the caffeine rush that may keep me awake until 3AM I don’t think there is much of a problem with the sugar hit, cause there isn’t much of it. In fact there are lots of other good things in Cacao that tend to offset (at least psychologically) the negatives. There is a fair amount of protein and fiber in dark chocolate. Weaning yourself off of processed, milk-chocolate, isn’t all bad with good dark chocolates like these available.

Whew, there you have it. Who knew I had so much to say about sugar.

If you’ve got more ideas, I am pretty happy with what I’ve found but I do like to experiment on myself so, bring ’em on.