What‘s in Your Sweetener?

Do you know what’s in your sweetener? I bet you don’t

I have written about sweeteners before. I like to divide sweeteners into sugar-based or non-nutritive ones. Unless you are fit and have a low risk of diabetes, I strongly recommend not using any sugar-based sweeteners. These include sugar, brown sugar, honey, maple syrup, and cane syrup. If you’re not sure if it is sugar, look it up.

There are two non-nutritive sweeteners that have never shown harm in a reputable study: stevia and monkfruit. Back to these in a moment.

I do not know if aspartame (blue packets), saccharin (pink packets), or sucralose (yellow packets) are harmful. Some studies show that people who use them have an increased risk of cardiovascular disease. I am not sure what to make of these studies. No one uses these products by themselves since diet drinks have many other ingredients in them. Also, people who consume them may have been doing so for health reasons, perceived or actual. Authors try to control for other factors, like obesity and smoking, but there is always a chance of inadequate adjustments of the results.

In the study I just referenced, about a third of the sweeteners were consumed in those little packets. Now, back to stevia and monkfruit. All packets you see in restaurants and coffee shops have a significant problem. They contain substances other than what is on the front of the packet. If you get Truvia, a leading brand of stevia, the first ingredient is NOT STEVIA. It is ERYTHRITOL. Studies show that erythritol is associated with an increased risk of heart disease. How the FDA allows a sweetener label to say stevia on the front when erythritol is the main ingredient is insane. Equal’s lead ingredient is dextrose, which is glucose, the primary sugar humans use. The FDA allows a sugar-free sweetener to have sugar as the lead ingredient.

All packets of powdered non-nutritive sweeteners have a main ingredient of dextrose, erythritol, or maltodextrin, a high glycemic index carbohydrate that is converted easily to glucose. Anything that causes blood sugar to rise increases the risk of diabetes and obesity. See my book, The Three Rules to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Forever.

I use stevia in its pure form, with nothing else added. When pure monk fruit powder drops in price, and when a few more studies come out, I will try it. Since I trust Now Foods, I buy their brand of stevia. It is about $20 for the box, but that contains over 2000 servings. That is why packets of sweetener have fillers in them. The serving size of the non-nutritive sweetener is so small, they probably think you wouldn’t see it in the packet.

How do you take the stevia or monk fruit to the coffee shop? You could transfer some to a small food storage container. My wife and son mock me for this, but I can deal with them. You can also use the sugar-free syrups the coffee shop sells for at least fifty cents. The problem is that these also have ingredients other than the sweetener. Starbucks’s sugar-free vanilla has maltodextrin. That is better than sugar, but not by much. One last point about the FDA. Look at the nutrition label of the sugar-free vanilla I linked to. The label says that a serving has zero calories. But it has one gram of carbohydrate (the high-glycemic maltodextrin.) By definition, a gram of carbohydrate has four calories. Go figure.