Name those sweetners - and know how they affect you

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Check the back of most heavily processed foods and you’ll see a plethora - I seldom have occasion to use that word! - of sweeteners that only food industry chemists could love.

Sugar is a natural substance distilled from sugarcane or sugar beets. Really. They’re these big white beets. I used to see them, growing up in Utah. Anyway, brown sugar comes from the same place but gets that color from added molasses. Sugar is made all sparkly white through processing shown here. Sugar is also known as sucrose, which you will see on labels. You’ll find it in damn near everything from ice cream and other sweet treats to bottled sauces.

You should try to consume sugar on a full stomach, otherwise it can cause your blood sugar to spike making you cranky and nobody will want to be in the same room with you. Asshole.

Oh, and it rots your teeth.

Agave Liquid is a sweet extract from the agave plant - which also gives us TEQUILA!!! You will see it referred to as agave nectar and agave syrup, too. But you probably won’t see TEQUILA!! on many food product labels unfortunately. Agave doesn’t cause your sensitive blood sugars to spike as quickly as sugar since they’re all relaxed and lounging about drinking TEQUILA!!! Since agave is 25 times sweeter than honey you may use less of it. I love it on plain yogurt with a shot of TEQUILA!!! on the side.

Stevia sounds like an old pop singer from the 1970’s but it’s actually a silly, trendy sweetener. It’s all natural (what ever that means - so is arsenic) and has no calories. It comes from the leaf of the Stevia plant. It’s also referred to as Reb A, Rebiana, Truvia, PureVia, Enliten and Sun Crystals. Also as Bob, Ray and Earl. I jest.

You’ll find Stevia in a lot of trendy and expensive shakes and drinks designed to shrink your waistline and your wallet.

The big people in Washington generally ‘recognize Stevia as safe’ but recommend caution and moderate use … as in no more than four milligrams per pound of body weight daily. Hmmmm. Get out the calculator.

High Fructose Corn Syrup is an uber-sweet liguid derived from cornstarch - you know, that white stuff that people put into sealed envelopes that they send to the IRS with a threatening letter. It’s also know by HFCS or high-fructose syrup. It’s generally recognized as evil by all the really cool people. You’ll find in in everything made on the planet today - including TEQUILA!!!. Just kidding. No, really it’s in things you wouldn’t even imagine. And studies by very educated and important people are suggesting that it makes you overeat, you big fat slob. Just kidding. No really, it makes you overeat and messes with your metabolism and the hormones that tell your feeble brain that YOU’RE FUCKING FULL NOW SO QUIT EATING.

Saccharin is that stuff in the pink packet and is safe for your diabetic grandma. It’s a food free chemical blast that goes by Sweet N Low. You’ll find it in old line trendy soft drinks, toothpaste, some medicines and TEQUILA!!! It’s - whoa - 300 times sweeter than sugar, but has a metallic aftertaste for your metal loving youngsters. Nobody can find a link between saccharin and cancer, but they have found a link between saccharin and looking like a total geek that nobody would want to hang out with.

Aspartame is another goofy named synthetic sweetener - where do these people for these names? Just start picking letters off of a Scrabble board? Hey, triple word score! It’s known as Nutrasweet and Equal - the stuff in the blue packet. It’s only 200 times sweeter than your boyfriend - I mean sugar. It has a clean flavor that makes it sub-optimal for hiding the taste of illegal substances. It doesn’t bake well. It probably doesn’t cause Alzheimers Disease, but do you really want to find out?

Sucralose is the stuff in the cute canary yellow packet. It’s another chemically tweaked kind of sugar known also as Splenda. It’s in a bunch of products these days. And it’s the total winner in sweeting power among the packets - 600 times sweeter than sugar. But it makes you have tummy cramps sometimes. Uh-Ohhh. Whew! Talk about hang time!

Sugar, obesity and metabolic syndrome

This is a very interesting article about how the overabundance of sugar - particularly fructose and high-fructose corn syrup - may be contributing to the childhood obesity epidemic. It almost goes without saying that the same causes may contribute to why you and I - adults - have such a difficult time controlling weight.

What I found particularly interesting here is that Lustig suggests that declines in activity levels among young people may be a result of eating a diet high in sugars.

Sugar is a poison, says UCSF Obesity Expert

By Jeffrey Norris

The rise of obesity is usually blamed on too much eating and not enough exercising, but Robert Lustig, MD, a UCSF pediatric neuroendocrinologist, asks us to look beyond the obvious.

Yes, more Americans are overweight today than 30 years ago. Kids are still getting heavier, compared with prior generations of kids. That leads some UCSF researchers to warn that heart disease and other health problems will grow in future decades.

But behaviors that some might refer to as gluttony and sloth are merely consequences of the true cause of the epidemic, Lustig says. Food was just as abundant before obesity’s ascendance. The problem is the increase in sugar consumption. Sugar both drives fat storage and makes the brain think it is hungry, setting up a “vicious cycle,” according to Lustig.

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Is Coke losing its fizz. CSPI thinks so.

I just received the following from from the Executive Director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), Michael Jacobson.

How would you feel if you had to pay $8.50 a gallon for gasoline?*

Then why on Earth would you pay that much for water and high-fructose corn syrup?

That’s how much Coke costs in those new 7.5-ounce, 90-calorie cans.  Calorie-counters may appreciate the small size (90 calories) but dollar-counters beware:  We did a little math and it turns out that Coke in the new can costs between 50- and 140-percent more than Coke in the old 12-ounce cans.  Basically, Coke is charging two or three cents more per ounce for Coke in a smaller can—and this from a company that throws temper tantrums when lawmakers propose a one-cent-per-ounce tax on soda!

I think time might be running out for Coca-Cola, as parents, public health officials, and others are beginning to work together to reduce consumption of disease-promoting soft drinks.  That’s the topic of my latest column in The Huffington Post.  Please feel free to weigh in on this topic in the comments section, which I’ll be checking throughout the afternoon and tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Michael F. Jacobson
Executive Director
Center for Science in the Public Interest

P.S. Also, we haven’t launched it formally yet, but you can now keep up with CSPI’s activities by becoming a fan on our Facebook page.  (And later this month, we’ll be relaunching our redesigned homepage.  Stay tuned!)

(*Okay, maybe we should pay a little more for gasoline.  But you get my point.)

Hmmm. It’s certainly worthy of some thought.

High Fructose Corn Syrup: Not off the hook yet

I’ve really worked at getting the HFCS out of my families diet for several years now, and more recently eliminating fructose - mainly in the form of sweet beverages, including fruit juice. I’ve not only managed to keep the weight more stable, but actually lost a couple of pounds.

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The confusion over High Fructose Corn Syrup and obesity rates

I have to admit, I’ve been avoiding High Fructose Corn Syrup for a couple of years now, in response to articles I read linking the sweetener with increased obesity in the United States. I may have to rethink this position. Ah, sweet science - so wonderfully self correcting, unlike religion and faith. But I digress. The bottom line is not the source of the sweetener - once in the body they are indistinguishable - it’s the overall intake. Moderation counts.

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