Liwovien

With the removal of Splenda/sucralose from our home, a void has been created in the sweetener category. The search for a safe sweetener continues…

When we switched to Splenda in late 2003, I gave away all of my refined sugar. Now, in early 2008, we are ruling out Splenda and any artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, saccharin). I don’t want to go backwards and start using refined, table sugar again, so the movement has to be forward which means more research.

After some quick research to verify what I found out a little while ago… We are back to using Stevia that we had sort of switched to for a time a little while back, but ended up drifting away from due to cost. However, now I have found that it is a little cheaper than is used to be but is still one of the more costly sweeteners. Really though, what is cost when it comes to your health… pay for it now or pay for it later, right? So, to sweeten tea and when using sweetener in small amounts, we are using Stevia which is a sweet herb that comes in small packets like many other sweeteners. I have so far found Stevia at Giant, Vitamin Shoppe, and GNC.

Then after more extensive research, I found that Black Strap Molasses are not only high in Potassium but are are excellent sweetener. So, this past week, I bought Organic Black Strap Molasses and natural Brown Sugar Molasses that unfortunately only work in certain recipes. Both of these sweeteners have a certain flavor to them that doesn’t go very well with many basic recipes. So, I am back out on the search.

I recently (as in earlier this evening) find out some good information about brown rice syrup. I will look into it a little more, but it looks like the best bet for now when needing to use a sweetener on a larger scale. It is gluten free and a complex sugar (doesn’t spike your blood sugar like simple sugars) – those are pluses – so if I can be organic as an added plus and find it somewhere where I live, then I will get to try it out and see how it goes.

Who knew trying to sweeten foods in a non-harmful way to your body would be so difficult…

The continuing saga of the Splenda purge… Lots of research later, some alternative have been uncovered. The fun part has been finding alternatives to some of the foods that we have grown to love that contain sucralose. It has been easier than expected though. With a trip to Giant, which is one grocery store that is really doing well with the organic and natural foods, all but just a couple of our old sucralose laden foods have found replacements. The wonderful part is that in addition to finding foods to replace those we needed to, we were also able to convert many of the foods that we eat with alternatives that are Organic. It is amazing when you go from shopping at Wal-Mart to Giant what a difference it makes. The differences however I will cover in another post though and once I write it, I will include a direct link from here. I am just so happy to find so many wonderful food options. Now, we need to make the decision to throw out the last few sucralose items or consume them until they are gone. And, those last few items need to find alternatives which I hope to find soon. We will see…

To all of those family, friends, and acquaintences that I have raved about Splenda to – I will rave about it no more.

I thought I was up-to-date on many of the food related issues out there, but apparently I dropped the ball when it came to Splenda. I tried to do my research but there just wasn’t much out there – well, there is now. Over the last year or two, there has been news that Splenda is potentially bad – put in the category with Equal for artificial sweeteners.

With all things, there is controversy; however, when it comes to your health, how far are you willing to go?

Please view the article that started me and my husband on the long IM chat about what we were going to do about the foods in our house that contain Splenda/sucralose.

After reading the article and lots of the comments, we decided to rid our home of Splenda/sucralose. There are only a couple of foods left in our house that contain sucralose and they are dwindling quickly. We threw out the bag of Splenda and any small packets that we had along with the brown sugar Splenda. A few other foods were donated because we may choose to not consume sucralose, but we don’t have the right to deny others if they so choose. We even purged the house of foods with aspartame in it. We want to rid the house of as many artificial foods as possible, so this seemed like the best time to go through everything. The are however a few everyday foods that we are just going to consume and then be done with them. I am not saying that is the best thing and we may change our minds as we are knowing what we are drinking or eating, but there is no more than 2 weeks worth left of any of the sucralose foods, so if we find healthy alternatives before that time is up, then we might just get convert completely and get rid of the remaining foods too. We will see.