Artificial Sweeteners - They are, and they aren't.

Over the past year and a half, I've pretty much stopped drinking things that have added sugar of any kind. I'll still grab a little OJ with breakfast sometimes, but otherwise I even avoid most fruit juices. In that time, I've pretty well adapted to drinking things that aren't sweet, but once in a while I still miss the flavor. So I decided to try some of the artificial sweeteners, just to see what might work.

Mostly: Ugh. "Artificial" is definitely the word in the majority of cases. I tried Splenda, Stevia, plain old saccharine (though I pretty much knew it would be a Fail), and a couple of the boutique blends, as well as some commercial products containing things that aren't readily available by themselves. There wasn't any point in trying aspartame (a.k.a. Nutrasweet) because I have known for years that even small doses of that stuff leave me with a raging headache in short order. (Oh, and since Monsanto's patent has finally expired, it can be listed under new names as well; beware.) Various websites in the US and elsewhere have reported on the facts about aspartame adequately enough that I won't go into them here; suffice it to say that I wouldn't feed it to the roaches under my neighbor's trash can. (Okay, I might, but I don't think roaches are likely to eat the stuff.)

But that still left me with the rest.

Splenda (the most common brand name used for sucralose) is currently first and favorite among the people who want their sweet tooth polished without sugar or aspartame. The packages proudly proclaim that it tastes like sugar because it's made from sugar. The chemical process involved in the conversion is such that this is akin to claiming that potassium-based salt substitute tastes like hydrochloric acid...and in my estimation, is about as accurate. Splenda's flavor is sweet-ish, like all of the artificial sweeteners, but it has an even more persistent aftertaste than average, and though some find that it is the closest to actual sugar from among the readily-available alternatives on the market, I feel that this is like saying Boston is close to New Hampshire. (By comparison to Atlanta, sure, it is...but that doesn't make it close in absolute terms.) After trying both the sweetener itself (in things of my own concoction, such as tea and limeade), and a variety of commercially-produced beverages and drink mixes containing it, I concluded that I'd prefer to avoid it.

Some beverage mixes and commercial drinks blend sucralose with another sweetener, acesulfame potassium. I was unable to buy Ace-K (as it is reportedly called) separately, so all I can report is that it failed to make sucralose dramatically more palatable. The strongly-artificial sweetishness and long-lingering aftertaste remained, though the initial hit on the tongue was slightly less jarring. Conclusion: Still worth avoiding.

Saccharine has been around for ages; it proved no more pleasant today than it did when I was a kid in the late '50s and early '60s. No surprise here.

Next up was Stevia in its many guises and combinations-with-other-things. Once again, the pure form is more sweetish than sweet, and it has a peculiar mint-like aftertaste that I find unpleasant. The brands which mix it with other sweeteners have varying levels of success in improving palatability in my estimation, but none rose to the level of something that I could actually say I liked. Score: Only tolerable if there was some strong reason to need to mask something INtolerable...in which case, the intuitive move would seem to be avoidance of both, no?

Then there's the class of things known as "sugar alcohols", including xylitol, mannitol, sorbitol, and maltitol (among others). Despite being classed as alcohols, they are neither capable of producing intoxication nor do they exist as a liquid at room temperature. Getting the pure form of any of them in convenient quantities isn't easy or cheap; a few boutique-level suppliers carry some of them in small packages, but for the most part they're used as ingredients in finished products instead. If you want a truckload, no problem. They all share several characteristics. First, for the most part, they don't taste all that artificial, which might be a good thing. Second, they are NOT calorie-free, but their effects in the body are far less than that produced by glucose or fructose; as a result they are sold for use by diabetics on this basis in some areas. Third, they all tend to have a laxative effect if overconsumed, as is warned on the labels of many products that contain them (including a couple of fairly decent-tasting ice-cream-substitute products from Breyer's and Dreyer's). Although it has been reported that one eventually adapts to their presence, and can achieve a reduction in the associated problem, I'm not sure now much of such disruption I want to accept in exchange for the privilege of being able to consume larger quantities of something that's sweet but still has caloric content. I will not, however, avoid these when encountered, as long as the amounts involved are fairly small.

The bottom line, for me, seems to remain mostly unchanged. Although I've found a few sweetened-without-sucrose/fructose/HFCS products that I find acceptable, I'll stick with unsweetened for the rest.

A side note: I've run across research which indicates that the body may exhibit a pre-adaptive reaction to encountering certain sensory input, specifically smells and tastes; the reaction in question prepares the digestive system in anticipation of food, and enhances hunger. It operates by stimulating a rise in the insulin level in the blood when sweet tastes or certain smells are detected, so that the presumably expected sugar can be processed right away. One of the other effects of rising insulin levels is a shutdown of the lipid cycle, which causes fat to cease to be pulled from storage for use as fuel; this shutdown is part of what makes you hungrier as you begin eating a meal. If this observed reaction to taste sensations is common, there is reason to avoid causing it if one is trying to control or reduce weight; anything that stops the lipid cycle is working against the system that uses fat from storage to fuel your body. And in particular, given that sensory input may not always distinguish between fake sugar and real sugar, it seems that there is cause to suspect that this insulin release could be happening when you consume artificially-sweetened foods or beverages that are otherwise calorie-free. In that case, the insulin release will block out the fat-for-fuel mechanism, but there won't be any sugar coming in to use up the insulin or to provide alternate fuel, so you'll end up starving yourself while NOT losing weight. (Several years ago, I remember seeing other research which indicated that diet sodas had the effect of increasing hunger, but I don't recall if they established the mechanism involved, and it's possible that the same actual effect may have been observed in both studies.) Of course, without more specific research to confirm the effect and determine its severity and full implications, the potentially counterproductive nature of artificial sweeteners in this area remains at least partially conjecture at this point...but it's conjecture based on observed results, not just something pulled out of thin air.

Back in the '60s, there was a cola-wars ad in which one of the major brands had a fake Russian saying "Put water in mouth, is sufficient!". All in all, I have to say that this is probably the best advice available, though I'll continue to leaven mine with a dash of lemon or lime, thank you.