Weekend Sugar Buzz

Happy 5th of July to all my fellow USA'ers.  What a busy weekend of celebrating!  Hope you all enjoyed some sunshine and were successful in monitoring holiday food indulgences.  I admit that I wasn't as neat and tidy in my intake as I would have liked, and that is why I'm currently sitting here typing away, sweaty as a pig from my ouchie badass combo lift-and-sprint workout this morning.  I'm quite proud of Ed and I for getting our butts out of bed so early to get good workouts in before the 'dangerous heat wave' arrives.  Feels like it's already here to me!  I will confine myself to the air conditioning as much as possible for the rest of the day, water bottle in hand. 

I was surprised this weekend by how many sweet foods I was surrounded with at each party.  Each barbecue/meal/ whatever had a display of muffins or cupcakes or pie or brownies or cookies etc. etc. etcetera.  Attack of the SUGARS!  Added sugar is probably my biggest dietary no-no, considering I am an apple-shape type of girl, and excess sugar always finds its way right to my belly.  So what's a girl with a sweet tooth to do?


Sugar is most definitely an addictive substance.  When you take in added sugar, your body physiologically craves more of it.  You can't blame it; sugar is the most easily useable form of dietary energy.  It's typically packaged already almost entirely broken down, so your body can just slurp it up and put it to work.  That's fine if you are mid-long run and need a boost, but if you aren't burning that up right away, and I mean ASAP, it's going to plop down and stay put somewhere on that body of yours.

I notice this sugar-wanting reaction in myself even after one cookie - I can eat one tasty treat and fully enjoy it, guilt-free, but then I can sense a heightened awareness of the sweet foods in my vicinity.  It's quite sickening how food-centric I can become if I don't monitor myself.  I've learned how to -usually!- not give in, and how to see over the tasty bite of sugary goo to the other side - the consequence side.  Those extra miles on the treadmill I'll have to wade through to return to my most-fit self if I indulge.  I can usually see that an extra cookie isn't worth it.

So what do we do when we want to kick sugar to the curb?  We enter the world of sugar-replacers, and find a new set of issues to tackle.  How many times have we heard about the 'evils' of artificial sweeteners?  Sweet n' Low in particular has some creepy tales in its history, and I won't touch the stuff.  Equal isn't much better, and Xylitol might back your system up with so much gas from indisgetible substances that you need to plan to stay home the rest of the day when you eat it, lest ye embarass oneself by way of one's noisy backside.

Me?  I go for the little yellow packet, aka Splenda.  I have been trying to knock this habit, because I have this creepy feeling that down the road, I'm going to wish that I had done so.  I really want to be using clean sweeteners, but I don't like giving up calories so I can use agave syrup or honey each time a food needs some sweet.  I like the taste of Splenda, and I like that it has no calories.  I've read the unsubstantiated reports of heart murmurs in lab rats that ingest Splenda, but honestly, that research isn't very thorough and it doesn't hold much water.  But something must be up with it, even if they don't yet know what that something is.  Now, I don't automatically buy into the idea that it must bad for you, but I am suspicious that something so handy comes without a price.  (Then again, am I just a skeptical bastard, used to believing that there's no such thing as a free lunch?  Maybe.  But it is always worth being concerned about what we are putting into our bodies.) 

In my opinion, the biggest issue with artificial sweeteners as a whole, obviously apart from some specific health concerns, is that they get you accustomed to very sweet foods.  When you're used to the hurt-your-dental-work levels of sweet, you tend to not as keenly appreciate the sweetness of naturally sweet foods like fruit and even tomatoes, peppers, or carrots. 

However, if you can cut back on your total usage of sweeteners, I'm sure you can find a way to balance appreciation for natural sweetness and a need to quiet the almighty sweet tooth.  I don't often bake with artificial sweeteners; I mainly use them to flavor tea, coffee, plain yogurt, and perhaps the occasional protein shake.  So, I was stuck with the issue of wanting an alternative to clean up my sweets.  Bing bing bing!  Call in the stevia.  My yoga-teacher buddy Liz goes through stevia like it's nobody's business.  Stevia is an all-natural sweetener made from dried and powdered leaves from the stevia herb. It is supposedly 30-100x sweeter than sugar, depending on the brand and extract concentration.  It also ranks a zero on the GI Index, which is pretty nifty:

Recently I tried 2 stevia-based sweeteners and I have 2 very solid opinions to share, to potentially enhance your own sweetener search: 

Test #1: NuStevia white stevia powder by NuNaturals.  Awesome.  I tried this in tea and it really gave a good flavor with no odd aftertaste.  I also mixed it into my Fage Greek yogurt and it was a nice subtle sweetness - just enough to take the sour cream flavor away.  The downside?  A little expensive (though perhaps worth it): $9.99 for a box of 50 packets.  I think this brand and type of sweetener may be my winner in the end, and I think I could probably find it cheaper online.

Test #2: Onto the other side of the stevia spectrum: Sweetleaf sweetener packets.  I got this type first because the price point was a little lower at $5.99 for 50 packets and it's a pretty popular stevia manufacturer.  But.. EW.  I mixed this into a large container of plain greek yogurt and man, I wish I hadn't.  I have always heard that stevia can be bitter when used in excess amounts.  Wow, they are right about that!  I took one bite of yogurt and almost had to spit it ou, and I rarely have this reaction to any kind of food.  I thought 'Ok, maybe it had a bad reaction with the lactose in the yogurt or something weird..' so I tried some right from the packet - Bam!  Same bitter-hyper-sweet mix with a lingering bitter aftertaste.  I was very sad about my tainted container of Fage, but I pseudo-successfully recovered its flavor with a dollop of buckwheat honey.  Overall, I am disappointed with this purchase, and the box is currently shoved into the back of my pantry.  Maybe I can sell it on ebay.. hmm.

There are definitely other stevia-based products to try, like Truvia, nuva, flavored liquid stevia, etc.  I have tried only these 2 brands so far and had firm experiences with them, and that is why I bring my report to you.  Good luck with your sweet findings and let me know if you have any tasty opinions on what I should try next!