You pick up a package of powdered drink mix; there is a bright red ribbon printed on the package and it clearly says “sugar free” at the center. It would seem safe to just assume that you could have a good time quenching your thirst with this product, and it would have no effect on your blood sugar levels, wouldn’t it? Well, not so fast. Let’s take a closer look at the side effects of artificial sweeteners.
Side effects of artificial sweeteners. Artificial sweeteners work on the back of all kinds of sweetening chemical substances,saccharine is an all-time favorite of course, but there are also sucralose, aspartame and several others in the lineup. The concept seems simple enough, they offer you sweetness just the way sugar does, but if you have a diabetic condition, this is sweetness that comes with none of the harmful health effects that regular sugar can bring you. And not only do they not contain sugar, they don’t have any carbohydrates either, that can just as easily send your blood sugar levels up; there’s just a little caveat there, products other than pure artificial sweetener, products like that unhappy drink mix just brought up are hardly all sweetener. These are products that are cleverly concocted out of a hundred ingredients and processes and that more often than not contain plenty of carbohydrates.
Side effects of artificial sweeteners. A lot of sugar free products on the shelves these days get their sweetening from something called sugar alcohols. First off, one does notice that this is quite a curious name; sugar alcohols are molecules that are formed by a rare combining of an alcohol molecule with a sugar molecule. When they bond together, they turn into quite a new material, one that is neither sugar nor alcohol. And they are quite a godsend to businesses trying to put out sugar free chocolates, candy, cookies, you name it. If you are someone who needs to try to keep your blood sugar levels under control, products with sugar alcohol sweetening can complicate matters a bit when you try to interpret what those labels actually mean.
More side effects of artificial sweeteners. Certainly sugar alcohol doesn’t raise your blood sugar levels the way plain sugar can; but it isn’t altogether “sugar free” as they would have you believe. Sugar alcohol is half as potent as regular sugar at raising your blood sugar levels. So how do you tell if a packaged product you’re picking up has any of this stuff in it? Typically, you can tell by finding anything on the ingredients list that sounds like sorbitol or maltitol. Anything on sale with the label “sugar free” is supposed to have a separate item on the nutritional information label that tells you how much of sugar alcohol it has. If you don’t keep count of all of this, you’ll just have to wonder one day what on earth you did wrong to deserve dangerously high blood sugar levels, all you ever did was to buy sugar free foods.
If you need to use an alternative to sugar for health reasons or calorie reductions, consider using a natural sweetener call stevia. What is stevia? Stevia is a non caloric South American sweet herb, native to Paraguay. It has been used as a sweetener and flavor enhancer by the Guarani Indians for centuries.it can be found in many forms in most health-food stores. Stevia can be purchased as a refined liquid, as a leaf product,or as a powder extract. I personally use the powder extract to sweeten my tea and sometimes I had it to smoothies, plain yogurt and oatmeal. Stevia can be used as an alternative to sugar. The advantages of stevia are that it is not artificial like the other chemical sweeteners on the market, it has a delicious taste, it is sweeter than sugar, it has no aspartame, no carbohydrates, and no calories. Stevia has also another advantage it can be used by diabetics because of its zero glycemic index. Stevia also contains vitamin c. I strongly believe that if you want to avoid the dangerous side effects of artificial sweeteners, you should consider trying stevia. SweetLeaf All Natural Zero Calories SteviaPlus, 100 Packets, 3.5 Ounce Boxes (Pack of 2)
