Twelve Black Code Monkeys

I’ve always been more of a “salt” person than a sugar person, but given the right sweets, I’ll suck deserts down with the best of them. This can be problematic if you’re watching your weight, or simply trying to avoid huge swings in insulin that could bring on insulin resistance and eventually diabetes (or of course if you already have one of these conditions). Of course, if you’re on a low-carb diet, sugar is not exactly your friend.

So, people have turned to the sugar “substitute” or “artificial sweetener.” Saccharin was the grandady of these, having been discovered in the 19th century. Concerns about cancer in rats who consumed their own weight in the stuff per day caused Canada to ban saccharin in 1977, while the FDA simply mandated warning labels (since removed). Other than the potential health risks, saccharin also had the disadvantage of having a somewhat bitter aftertaste. Saccharin’s trade name is “Sweet N’ Low.”

Aspartame, which became the main sweetener used in diet soft drinks starting in the 1980’s, has had even more controversy. Firstly it approved by the FDA despite concerns that it might cause brain tumors allegedly because of influence of its owner, the giant Monsanto agribusiness. There have also been concerns that aspartame is a neurotoxin due to its component parts and many people have reported migraine headaches and other physical ailments that are similar to those reported by some consuming MSG. The trade name of aspartame is “NutraSweet” and it’s sold as a substitute in packets by the name “Equal.” Aspartame’s big improvement over saccharin was in its lack of a bitter aftertaste, although it still contains some aftertaste.

The newest big contender in this market is Sucralose, which has approved in the U.S. only in 1998, although in Canada it was approved over ten years ago. The Sucralose molecule basically takes some of the atoms in a sugar molecule – hydrogen and oxygen groups called hydroxyls, and substitutes chlorine, which is thought to make it indigestible by the body. It is thought to taste the most like sugar of all of these substitutes and unlike the others it can be used in cooking. So far there have been no major health concerns with sucralose, despite it’s being studied now for almost 20 years after being discovered almost 30 years ago. It goes under the commercial name “Splenda.” Due to aspartame’s dominance in this category for a decade or two before sucralose came on the scene, it has had a somewhat difficult time supplanting aspartame despite it’s seeming advantages. Only one major soft drink brand (Diet Rite) has adopted its use, and it is still rarely seen accompanying the other two major sugar substitutes in restaurants, although this is starting to change. One factor that has driven a great deal of Splenda’s success is its adoption by low-carb dieters who saw it as a much less risky and better-tasting substitute for something that is basically unacceptable at any level on their diet – sugar. Recently, we’ve heard that not only is Splenda in tight supply due to the surge of popularity, but the company that makes Equal, Chicago-based Merisant, obviously feeling its market share threated, is suing the maker of Splenda for false advertising.

Speaking of low-carb, in order to continue to eat sweets, many low-carbers have turned to low-carb sweets like candies, and even attempt their own baking creations. Many of the packaged “low-carb” sweets use primarily what are termed “sugar alcohols.” Splenda might be a better choice, but in the quantities needed to sweeten candy and other deserts, it would be so prohibitive that the products could not be sold except in very high-end gourmet specialty stores in Beverly Hills! Xylitol, sorbitol, and maltitol are just some of the many of these sugar alcohols. The theory is that they are only partially digested (different ones get absorbed at different rates and these rates also depend on the person consuming them), and that they do not raise blood sugar levels and the accompanying insulin levels. But just because they don’t raise these levels does not necessarily mean that they don’t count in terms of calories or carbs, and thus the controversy. The main problem with these substances other than this is that they have, to varying degrees and depending on the consumer, a laxative affect, especially when consumed in anything more than a small quantity.

So much for better living through chemistry! As I’ve mentioned here before, I adhere (most of the time, although this holiday season is kicking my ass) to a diet based on the Protein Power books by Dr.’s Michael R. and Mary Dan Eades, and have done so for over four years now. While their diet is low in carbs, they have a much more holistic view of eating and health than simply eating a certain way to lose weight. So, they recommend organic produce, free-range or grass-fed animals, lots of fresh veggies, and some fruits as well. While one can certainly eat plenty of veggies on Atkins, the tone of his earlier books, I think, gave some people (including his critics), a misconception that it was only about eating meat, cheese, and fat. The Eadeses, on the other hand, are clearly about eating a varied diet full of vegetables in addition to meats, fish, dairy, nuts, seeds, fruits and other whole foods. Low-carb dieters, I feel, get a bad rap because they seem to be doing something “faddish” by eating foods that the “experts” have been recommending against for so long. Of course some people do jump on the bandwagon because they hear about it as being popular, effective in producing some quick results, and with the added benefit of allowing you to eat foods a whole lot tastier than celery and skim milk. Some of these people don’t take the time to learn about how to eat or why to eat one way as opposed to another, so when they get sick of their skewed perception of what the diet should be, they go off and regain the weight.

It may seem odd to some that their might be some folks like myself who are both big low-carb advocates and at the same time big organic, whole foods advocates, but there are plenty of us out there, and I think the Protein Power books were influential for many of us. That being said, I wanted to discuss a couple of other sugar substitutes that adhere more to this holistic approach to eating as opposed to the more synthetic and processed approach taken by much of the food industry (including many low-fat products).

Tagatose is probably the newest sugar substitute, or at least the newest one to be approved by the FDA – only last year (2003). It goes by the commercial name “Naturlose.” It’s been used so far in 7-Eleven diet Slurpies, but otherwise has not garnered much commercial notice, perhaps due to cost issues. Tagatose, while not nearly as sweet as the other substitutes – in fact it is a little LESS sweet than sugar – is also the most similar to sugar in taste, texture, behavior when cooked, etc. That’s probably because it essentially IS sugar, but just a mirror version of it called an isomer. It’s sometimes referred to as “left-handed sugar” due to its molecular orientation. For some reason the body doesn’t recognize this as real sugar and only absorbs about 25% of it. It actually occurs in nature, but in fairly small quantities.

Stevia is a substance that comes from a plant and has been used for centuries as a sweetener in South America, although it occurs in other parts of the world as well. The extract can be 200 or more times as sweet as sugar. Depending on the source it can contain some degree of bitterness that has a licorice flavor. While natural, there have been some indications that in large doses it causes infertility in rodents, but otherwise there seems to be no indications of health issues. Nevertheless the FDA deemed it “unsafe” as a food additive and so one can only buy it as a “dietary supplement” and use it personally to sweeten foods for your own consumption. The recent explosion of popularity of low-carb diets has meant that Stevia has gotten more visibility lately and one can now find it more readily in natural food stores at least.

Because I subscribe to a more natural, holistic way of eating, my personal leanings mean that I try to eat substances that are more “natural.” But what does this really mean? While Stevia exists in nature, I doubt it exists in the concentrations that are available in commercial extracts. There’s also the oft-heard rebuttle from those who poo-poo natural food advocates that not everything “natural” is good for you – such as poison mushrooms, arsenic, etc. While this may be true, the fact of the matter is that these artificial chemicals are potentially even more risky because they do not occur in nature and so the human body has never evolved to deal with them. Maybe some like Splenda will turn out to have no ill-affect, and certainly others like Aspartame while potentially dangerous to some, are completely harmful to others. With natural products, there is at least a slightly better chance that the body can handle them appropriately, the theory being that those who ate something that was potentially harmful had a disadvantage in surviving and so eventually died out.

Up until fairly recently, I had basically taken the position that because none of these substitutes was necessarily perfectly safe as far as we know, that the only thing to do was to avoid all sugar and substitutes. And this is a viable option for some. I took this approach for a while and after a while you do get used to it and your taste buds adapt. You are much better able to taste the natural sweetness in foods when your taste buds aren’t being pounded by huge amounts of sweetness. Of course most coffee is not goint to ever taste at all sweet, no matter how long you’ve gone without sweeteners.

So with this in mind I set out recently to try out some Stevia and found it to be pretty affective. The only thing that I sweeten personally is coffee or occasionally tea, so I’m not sure how it would taste in other foods. I tried two different kinds, one I picked up from Trader Joe’s and is called “Superior Source Sweet ‘n Natural Powder.” One thing about both Stevia and Splenda is that because they are so much sweeter than sugar, they cannot be packaged in pure form. The granuals or whatever their natural form takes would be so miniscule for a single serving that you’d need tweezers to add it to your food! So, manufacturers have generally settled on two methods of packaging. The first, and most prevalent way, is to use a “bulking agent” that is mixed in to dilute the agent and thus allow for larger mass per serving. Unfortunaly the bulking agents used add carbs and calories to the mix, somewhat defeating the purpose. The other method is to use a bulking agent which adds no carbs or calories – water. Obviously, this is less convenient in many ways than a solid buling agent since you can’t make “packets” like sugar, Equal, etc. I guess you could make them, as they do this with more liquid items like katsum, mayo, mustard, etc, but perhaps the cost would make it impractical? In any case, liquid Splenda, while first available in the U.S. several years ago, is no longer. In any case, the Superior Source Sweet ‘n Natural Powder uses a solid bulking agent – that of lactose. Half a teaspoon is plenty to sweeten 8 or even 16 oz’s of coffee as far as I’m concerned. The consistency is something like confectioners sugar – very fine grained “powder.”

The fact that the bulking agent was a sugar made me consider trying one of the water-suspended Stevia products. So I recently went to my local Whole Foods and bought one of the several brands they had available, Sweetleaf’s Stevia Clear Liquid Stevia. It was quite expensive at about $18 for 120ml, but the serving size of 2 drops indicated that I could get 1200 servings, which I thought was a great deal for $18. However, I found I could not taste those two drops in the least. In fact, in order to even get close to the effect of the ½ tsp. of the powder, I had to put in at least 15 drops, which lowered the number of servings to around 150, or more than $.10 per serving. Nothing astronomical, but certaintly not cheap either. I’m curious to try other brands to see if their potency is any better, but for now I think the powder has won out.