Artificial sweeteners, increased appetite

(Chuck) #42

I don’t know what it is it doesn’t necessarily lower my BP it just seems to stabilize it so I don’t get the wild swings.

(Alec) #43

I reckon about a year of pretty strict carnivore. I did have some sweet tastes (erythritol) for a while, but now that is rare… I hardly eat anything sweet at all these days. And when I do, a little tastes really sweet. This week I was travelling and I had a meal out and ate some meat off the top of a pizza… it had a small amount of BBQ sauce on it… it was almost inedible…. Just too sweet.

#44

I have a very different experience with this issue than most people commenting. The sweet profile is one I like. I’m not addicted and I don’t crave it, and I can’t handle full sweetness of regular sugar at all. But I do love mildly sweet things as a flavoring, so for me I use erythritol because it’s only 70% the sweetness of sugar and satisfies what I need and allows me to be successful in my diet. 70% sweetness is perfect for me because more than that is overkill to my tastebuds. The substitutes like Stevia and Monk Fruit were hard for me because like past substitutes they have 300-400x as much sweetness as sugar, and I never liked the harsh aftertaste of most substitutes because of that. They used to be cut with sugar alcohols to tame them down but what was used was still pretty high on the glycemic index and many also had troublesome digestive side effects. Nowadays they are all suddenly cut with erythritol. So I just stuck with that alone, and occasionally will use an Allulose blend or a monk fruit blend in baking.

My use of erythritol has not interfered with my diet or caloric intake in either direction and it does not trigger any kind of cravings or binging. I could live without it easily, but I don’t have any real reason to avoid it and since I enjoy a mild sweetness added to many things I don’t. I will say I probably never have more than 30-50g in any single day except for the holidays. I’ve gotten quite talented making the most delicious cookies, pies, bars, and jello desserts using almond flour and erythritol. It took well over a year to learn how to do it well and now everyone loves what I make, even my non-Keto friends. So a holiday may find me visiting the bathroom more on that particular day since it takes a lot of it to trigger digestive upset. :rofl: But for the most part at typical daily amounts, erythritol is nothing like any of the other sugar alcohols, and I have tried most of them. It’s quite different, is very mild, and exits our body through our urine. Most often those who warn against it never used it long term themselves and are judging it according to the entire category of sugar alcohols, not knowing it is actually very different.

There was a recent media report about a new study last year that is trying to prove erythritol causes increased risk of cardiac events. It is yet another poorly constructed, observationally based study controlled by those with significant conflicts of interest. They gave the subjects increased erythritol in cookies, packaged foods, and soft drinks! Well that’s no way to remove dozens of other variables from chemicals and lab created ingredients that could be causing the blood markers they discuss. Our body naturally creates erythritol too and there is no clarification of the increase in the blood is caused by our bodies or external consumption, and absolutely none that shows it’s responsible for increased risks. And the doctor doing the study receives support from big Ag and pharma, and he has a vested interest in making royalties on a new machine that will measure the erythritol in the blood to predict a cardiac event. The scientific waters are so muddy on this one that it’s simply a scare tactic to fight back against something that is cheaper and widely available and robbing the sugar industry of a lot of profit. His findings haven’t even been duplicated yet but it’s sending shockwaves across the media. SMH. I need much clearer, random controlled trials done properly with no conflict of interest showing the same results than this to stop me from using it. I’ve used it daily for 2 years and my cardiologist said my heart and any risks have never been healthier than they are this year. Morale of this story don’t believe every new study that gets reported on and add to the hysteria by spreading the rumors even more. We need better data and more of it. This study smells of boardroom war plans.

For me, who gets triggered by the natural sugars in fruit, and can’t handle the overly sweetness of them, I needed something more mild like this to get the cooking and baking results I wanted without the triggers.

Maybe it would be enough for you to help you get your calories in without worries?

#45

No sweeteners is a big difference I would think. I can’t be sure as I only cut them off when I tried carnivore and the lack of plant carbs had a big impact already. But I am pretty sure the combo was the really effective thing for me. Plant carbs mess with me but sweet stuff has some extra effect too, eating sweets (with any amount of net carbs) may trigger wanting more sweets and keeping up the sweets eating habit doesn’t help.

I loved chocolate but it never ever made me even a bit happier, no matter what people say about it. Except the joy but a pickle is better if we talk about that… Let alone some nice meat :wink:

Well of course, BBQ sauce is crazy.
Once I felt black coffee (well brown, I do have it weak) sweet :smiley: That was even more weird than feeling my lemonade (water with a minuscule amount of lemon juice) sweetish. Green tea is very sweet to me now. Lactose free cream is sweet too, yay! I like sweet things.
Of course everything with more than minimal added sugar is sweet.
And I for one HATE meat+sugar. I can handle more sweetness if it suits the dish or drink. I can’t handle anything noticeable for meat except one special recipe but that has vegs already and very very tiny sugar/sweetener. In my country we don’t pour sugar on meat… At least not in my circles.

I already felt things way sweeter than on high-carb after some months of low-carb but then it stayed… And it started to change again on carnivore and I don’t know where and when it will stop… It changes back a bit (never further than the before-carnivore level) if I eat very sweet things for a while but carnivore quickly redoes it.
I like this. Even if I am pretty sure I will borderline lose more and more of my precious fruits as they stop being enjoyable due to the excessive amount of sugar in them. At least they are pretty and seeing them grow gives me huge joy. And my SO eats them. My greengage has close to zero sweetness (as I suppose it has some even if I don’t feel it) while it’s SUPER sour when cooked, it will stay with me forever. If I still will be interested but carnivore probably will keep changing me and I can’t guess my future. But I love sour things. Even more than sweet ones. Savory is the best but variety is nice.

But 70% sweetness is still super sweet, you put it into things, you just need less from a sweeter sweetener… I prefer xylitol as it’s way tastier and I just use less. For very sweet things (some dishes are only good real sweet) I must use xylitol as erythritol works weird in that situation for me…
I can’t handle the super sweet sweeteners at all, they all taste horrid to me (even when mixed with hundreds of more xylitol and a lot of food. I am sensitive to them and skipping the sweetener from ANYTHING would be way more enjoyable than using any of them). Hence the erythritol (meh but sweet) and xylitol (way tastier than normal sugar and much better in many ways. there are way tastier sugars but they are sugars and I only put lactose above xylitol as it’s carnivore and my body doesn’t care about animal sugars, they feel like no carbs at all as far as I can tell. it has its limits though, I can’t make very sweet things with lactose. that’s why I am glad that my sweet NEED dropped too. but it depends on the dish).

Erythritol has many haters, it’s understandable, we all like different things, we are sensitive to different things and it is really not tasty. (But normal sugar isn’t either… Just sweet.) I don’t get the “cool” thing as I don’t feel that. Maybe in the beginning but it never was annoying.

There are fruits from dates to lemon (and in my garden, from very very sweet grapes to quince and the not even sweet but extremely sour greengage). Lemon is the fruit I allow in my carnivore-ish. Just a few drops here and there, it’s an important flavoring in some of my desserts, usually the vanilla flavored ones. I don’t feel the lemon but the treat doesn’t work without it. It must be like missing the salt from a dessert, I don’t know that as I never put salt into desserts without grains and nowadays I want to take it OUT instead (yolks are naturally salty) but I can’t.

I never can resist the topic of fruits, sorry. Even if I won’t want them at all at some point (I hope that never will happen, sounds sad), I probably still will enjoy the topic.

#46

Oh I love lemon and use it a lot. I don’t particularly think it’s sweet but I love the flavor in my cooking very very much. I also use fresh squeezed in my ACV morning cocktail.

Yeah there are tastier sugars but they all are too high on the glycemic index. That matters a lot to me. As for xylitol you are correct, we each have to find what works for our own composition and tastebuds. I think erythritol tastes wonderful. Isn’t that strange?? LOL I am very happy with it and 70% sweetness of real sugar is not overly sweet to me, so I disagree that it’s still too much. The substitutes like stevia that are 300-400x sweeter are what is truly too much, especially if sugar itself tastes too sweet to me. And Xylitol is a lot higher in the Glycemic Index and I firmly committed to never using any sweetener over a 0 or a 1. Period. Sugar is a 60-65. Erythritol is a 1. Xylitol is a 7 I believe? Much better but still too high for what I’m doing. It also caused me digestive upset in my younger years. Haven’t tried it lately to see if it’s the same but since I can do everything I want to do with other sweeteners that are a 0 or a 1 I don’t have to try xylitol again. However I will say that if I eat something sweetened with it I don’t get all upset about it because it’s still pretty low.

I meant to mention that I too make my own chocolates now so that I can control what goes into it and the final numbers. I love dark chocolate and my chocolate pieces turn out heavenly. It’s just another way to have a small treat without any real detriment at all to my numbers and not triggering my insulin. But again I realize others may not have the same capacity as me and their blood sugar may spike where mine wouldn’t, or they get triggered or cravings where I don’t. I’m speaking more to those who are more like me and want to know how to incorporate sweetness into their Keto world responsibly and joyfully.

(KM) #47

And then there’s me … :kissing_closed_eyes:

After about 2 years of pretty strict ketovore and nearly 10 of mostly carb restriction I don’t crave sugar at all and it’s off my radar even when my husband has a bag of candy in the house … But the once a year I’m going to eat a sweet thing, let it be Sweet. Let it be salivary gland-cramping unbearably sweet. Let it be a tiny box of Bourbon nougat balls. Let it be pancakes with jam rolled in crunchy brown sugar. Let it be two bites of a white chocolate pazookie dripping caramel sauce. To me, sugar in my pasta sauce or on my steak or for my breakfast is disgusting. But let my annual dessert grab me by the hair and slam me in a bear hug, thank you.

#48

Laughing so hard. Too funny.

Well I’m sort of the same as you. I certainly don’t put sweetener on my steaks or breakfast or sauces. Lol And I don’t crave past sugary sweets ever, not even once a year. If they are around me they turn my stomach, as it’s gross to me. So no temptation. Actually everything you mentioned for your once a year treat almost made me gag, definitely I cringed. I no longer think deserts like that are tasty. :woman_shrugging:t3: That’s what Keto did for me. It changed my taste buds.

However … I do love the flavor of all the Keto deserts and treats I learned to make well. I can’t say I crave them but we love eating them when I make them. They are delicious, satisfying, and still a bonafide guilty pleasure. But it’s because I’ve refined the recipes well over the past two years and finally hit eureka with many. It took a lonnnmg time. If I had to judge Keto deserts on all the recipes found online and tried when I first started out I would not enjoy treating myself with any of them. I would be in full agreement with how you see it. Truly most of them are awful and not the same “treating ourselves” experience we were used to. So many of them made me angry at the money and ingredients wasted believing what they said about the recipe when it really wasn’t true. But I kept at it on my own and finally got many different diamonds in the rough that my family begs for now. They taste so much better than what I used to think was a special indulgent treat years ago. They are extremely salivary and some are very, very sweet. My husband is surprised how many he prefers to our past deserts. The best part is we never have that “gorging ourselves” impulse in the middle of eating any of them, thanks to the absence of the sugar and the addictive elements. We simply enjoy them. We gush over how delicious they are, and we look forward to having another serving the next day. But we don’t feel a need to over indulge.

It can be done. It’s no longer an either or with either “settling for an off-tasting frosting spread over a piece of cardboard, and faking that we like it” OR “proper indulgence for that once a year treat fully ladened with real sugar and all the glory we remember enjoying in the past.” I will never again think eating anything loaded with sugar is proper indulgence. Not now that I’ve found there’s better options and they truly are just as tasty and full of bear hugs.

If you never ate a really well made delicious Keto desert you can never know that it’s possible and you can only see the “either / or” dilemma.

#49

I don’t say to eat them, I don’t do it either, only a few times per year but I can’t not think about them when I write about the tastiness of sweeteners.
And amount matter so I focus on glycemic load more than GI. Big GI, tiny amount, still can be good enough. Not for me as I try to keep my diet carnivore and if I fail, I better fail not so much… And adding sweetness is more serious than a few slices of radish, for example… My off eating changed so much since carnivore! It’s good, I look at erythritol and xylitol as something very wild and probably unneeded and a bit wrong now.

But virtually no one eats them ALONE. They just use a tiny bit so the sweetness can be the same.
Oh, 70% sugar sweetness is overly much for me, sugary milk chocolate is 50% sugar and that is already insanely high. But fine, I ate pure sugar with a big spoon as a kid sometimes so it depends on the person. But if you put it into something, you simply use less of a sweeter one. (Maybe you have some interesting perception normal people don’t have, it’s possible.) What is different is the other properties of the sweetener. IDK why all super sweet ones taste awful to me but they do. It’s not the sweetness, my SO said stevia feels WAY less sweet than it allegedly is. I don’t know as the horrid flavor masks everything and I do my best to get rid of it.
We can’t even say erythritol is 70% as sweet as sugar as it is just probably the average for people. Or IDK how they figured it out. I feel it much sweeter than my SO. And normal people, my SO included, feels maltitol sweet while I find it not sweet when tasting alone (I was curious and bought a bag… and then I had no idea what to do with it…) and at most 20% as sweet as erythritol when in food like chocolate. A maltitol chocolate has the right sweetness for me (or was years ago, it’s not like I want to eat maltitol again) while a normal one is horribly sweet. But they should have the same sweetness.

Honey is odd as it’s only 80% sugar but I often read it’s sweetener than sugar… And I think I feel that too… At least alone.

Sometimes I eat rice, very rarely and not much but well, it’s exotic forbidden fruit and unique and fun. Not as good as carni food but still. My inner rebel need its fix and sometimes it’s rice.
My only fav is Jasmine. Higher GI than table sugar, I always found that fun :smiley: And I can’t care less. As it’s rare and little.
I eat honey too as it’s awesome. Rarely, little but yeah.
I still care about GI and especially GL - on my normal days. And I don’t go overboard with the amount even when I am very off. I wouldn’t even like that.

If I eat 5-10g sweetener per month (sounds a good amount to me. I am not quite there but not so far lately, give me some more time, carnivore and my stubbornness and experiments are helpful), it better be the tasty xylitol and not the meh erythritol… If I eat a bit more… That’s why I still have erythritol.
And I don’t even have any honey at home during the vast majority of the year.

I am there already but when I first made it… I just ate and ate and ate… It was before keto and I had these singular keto days to break my raging chocolate phase. It worked well.
But it was in the very beginning, I got used to the presence and carnivore took away my desire for chocolate, not immediately and fully but still pretty well. I rarely even think about eating a tiny bit of it when I go off.
And my SO would be in a difficult situation without his homemade chocolate. He hates added sugar but needs chocolate every day. He goes through a 370g jar every week. Wow, that’s a lot… But he can afford the fat. I can’t. He is a xylitol lover, can eat erythritol in a pinch though.

Interesting. If I could do carnivore for months, I probably couldn’t handle sweet at all (except the natural ones. fruits are awesome and if it’s too sweet, I just need a smaller amount. I probably can handle ONE little ball of grape even if it’s our sweetest one). I dislike the “normally” intense sweetness. I eat sweet fruit so very often and I STILL don’t put sweetener in my ice cream on an off day if it has lots of lactose free cream. it makes it perfectly sweet for me. Even when I half-lived on sweets, I couldn’t just eat frozen banana alone as it was awfully sweet therefore not so enjoyable. It needed unsweetened chocolate. I want the ideal sweetness for everything. I mean, it varies. It turned out I like my tiramisu sweet. Just some milk powder and cream can’t cut it. But I will try again, later, after some carni weeks. I just can’t enjoy super sweet things anymore and I like it.

I know and love that! 30-40g ice cream is a great portion. But I had this with certain carby treats too especially with fruits. Like my darling banana as a beginner ketoer. If frozen, that was important. A few bananas are easy to eat, I rarely could stop below one, what a weird though - but 10g frozen with unsweetened chocolate (because I feel it WAY sweeter when frozen) was the perfect treat. Usually. I had 20g times too.
I still can’t eat just 1-2 pancakes and they can be pretty low-carb… My pancakes (Hungarian thin crepes-like ones) are carnivore and my fav filling has barely any net carbs… But they are lovely and not meat so I can eat several unless I was very satiated before but I don’t eat them in that case.

The case is that I may fondly remember an old treat but eating it again just isn’t the same. Sometimes it is similar but sometimes I need to make a very different recipe to get what I remember. I wouldn’t enjoy my old beloved pancakes, they would be too flour tasting, ew. And not eggy enough, probably even though I always made them unusually eggy.
Why breads aren’t flour tasting I can’t imagine but they are still wonderful taste wise. The good ones, at least, I am choosy. Some baked goods can get away with it too. But my SO’s pudding with tapioca flour… Nope. I can do so much better, puddings don’t need any flour. They need eggs as almost everything… :upside_down_face:

Yes, it’s so great I just skip the sugar and starches, add way more tasty ingredients and the result will be much tastier! It doesn’t work with everything, I can’t make crunchy biscuits like that, well, it’s work in progress, I managed crispy ones already… But certain textures are impossible for me. Carnivore has its limits. Oh well. I don’t need every texture… One day I may accept that. But I can’t make a proper crunchy biscuit without limitations either (except what I automatically impose on myself. like I should use plenty of eggs and very little flour. it’s hard to go against that). I am almost cursed to bake only soft, eggy things. But they are crispy now if I make them the right way! It’s new development and it’s quite nice. I just need way too much energy and time to make 12 tiny little biscuits. But I don’t need them all the time.

(Bob M) #50

I also partake in some artificially-sweetened treats at times. And I even eat real sweets at times.

#51

Yeah I can’t hack real sweets anymore. My tastebuds changed sooooo much and they taste awful to me now. Sickly sweet. Chemical sometimes. So cool how that happened naturally with Keto and without any effort. But I’m not going to push it and try to like any of it again because I feel like if I’m finally out of prison why would I stick even a toe back in? :joy: I beat that addiction and the hold it had on my life and body. Sugarholics Anonymous - LOL.

But I think what keeps me away the most is the insane fear I now have over what raw sugar does to our cellular activities and structures. Just like I won’t use heroin or cocaine (never have due to proper fear.)

I’m thankful I’ve found a way to make different sweet pleasures now that don’t use such dangerous ingredients. So I don’t have to be the kid looking out the window at others playing while I can’t. I never feel deprived. And oddly we only eat a sweet treat or desert maybe once every other month, except around the holidays. Preketo it was every single night!!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #52

Interesting question. Caffeine and theobromine are methylxanthines, which also aid respiratory function. The methylxanthines with the biggest respiratory effect, however, are theophylline and aminophylline.

(Megan) #53

I’m finding this thread very interesting. If there is zero hunger response after consumption of anything sweet tasting, is the cephalic-phase insulin response still happening? I ask this because I am vaping as a way to stop smoking. I have smoked pretty heavily for 48 years and on December the 8th 2023 I quit and started vaping. Vape eliquids contain a mix of vegetable glycerine (which is largely responsible for the clouds and is sweetish tasting) and propylene glycol (which is very slightly sweet), then a very small amount of flavourings (food grade) and most have a very small amount of artificial sweetner (usually sucralose and sometimes erythritol), and nicotine in various amounts, tho you can also choose zero nicotine.

The eliquid is vaporized and inhaled and the sweet smell and taste is very definitely experienced if it’s a flavour that’s associated with sweetness. In fact the most popular eliquids, by far, are the sweet tasting ones - sweet fruits, custards, desserts etc. Can we say sugar addicts?!

I’m not a fan of the very sweet ones but a couple I vape all the time are fruit flavours, so are somewhat sweet. The other I vape is a concoction I make by mixing a few eliquids - so sort of virginia tobacco, coffee, mocha, and some menthol.

I vape a lot and at some point I will need to start reducing my dependance on it. I’ve already started reducing the nicotine strength in the eliquids I buy. It’s much, much safer than smoking (though long term studies haven’t been done and I know it’s not a completely safe thing to do), and a heck of a lot cheaper, so for now I am happy to keep vaping to keep me off the cigarettes.

BUT is it going to affect me metabolically because of the sweetness experience? As I said, I get zero hunger response but maybe it’s still affecting insulin production and secretion? I’m not losing weight, in fact I’ve put on some of the initial 2.5 kg I lost after the 1st week of carni - which was, in part, water weight loss from stopping carbs apart from the carbs in the milk powder I was still making into milk and drinking in my tea and coffee. My current financial situation made not using it up seem a crime, but I have now ditched it and bought cream.

I’ve also been terribly constipated as my gut transitions, and to a degree still am. I’m taking a lot of magnesium to help move things along. When I went carni in May 2022 I had crazy diarrhoea for 6 weeks while my gut transitioned, and I’d rather have that than this! Anyway, constipation could be messing about with what the scales say when I do my weekly weigh.

And then there is the thing where some people put weight on initially when going carni, and then start losing. This didn’t happen in 2022-2023, my weight steadily decreased from week one until I plateaued about 13 months in, but it could be happening now.

BUT the question lingers. What effect is my vaping having on me metabolically?

Anyone else here vape and want to share their keto or carni experience? Or has anyone come across anything in the literature that could point me towards some answers?

Sorry it’s a long posting and thanks for reading!

(mike lisanke) #54

Google Cephalic Insulin Response. and then realize that eating Anything… even thinking about eating Anything can cause a release of Insulin which effects your appetite and many more of your basil metabolic functions… just saying. Many things Are just in your head. If you can avoid thinking into Insulin release you might be able to eat Actual caloric carbohydrates… it’s Not the calories if you’re not eating much of it… these artificial sugars are said to be proven non-caloric But that doesn’t mean they have No effect on your hormones especial Insulin and Ghrelin.

(Kirk Wolak) #55

LOL, So I went out and got the chocolate alternative: Carob Powder.
And my reaction to it at a physical level was horrible.

It turns out… Carob still has oxalates. And probably a few other things I react to. LOL

(Bob M) #56

When I was younger, I was eating Carob Powder, I think because chocolate had evil fat in it, whereas Carob Powder did not. That stuff was terrible. Kinda like rice cakes – the idea of them is way better than the taste of them.

In my life, I’ve eaten so many things that tasted bad, in the interest of “health”.

#57

I always was a curious kind and I bought some once.
There are cases when even I throw out theoretically edible items…
It is AWFUL. I rather not eat chocolate but why wouldn’t I? My chocolate consumption is quite tiny since I tried out carnivore years ago and my desires changed. (Cocoa powder is a tad different as it can be useful when I try to quit coffee.)

It’s so WEIRD. Normal chocolate is so sugary and you had problems with the fat? It’s even known lots of sugar isn’t good…

So from us 3, everyone hated carob powder. Are there people who like it…? Possibly there are some (I known someone who preferred the taste of UHT milk! and many people find various green leaves tasty and I mean nettle, dandelion and radish leaves) but have you ever heard about anyone…?

If it’s low-fat, that’s another reason I disliked it (but it was much more. it wasn’t meh like whey powder, another thing I just had to try, it had a nasty flavor)… Low-fat replacements of high-fat items are pretty much always a big fail. Except maybe coffee instead of cocoa but it only works for drinks, I like my desserts fatty. At least a bit. Like my originally “marshmallow” recipe (to be a bit ontopic, no artificial sweetener :D), it had just egg whites and gelatin and minor things in the beginning but I had to add yolks and whipped cream and it became nice. Still pretty lean in my world of desserts but works and it’s carnivore so I kept it and make it often.

My hedonism keep me from that, it’s always just curiosity and then my inability to throw out food (carob isn’t food, it’s an abomination). The biggest challenge this far was red grape seed powder, it’s grainy, tastes funny/weird to horrible (depends who you ask in my little family) and hard to find a food where it’s tolerable (I just use super tiny amounts, give me a decade and the bag will run out). The thing is allegedly useful for something but it’s near impossible to use and enjoy.
I am lucky to find some of the healthiest items the tastiest. I can change but I always loved my healthy items. I just loved worse and very bad food too… But as I still was healthy, there wasn’t extra drive to eat an inferior tasting diet for health. I probably would do it in need, health is my first priority. But it would be sad even temporarily.

(Bob M) #58

I was on a Pritikin diet, which is very low fat (<10% of fat per day by calories). Normal breakfast was hot cereal; lunch was pasta; dinner was brown rice and beans; snack was rice cakes.

#59

Actually normal chocolate is not sugary or fat. Those are added to it. Normal chocolate is actually quite healthy, it’s just bitter tasting. Sort of the way coffee beans are. I now make my own chocolates by using coco butter and erythritol. That’s the fat and the sweet to be added to it to make it palatable. But I don’t add as much sweetener as most people would. I like 80% dark chocolates too, which most people don’t because it’s not sweet enough. I love the flavor of chocolate itself but it does not need so much sweetener. It does need fat at least. I make a chocolate frosting with 1C butter and a little monk fruit or allulose, and some vanilla extract. Basically it is just chocolate flavored butter. :rofl: Man is it good.

#60

Of course the tons of sugar is added to normal chocolate.
I often use “normal” as “typical stuff in a supermarket for that kind”. Other times normal is whatever is normal for me, well the two tends to be quite different :smiley: But it’s usually the former meaning on this forum.
So in this meaning “normal” (supermarket milk) chocolate is half sugar, quite serious, I can’t wrap my head around it since I went low-carb!

It seems normal chocolate is the very dark ones for you :slight_smile: I can’t eat those, way too much cocoa for me. My own is mostly fat, very low cocoa (as I don’t use cocoa butter so it’s not real chocolate but it’s chocolate to me, I need to call it somehow and I don’t see much difference). But I almost never have it anymore.

I am always curious about other people’s recipes, how much erythritol and fat you add?
We use 9% xylitol for my SO’s chocolate, I didn’t use any sweetener in the end as I just want chocolate, not sweetness and with all the fat I used, it wasn’t too bitter :wink:

One can buy chocolate with sweeteners but it’s the same: the bigger half is the sweetener. So we had to make our own but it had many benefits, it followed our changing tastes.

Of course, it would be mostly cocoa powder otherwise. But how much fat we use, that’s flexible to a great extent, that came handy in my family.

Butter is nice. Originally I only used coconut oil as it didn’t spoil (my SO has a jar with 370g “chocolate”, it almost lasts for a week, very important staple for him) but when I mix my tiny chocolate to eat up immediately, I use some butter. Lovely. My trial with the super expensive and hard to get cocoa butter wasn’t as good.