Sweeteners are making me crazy!

#1

I’ve already wasted a lot of money by buying the wrong sweeteners,so I’m hoping someone can simplify it for me. I want a sweetener for making fat bombs, and also one for drinks. What have you all found as the best way to go without blowing a huge heap of cash? I try to compare online prices and it so confusing!! Any help to clear this up for me would be wonderful. Oh and so xylitol is out and if I get sucralose it should have no maltodextrin and no maltitol? The erythritol is pricey since you need almost twice as much as sugar…

#2

Hi @pieshifter – I’m there with you. I own every artificial sweetener including erythritol, xylitol, stevia, and steviia blend.

Here’s my recommendation: don’t eat any of it. Stop it with the sweeteners already. They increase insulin and cravings. The problem is not WHICH sweetener, but that you are consuming sweeteners in the first place. Stop that. Don’t do it any more. They increase cravings. The fact that you feel you must eat sweeteners is more evidence that you need to stop. Stop being crazy. Just stop. No more. Stop.

#3

I’ve tried a few. My favourites are sukrin gold which is like a brown sugar and sukrin melis which is like an icing (confectioners) sugar. Gold is good for drinks. Melis is good for fat bombs or anything where you don’t want a granulated sugar. I think they’re both erythratol based. I do use them both sparingly though.

#4

Loved your reply. Put me in mind of when I finally quit smoking ten years ago. Went crazy trying to stop for twenty years before that! I hope to someday rise to the lofty goal you suggest. But damn, I’m still trying to get over crap like blue box macaroni and cheese! I’ll get there, someday. This weekend I have to make a keto cheesecake thing for my daughter’s 29 th birthday. She has now joined the keto revolution as well.

#5

I’ve not seen this brand around here. I will look it up online. Thanks for the info!

#6

Yes, I see it’s a UK product. It would cost me $17 a pound to get it here. It does look like a great product! You guys get all the good stuff over there, and health care too. Everything and I mean like a huge majority of products here are laced with maltodextrin, and who knows what else…

(Brian) #7

FWIW…

I find that I like different sweeteners for different things.

My go-to for coffee is stevia. For baking, usually it’s a blend of stevia and erythritol.

SweetLeaf drops is what I use in my coffee, and I have two bottles of it, one chocolate and one vanilla. I like a little of both along with copious amounts of heavy whipping cream. Occasionally, a baking recipe will call for some liquid stevia and I think I have a little bottle of Pyure that I use for that. (It lasts me a long time as I don’t use much of it.) For baking, I tried Swerve, and I like the confectioners (powdered) sweetener ok. The granular I like the taste of fine but it’s not sweet enough for me. I tend to get the Pyure granular, the one that’s a stevia and erythritol blend.

That’s it for what’s at our house. I haven’t felt like I needed anything else. I’ve not really messed around with xylitol. I know some people worry about it being poison to their dogs. I can’t think of anywhere around here I’d get it anyway so it’s not really an issue. Pyure and SweetLeaf products are at the the local Walmart and Kroger so very easy to get. I ordered some Swerve powdered online months ago and still have a lot of it left. Really, I don’t use that much of it.

I wouldn’t mind trying the Sukrin or some of the monkfruit type sweeteners but haven’t seen them on the shelf locally so just haven’t messed with them.

I did find out early on that erythritol will give me a headache if I overconsume it. But to do that, I have to eat way more goodies than I know I should be eating, even though they are keto friendly. I think I did that more in the beginning because I was trying a lot of new things out. (I love to cook and bake.) But now that we’ve been eating keto for the better part of a year, a lot of that has waned and we’re eating a much more relaxed and laid back set of foods. Yes, they include goodies, but not at every meal, and not large quantities of them. I rather look forward to the days when we have company over (not really that often) so that I can try out new recipes and we won’t be tempted to eat way more than we should… since we have to share. :wink:

Good luck! Some of this still may get worked out over time. Hope so.

#8

Ah sorry. I hadn’t realised it was only reasonably priced in the UK. I tend to think all the best keto products are American. You’re right our health system is ace. Having easy access to healthcare and not having to worry about insurance and what it will and won’t cover is something I’ve taken for granted until I’ve started meeting more American people online.

#10

I know it depends on the person and the study, but many have found daily consumption of erythritol to be just fine and not insulinigenic. Many have lost hundreds of pounds and improved their health drastically while still consuming erythritoI very often. Erythritol can be a wonderful sugar replacement, and I’d recommend one should stay away only if it triggers dangerous cravings and overconsumption. Otherwise, it is totally fine to consume, and if it helps people stay calm and keto, I’d actually encourage it.

To answer OP’s question, my favorite is raw erythritol and raw monk fruit combo. I buy Anthony’s erythritoI on Amazon and Lakanto’s 30% Monk. This helps save some money to blend them yourself. I do a x cup erythritol with x tsp of monk. It can be tricky working with it in different applications, but enough low carb recipe wizards have cracked the code for many of those applications.

(Deb) #11

How about…none?!
I just broke a year long stall by dropping them. Caused me a LOT of cravings and misery.

(Charlotte) #12

I always buy somewhat in bulk–I’m not spending hundreds of dollars on pallets of erithrytol or anything, but I will spend a bit more upfront on something that ends up being a lot cheaper per ounce, which saves a lot of money in the long run.

My daily, most frequently used sweetener is liquid stevia (which is basically a tincture and doesn’t have the bulking agents that the packets do), which I’ve found to have little to no impact on blood glucose, doesn’t make me crave sugar, and is super economical, as a little goes a long way. It’s also the most natural and least processed no-carb sweetener you’ll find (you could literally make it at home if you had access to a stevia plant, some glycerin or everclear, a glass jar and a dark cupboard). I buy the NOW brand from Amazon, as it’s the best and cheapest I’ve found–right now the organic is around $18 and the conventional is around $14 for an 8-ounce bottle, which will seriously last you FOREVER. Per ounce, it is absolutely the cheapest I’ve found that also tastes good. I also like using their toffee flavored stevia in my coffee and in chocolate fat bombs.

Sucralose I’ll consume only in prepared foods when I’m out and about (like in the occasional diet soda when I’m at a restaurant, for example), but it’s really not a healthy or natural choice. If you do choose to use it, you definitely want pure sucralose only, so liquid is also the best choice there, though you can find pure sucralose powder as well. JD liquid sucralose seems like the cheapest on Amazon right now–$30 for 16 oz or $20 for 8 oz, with one drop equaling the sweetness of a teaspoon of sugar, so that stuff would last you an INSANELY long time.

As far as buying erythritol goes, a great economical hack that I use to make it stretch a bit further is to use erythritol as a 1:1 replacement for sugar in recipes, and then add in a few drops (around 10 drops usually hits the sweet spot for me) of liquid stevia to make up the difference in sweetness. Comes out tasting great and saves you money on pricey erythritol. I don’t bother with swerve–you’re paying more for the brand name, it’s just plain erythritol–and rather than purchasing powdered erythritol, you can easily just turn granular erythritol to powder in a coffee grinder or blender. Anthony’s seems to have the best price per ounce on erithrytol on Amazon right now, though I’ve also found better deals on unbranded erythritol from bulk supplement sites.

You may also find that as you get more and more adjusted to keto, you just naturally use less sweetener. I love Lakanto monk fruit sweetener (it’s a blend of monk fruit and erythritol and tastes much better than plain erythritol imo), but it’s pricey. However, since I now use it so infrequently and in such small quantities, one bag lasts me a really long time, so I feel reasonably justified in buying it.

Definitely no maltodextrin, malitol, dextrose, etc though–that stuff is terrible–and no fiber syrup either (that includes sukrin syrup, vita fiber and fiber yum)–that stuff is a nightmare for blood glucose and can turn you into a sugar monster roaring for a fix in zero time flat. An awesome substitution I’ve found for a thick liquid sweetener is this one, which is very simple to make (I personally use a combo of stevia and erythritol when I make it): https://www.wholesomeyum.com/recipes/sugar-free-maple-syrup/

Anyway, sorry for the novel-length response, and best of luck!

(Charlotte) #13

Sorry to nitpick, but stevia is not an artificial sweetener. It is a natural sweetener.

Also, some of us do just fine eating keto with no carb/low carb sweeteners in moderation. Everyone’s experience is different, and they help many of us stick to a keto way of eating long-term. There’s no need to call folks “crazy” for keto-ing differently than you. We’re all just doing what works best for each of us individually, and we’re all on the same team here. :slight_smile:

#14

You might wanna try restricting the consumption of sweet stuff only at weekends. I do that and after a while of non sweet life , i dont even want it

#15

Stevia as we buy it, thw white stuff is processed. Only the green one straight from the plant is natural. And that green thing is NOT tasty at all

#16

Your post is offensive, and I’m pretty sure its offensive to his Jewish son-in-law, Jewish daughter, and Jewish grandchildren! Get over yourself and understand politics rather than attacking individuals because you don’t like them personally! POLITICS is POLITICS.

(Charlotte) #17

Liquid stevia is just a pure plant extract, akin to vanilla extract, so it’s very minimally processed and quite natural. I don’t use the powdered stuff, as the bulking agents (usually dextrose or maltodextrin) are pretty nasty.

(Cindy) #18

I used to use every sweetener there was, and tried every new one. AND I constantly struggled with sweet cravings - ALL the time. It made it very hard to stay on any kind of diet. When I went keto 6 months ago, I decided to try going without any sweetener of any kind just to see what it would be like. It has been so LIBERATING!!! For the first time in my life, I don’t even care about sweet foods. I was one of the worst sugar addicts I’ve ever seen, so this was a serious problem for me. I kept my weight down by starving all day and eating something sugary for dinner - and nothing else all day. I did this for years at a time. If I took one bite of something sweet, I had to have more. So I kept my house completely empty of food, and brought home the one thing I could eat each night. I was a MESS. Any kind of sweetener set off the addiction just as badly. I felt it was a completely hopeless situation for me. My addiction to sweets was just so much stronger than I was. So it is completely miraculous that going no-sugar, no-fruit, no-sweeteners has finally completely cured me of the addiction. I’m like the alcoholic. I know I can never again take that first bite of anything sweet, but the true miracle is that now I don’t even want to. I look at some luscious treat that I never would have passed up before, and it looks like poison to me now. So for me, I have to agree with Dave. I will never use any of them ever again.

#19

Hey @Chazzam - thanks for your reply, and I agree we’re on the same team. I was responding directly to the title of the thread “Sweeteners are making me crazy”. I was not calling people who do things differently than me crazy.

What I was hoping to convey, in my clumsy overstated way, is that continuing to indulge our sweet tooth with sweeteners, artificial and otherwise, is to scratch an itch that needs to go away, particularly if we are stalled above our desired weight.

(Charlotte) #20

Ohhhh, gotcha, that makes sense! I’m sorry for jumping to the wrong conclusion! You’re likely right, but you’d have to pry my stevia from my cold, dead hands. That said, if I ever did hit a major stall that I couldn’t break, cutting out sweeteners would likely be one of the first things I would (very begrudgingly) do to try and get things back on track.

Love your username, by the way! LOL, takes me back!

(Deborah ) #21

I couldn’t agree more. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I like my beverages sweetened. Can’t stand unsweetened coffee or tea. I use sweeteners and they don’t trigger cravings for other sweet things in me at all. I was a huge lover of baked goods – cakes, pies, doughnuts, etc. – but now can pass them up without a second thought (and often do in the office).

I tested my reaction to several sweeteners and they didn’t trigger any response, so I’m not concerned. If they might possibly be slowing my weight loss, so be it. I’ll get there eventually, because keto is my WOE for as long as I can foresee.

But that’s just me. :slight_smile: You do you.