What's worse for you occasionally: artificial sweetener or sugar?

(Cristy Lucke) #1

Anyone else listen to this episode of The Ketovangelist?

Fife makes a compelling case that all sweeteners cause insulin spikes because they taste sweet and we should avoid them all.

I love the idea of everyone losing their cravings for all things sweet and never needing sweeteners. I’m sure most of us keto folks are enjoying freedom from past destructive sweet tooths. Escaping sweet cravings is so empowering!

However, let’s say you have an event coming up and you want to celebrate with non-keto family. Are you better off eating sugar and enduring the rare blood sugar AND insulin spike, or is it better to bring your own keto dessert with artificial sweeteners and therefore only endure an insulin spike?

(Of course, I’m talking about very occasionally and not people knocking back keto desserts frequently. I think everyone would 100% agree that’s terrible for everyone.)

So what do you think? For occasional treats are artificial sugars still better than regular sugar for most people because you’re cutting out the blood sugar spike even if you haven’t eliminated the insulin spike?

Thanks!

(Siobhan) #2

Erythritol has been proven in clinical trials to not cause insulin spikes or glucose spikes. I am not sold on the “sweet taste = insulin spike” thing as I have yet to see a study to support it, although I havent looked particularly hard yet either.

That said for some people it can cause cravings and lead to a binge.
HOWEVER if thay does not happen I would choose artificial/alternative sweeteners any day as they cause me no demonstratable harm thus far.

I would not begrudge anyone who chose to avoid them no matter the reason though.
It is very much on the individual experience.

Also, if artificial/alternative sweetener makes you feel as bad as sugar, the honest answer is both are just as bad.

(Cristy Lucke) #3

I was secretly hoping someone would share some science disproving the “sweet taste always equals insulin spike” theory. HEE!

(Doug) #4

Something merely tasting sweet does not demonstrably raise insulin levels for everybody. It’s a somewhat hazy area, lacking in enough good, broad studies - there are arguments back and forth, and some conflicting results in the studies that have been done to this point. Sweeteners aren’t all the same, too, which leads to confusion. My opinion - the individual is best served by testing themselves, if the usage of a given sweetener is desired. However, insulin testing isn’t always readily available or cheap.

As to artificial sweeteners versus sugar, unless one really reacts badly to a given sweetener (which does happen for some people), then hard for me to see how sugar isn’t going to be worse, overall.

#5

You might want to check out the discussion in these threads too:

As to the original question, I can’t think of a reason to intentionally consume added sugar if you are trying to be ketogenic, unless maybe you are an athlete and running an ultramarathon or similar.