sweeteners

Question
hi Arlene , i磎 on the atkins diet , can i have diet coke on it , how much carbs do aspartame has? , and can i have splenda?? ,
thanks a lot
luis

Answer
Hello, Luis,
And congratulations on starting a diet!  Atkins has been good for me, and I hope it will work for you, too.

The short answer is "Yes, if it is important to you", you can have diet coke while low-carbing -  but only in moderation.  Perhaps four cans a week, maybe more if it is decaffeinated.  You are supposed to give up caffeine (which I admit I was never able to do).  I know this will tee off the purists reading my answer, but I am pragmatic.  I have friends who would die before giving up their cokes.  If you are one of these people, then have your goal be to drink the minimum you need to drink.  Better to do this and go on Atkins then have your pepsi or coke be the deal breaker and not diet at all.   

Aspartame has no carbs, but there are several good reasons to avoid aspartame as your major sweetener.  (I won't go into the biology here, unless you ask specifically.)  The major bulk sweeteners, ie. cheap enough to be in tonics, are saccharine, aspartame (Nutrasweet) and sucrolose (Splenda).  Each has good and bad, but I personally place aspartame in last place.  Splenda is getting easier and easier to find in products.  But, we won't hear the bad stuff about Splenda till the next company invents a new bulk sweetener.  Saccharine, which is incredibly sweet, got a bad rap over cancer-causing, which turned out to be bogus.  But that was enough to push it out of first-place in stores.  In the end, try to limit these artificial sweeteners as much as possible, be aware of their presence in *all* the products you are eating so you can get a true idea of how much of each you are eating, and mix and match the kinds.  Why be an experiment by eating lots of one kind of artificial sweetener?

Splenda is so convenient, and very low carb, but still use it sparingly, for the reasons above.  If you are adding it to coffee, I suggest trying stevia.  It is a natural sweetener that comes in a little tube as a liquid.  It does have a licorice after-taste that you either love or hate.  But it is worth trying if you are big on sweetened coffee.  Also try adding cinnamon (recently found to have good effects on blood glucose) or other spices to be able to cut down on your use of sweeteners.  

Luis, best of luck with your diet.  Keep track of your progress.  Some people really cannot lose weight using aspartame or splenda, or have other unpleasant effects.  So, stay alert.  Any way, over time you will naturally move away from needing super-sweet things and then will find yourself using less and less of Nutrasweet and Splenda-sweetened bulk foods.  At that point, a slice of apple, a perfect piece of chocolate (I like erythritol-sweetened), a single prune, or a piece of semi-sweet cheese will fill your sweet tooth.  And then you won't have to worry about aspartame vs Splenda.

Wishing you success, Arlene  

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