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Comment by JustSomeNobody | Hacker News Reader

Well, this sucks. I use this in my coffee and a smidge on my oatmeal.

Is there an artificial sweetener left that doesn't cause issues? Splenda was associated with CVD so that's why I switched.

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Abstinence.

Hear me out.

I have never had such sweet bread as I had after being on Keto for a year. As in actual Ketosis, doctor verified.

When I started eating "normal" again, lots of things tasted way sweeter than I remembered. But like saltiness and other things you get used to it.

You can also force the contrast by having something bitter, like unsweetened black coffee, before something not normally considers sweet, like bread.

I can attest to this. You don’t even have to avoid all carbs. Just cut out sweet sugary stuff and things will start tasting sweeter. It works with salt too.

I cut down on salt and eating out now kind of sucks, everything tastes like a salt stick.

It is either that or stuff is loaded with butter. I can't think of a single restaurant that I've been to in the last two years that I crave going to again. I keep thinking it is the area I live in or the places I've been, but at the end of the day, I think I'm just spoiled by cooking at home.

I can't eat out. We've learned to cook at home a lot of our favorite foods and they taste so much better at home now. Not in any way saying we're chefs, but just the over salting and too much butter that restaurants use is not good.

You're right. The reason I switched to using artificial is because I'm borderline hypoglycemic so I have abstained at periods in my life and yeah it's better. But then you really just want something sweet and down you go.

If it's not too many cups of coffee each day, and just a smidge on your oatmeal, then could you use regular sugar?

A decent demerara, not that it's better for you, just that it's gorgeous ...

I've honestly never tried demerara. That's an idea. Thanks.

Billington's is the one I always look out for ...

Back when I still used sugar I found Xylitol pretty neat. It has about 1/2 of the calories of normal sugar but mostly tastes the same (I actually prefer it to 'real' sugar by taste). There are some claims about health benefits but I remain skeptical about them.

All in all, I decided pretty early on that eating stuff that tastes extremely sweet but does not cause the associated glucose spike is a weird way of fooling one's body, and it just doesn't seem like a great idea to me...

Reducing sugar/overly sweet stuff intake has this nice by-effect that everything else starts tasting much, much more intense. I'm very much into savory stuff nowadays, and when I sometimes let someone trick me into trying something sweet, I usually regret it - purely based on the disappointing taste.

There should be no question about xylitol being beneficial for dental health. (Not just less harmful than sugar, but actively beneficial.)

When I looked at the studies for these claims, they seemed to be of rather low quality.

Xylitol gives me diarrhea and gas. I found out the first time when I took some candy with it before a long flight!

My encounter was a xylitol-sweetened triple ice cream cone. Massive amounts of the stuff in the gut. Wasn't before a flight, at least.

Xylitol will kill my dogs.

Allulose? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psicose

The holy grail of sweetners is left handed sugar. Basically a regular glucose molecule but flipped. Tastes identical to sugar but cannot be metabolized.

The catch is that no one has found a way to synthesize it cheaply.

I don't know. Trans-fat turned out to be super bad. I'm leery of trans-sugar.

Something tells me there is no free lunch here as well.

It seems everything that gratifies the tongue is bad in some way.

Wikipedia says "L-Glucose was also found to be a laxative..."

I assume you make oatmeal with water, right? Try to make it with milk (2% is fine) instead of water. Probably not the healthiest alternative but I think better than sugar or sweetener.

My SO does it this way. They prefer it. But, yes, I always use water. I suppose I'll try it with milk.

Why artificial? Stevia is fine. Get the kind with the tiny spoon, like at Trader Joe’s. Not the kind bulked up with ery powder.

Aspartame?

No! Aspartame is known to cause serious issues for decades now, even before it was finally approved by the FDA.

Oh? Who is that 'known' by? Certainly not any of the over 100 regulatory agencies around the world who have made aspartame one of the most studied compounds on earth. Unless you have PKU or migraines there is literally no widely accepted science that says otherwise.

Aspartame is linked to an 18% increase in stroke:

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/sugar-substitute...

According to Betteridge's Law of Headlines - "Sugar substitutes: New cardiovascular concerns?" means we can assume the answer is "No".

“Now, a large study has found a potential link between artificial sweeteners and an increased risk of strokes, heart attacks, and related cardiovascular problems (see "Fake sugars and heart health").”

There's plenty of issues with the 'widely accepted' aspartame safety. There's indeed a lot of research that says aspartame is safe, but not as many if you exclude those that are not financed directly or indirectly by the industry. I will not even get into the circumstances around the Bressler report and the fact that it took a change of FDA leadership to get it approved.

There's a good list here: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/event/documen...

Isn't this a many times debunked myth that just keep coming back?

I feel like this is a fallacy. For most of us, the choice isn't between artificial sweeteners and never consuming anything sweet ever, it's between artificial sweeteners and sugar.

Given the glut of well-documented harmful effects of sugar, I'll take the "kinda sorta maybe" of aspartame any day, because I'm not about to give up every pleasure in life just because they all seem to kill me.

> just because they all seem to kill me

Thing is, if by 'they' you mean processed foods, you are basically right.

A little bit of sugar that you add to a coffee or whatever won't kill you. The problem is that just about all the processed food available has been spiked with sugar.

A little bit of a thing that has documented harmful effects won't kill me, but a little bit that we studied a ton and still aren't sure if it's harmful will? Why?

Instead of a sweetener maybe try a sprinkle of cinnamon in your oats.

That's a great idea.

Ugh. Splenda has been my go to sweetener for 15 years now.

Saccharin, aka good old fashioned Sweet n Low.

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