Sweetener Smackdown

I have a confession to make…for all my healthy and clean eating, I still have one rather large challenge (ok several, but this is the one I happen to be working on righthisminute). Hello everyone, my name is Emily and I’m addicted to artificial sweeteners. Aak! Particularly to aspartame in the form of cheap date NatraTaste, but I also occasionally dabble in Splenda (the devil!), and once or twice in my life I’ve even delved into some Sweet n Low. Hideous.

I try to avoid Splenda as much as possible because it gives me serious tummy troubles, and we all know that the chemical compound in Sweet n Low is the only one actually proven to give ya cancer….but it’s that dang aspartame that keeps me tied down. I like to use it in a lot of stuff, namely this this and this (Hello, I'm also addicted to TEA!). But also this (cottage cheese with SINnnnnamon)and sometimes this and basically whatever else needs some suga (on my tongue, ya gotta give me, give me some, put it right there on my tongue). Sorry. I just love to sing to you.

Sigh. Anyway, I’ve been turning over this thought in my head for a while now, and I HATE how I work so hard to make my body the best it can be, in the goal of complete health, and yet I still put this sort of garbage in there. I believe it might go a long way in helping me to become a true intuitive eater and master my hunger/fullness cues a little better if I would quit ingesting chemicals that tell my body I’m receiving a sort of food that I’m actually not.

So without further adieu, I present to you my latest experimental challenge: The Sweetener Smackdown! Each week, I will be trying a new kind of all natural sugar substitute in hopes of prying the cold white hand of the NatraTaste goblin off of my tea mug.

The first contender: Well, here's the verdict so far. I can't really taste it! I'm exercising a great show of self restraint not to squeeze the whole bottle in. After all, the point of a sugar substitute for me is to sweeten with less than would be required of sugar. I also tried it in some cottage cheese, but it was very difficult to detect in that as well. Interestingly enough, after a few frustrating days of sampling the agave in my tea, I gave in and dumped a packet of the blue stuff in. Holy cow was that SWEET! Soooo...I think I possibly could be retraining my taste buds, but only time will tell.

That's all for now until the next installment of Sweetener Smackdown. Hope your Monday is going well and turns out sweeter than any chemically formulated non-nutritive sweetener. xoxo