My mother picked me up at the airport (I was visiting her at her home in the middle of G-d’s country Missoula, Montana). As she stood waiting at the gate, flashes of my grandmother poured over me. She reminded me so much of how my grandmother (her mother), use to wait at the airport for our visits to Charleston, South Carolina. Gosh, for good and bad, we really do turn into our mothers. I can honestly say this would be one of my greatest accomplishments. My mother is an awesome rock solid woman. Sure, she has her faults, hey, we all do. But it is her strength, courage, perseverance and determination that are among her qualities that I most admire. So, as I was having a “my mother could do no wrong” moment, she THREW ME UNDER THE BUS! Yes, she outed me. We were having dinner with friends and she told them all about my fake sugar habit and how I use “splenda”. I was speechless. I was embarrassed. Yes, well, even a nutritionist has her vices I humbly told everyone. But, you know what. She was right, and I knew it. A mother’s words of wisdom always prevail. I needed to quit the fake sugar ASAP!
Artificial sweeteners have been scrutinized intensely for decades. Critics of artificial sweeteners say that they cause a variety of health problems, including an increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Moreover, consuming artificial sweeteners is just as bad for you as sugar... and artificial sweeteners may even exacerbate the negative effects of sugar. Consuming sweet-tasting but noncaloric or reduced-calorie food and beverages interferes with learned responses and your natural ability to adjust to glucose and energy and create an internal equilibrium. Frequent consumption of high-intensity sweeteners may have counterintuitive effects that mess with your metabolism. In fact, people who regularly consume artificial sweeteners show altered activation patterns in the brain's pleasure centers in response to sweet taste, suggesting that these products may not satisfy the desire for sweets. Studies in mice and rats have shown that consumption of noncaloric sweeteners dampens their physiological responses to sweet taste and causes the animals to overindulge in calorie-rich, sweet-tasting food and so pack on extra pounds. It has been suggested that the use of artificial sweeteners may have a stimulating effect on appetite and, therefore, may play a role in weight gain and obesity.
I believe that reducing the desire for sweet tastes is difficult, but by no means impossible.That means adding less of every type of sweetener to what you eat, and, as often as possible, skipping heavy desserts in favor of fruit when you need a fix. So, after a few weeks, it won't take much sugar to make food taste good. You just need to develop the habit and stick to it. This is what I put my mind to and I did it!
Lucky am I to have such a wonderful mother and unbeknownst to her, she helped me to break my fake sugar habit. I am now a convert. At times I use organic honey to sweeten my foods or organic maple syrup or simply nothing at all instead of packets of splenda.
