Splenda - friend or foe?

[ValidRouge]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

Oh, and after talking to my mom...I found out that as a baby, every time she gave me real milk, I would throw up. The doctors put me on soy instead.

I don't have any type of "traditional" food allergy symptoms to lactose...but I stall and can bloat.

[julirama723]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

I've been discovering the same things that Joy has discovered. Oh lord, I had to have soy formula too as a baby. I will absolutely CRY my eyes out if I can't eat ANY dairy!

[woodym]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

Yes! Yes! ...

Ha ha ...

Was just kidding around a little ... but seriously, part of it does depend how much Splenda. The maltodextrin filler in the powder does amount to some 24 carbs per cup of Splenda ... it's just a hair under half a carb per teaspoonful, so they're allowed to round that off to zero. But it isn't zero, it's a half.

So if you're adding a couple of cups of Splenda powder to Koolaid or a cheesecake recipe, you're adding some 50 grams of carb. Splenda by the teaspoonful probably is no problem, but Splenda by the cup in recipes possibly is a problem.

Splenda in soft drinks is pure --- meaning no maltodextrin filler --- so there really are no carbs from Splenda in soft drinks or other foods that list Splenda or sucralose in the ingredients.

Personally, I use refined stevia powder. I get something like 100 grams of it for $20 and it lasts me for a year or two, so it ends up being a lot cheaper than Splenda too.

[ValidRouge]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

Woody, so the powdered stevia doesn't have the maltodextrin? Is the powder, then, some sort of fiber from the plant??

[woodym]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

Stevia is a plant whose leaves taste a lot like black licorice, anise, fennel. Dried, the leaves make an interesting tea but are not really useful as a general sweetener. They are able to refine from them "steviocides" which are sort of pure sugar-tasting molecules, and the resulting stuff can come as a white powder or a liquid.

Both steviocides and sucralose (Splenda) then are weird molecules that are, you know, 300 times sweeter than sugar. Companies sometimes add a "padding" agent to make it similar to sugar as a teaspoon-for-teaspoon rough equivalent. With stevia I have seen them do this using inulin which is a fibrous root product of some sort. With Splenda they chose to do this using maltodextrin, which is a light fluffy cotton-candy-like product but basically a sugar.

The refined stevia product I use is the 300x-as-sweet-as-sugar stuff, so for coffee I just shake a bit from the salt-shaker-like container to sweeten my coffee. For recipes I might use a fraction of a teaspoon, something like 1/4 teaspoon being sweet as a cup or two of sugar.

Splenda is available to industry as pure liquid, no carbs in the form of maltodextrin. I personally have purchased it in a "grey market" environment, meaning I got it from someone who got it as a food manufacturer, but it is not in general marketed pure to the public. We mere citizens can only buy Splenda that is padded with maltodextrin.

Politically, there are big bucks to push patented molecules like aspartame and sucralose/Splenda through FDA regulations by owners of the petents. Since stevia is a natural plant product no single corporation could corner the market on it, so it has never been able to get the financial push through FDA regs to be represented as a sweetener in the USA. That is why we must buy it as a "food supplement" from odd healthfood stores, and never see it on an ingredient list of a manufactured food. In Japan, for instance, soft drinks are usually sweetened with stevia (I have read)...

Hope this helps

[Hayden]

Re: Splenda - friend or foe?

In Japan, for instance, soft drinks are usually sweetened with stevia (I have read)...

I'm lost on this whole sweetener issue in Japan.

I have tried to buy Splenda, but never seen it in any shops. I asked a Japanese co-worker to find and buy me some, and she told me it was a banned substance in Japan.

However, Grovemonkey reported he bought some off EBay and imported into Japan. So, I'm at a loss still.

I have never ever seen any product reported sweetened with Splenda, or written in the ingredients.

Coke Zero, here is sweetened with Aspartame.

You are correct that Japan currently consumes more stevia than any other country. 40% of the sweetener used in Japan is Stevia.
It's not called Stevia though, in Japanese it's: アマハステビア (amaha sutebia)
Except, I've never seen it for sale in a normal supermarket.

Interestingly, Stevia is currently banned for use in food in the European Union. It is also banned in Singapore and Hong Kong.

Most of the time, I'm not 100% certain which sweetener has been used or not.