As sweet as sugar..

A while back, the Mr found out he had diabetes, I had no idea what this was or how it happened or even how to deal with it. After reading endless amount of library books and online articles, we came across something called the glycemic index. Something which I’d never heard of before and something which I think we should all know about. Even for people who don’t have diabetes it could help you lose weight or just control the amount of sugar you have every day. The different types of sugar which we don’t even know about are amazing, I didn’t realise how much of it gets into our foods and the effect it has on our bodies. Obviously, we all know too many cream cakes make you gain weight but it’s hidden in everything and it’s not just the sugar we have in our tea that causes problems. It’s the sugar in carbohydrates and fruit. After reading and learning about this I gave up the energy drinks and the lucozade and I limit the amount of bread I have each day and the have cut down my fizzy drink intake right down. I have already lost a stone, that’s without exercise!

 So what actually is the glycemic index?

Well, it’s also known as GI and it provides a measure of how quickly blood sugar levels rise after eating a particular type of food. There is actually a database online which has taken some everyday foods that we eat and measured the GI value and puts them into a high, medium or low category. It is something which I need to look at again to be honest, it’s so easy to fall off the waggon but with something as serious as diabetes, it’s not worth the risk!!

So, here I am talking about how bad sugar is blah blah blah but now we talk sweetners... Well, I’ve never been a dieter but now I’ve cut down on sugar I’ve had to find a replacement. So I went out and bought some sweetner to add to our tea and coffee and some NAS drinks. A few weeks back I was searching the interweb for the best sugar substitute to use in baking and came across lots of nasty information about sweetners and I was actually surprised at how misleading some of adverts are for one sweetner in particular; Truvia.

Now, we’ve all see the adverts about it being a natural alternative with no calories but what is the catch? 

"Truvia is a stevia-based sugar substitute developed jointly by The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill."

It says it all really. Developed by Coca-Cola! How much sugar does coke have in it again? It clearly states stevia-BASED too which means there are added nasties in there that play havoc with your insides! It is merely an extract with added chemicals which can cause so many side effects just like all the other sweetners out there! I was so relieved when I saw the advert and thought we’d found something different and not so lethal like aspartame and sucralose but it’s just as bad. These sweetners were never actually tested on humans until they were sold and several tests carried out on rats caused severe side effects! So now I don’t know what to use.

Holland and barrett actually sell Stevia in the powder form though, so if you are worried about chemicals and such like then take a look.. It’s not too expensive either and I’d definitely trust it more than what is sold in our supermarkets these days.

Sorry for boring you with an overload of information but I needed to tell someone and well, you have to listen don’t you? Have a Google about sweetners and their side effects.. you'll be amazed! Some of the things listed may actually help you feel healthy again!

Here's a link to Stevia and where you can buy it from;
Holland and Barrett

Thought of the day; Don’t trust advertising…