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Artificial sweeteners

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This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
H

helli

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
My approach to managing diabetes has been different to many on the forum. As I have Type 1, I consider insulin as my tool to manage my chosen lifestyle which is lots of exercise and mostly unprocessed food.
The latter means cooking from scratch including baking. I have always avoided artificial sweeteners unless I need a caffeine kick when I drink Diet Coke which happens three or four times a year.
I don’t have a thing against artificial sweeteners apart from a feeling to avoid processed food. So I was interested when i saw an article on my news feed asking if they were as harmless as we thought.
It draws no conclusions but still interesting https://www.theguardian.com/lifeand...sugar-free-are-they-as-harmless-as-we-thought
 
I have long wished that the Sugar guidance for manufacturers was to reduce sweetness along with reducing sugar, in the same way as they gradually reduced salt when they were required to back 20 years or so ago, until we just got used to less salty food. Even if they continued to make "diet" versions, if they gradually reduced the sweetness of all versions then everyone would get used to it.

I was interested to note the comment in that article about no official guidance on sweeteners for young children - I don't know exactly when it was dropped but, again going back 20 years, the routine advice was to avoid sweeteners in food for children under 3. (There was already starting to be a push to prescribe sugar free medicines for children though.) I always tried to give my children limited sugar rather than sweeteners when they were younger. Now they are teenagers one prefers to avoid sweeteners in drinks due to the effect on bowels (a major reason why I still mostly avoid them too) but my other child will have them more readily. They both probably have too much sugar now, in common with most teenagers who spend some of their pocket money on snacks and fizzy drinks!

My sister gets on with them even less well than me, having allergic reactions to several, ranging from vomiting to rashes to asthma attacks.
 
Status
This thread is now closed. Please contact Anna DUK, Ieva DUK or everydayupsanddowns if you would like it re-opened.
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