Hi I am new to this. My son was diagnosed diabetes type 1 in feb 2012 aged 13 I am just coming to terms with this. His levels are pretty good overall. However I have always been into healthy eating but when he was diagnosed I was told to give him low sugar drinks desserts and they all contain sweeteners which really worries me for his long term health. He doesn't like drinking just water and has fresh orange juice for breakfast. Could anyone recommend drinks that don't have sweeteners - many thanks
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Help re sweeteners
- Thread starter Jeanie
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Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Hi Jeanie, welcome to the forum 🙂 Sorry to hear about your son's diagnosis. I'm a tea and water person myself, so I'm afraid I can't really help with alternatives. I did buy some cranberry 'light' juice the other week and that was OK, with 3.5g carbs per 100ml. Unfortunately, fresh orange juice is not a good option when you have diabetes as it will hit your blood sugars almost instantly - really, it tends to be drunk just as a hypo treatment as it is difficult to time an injection to cope with it. Perhaps if drunk as part of a meal where the other components of the meal may lower the glycaemic load it would be OK, but I personally just stopped buying it when diagnosed 
Hopefully, someone else will have some suggestions for you soon 🙂
Hopefully, someone else will have some suggestions for you soon 🙂
robert@fm
Much missed member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 2
My advice is not to worry about sweeteners; I know there are a lot of horror stories out there, but they're all on crackpot websites or on the sites of those who have been misled by the cranks. The advice given by medically-competent websites (including Diabetes UK) is that artificial sweeteners are safe (indeed, far safer than sugar) if used sensibly; no artifiicial sweetener has ever been shown to be harmful at ordinary dose levels, or even at levels 10 or 100 times what would normally be used (not even the cyclamates, which is why the former ban on those was repealed).
The only experiments demonstrating harm from sweeteners were done at such absurd dose levels (equivalent to a human consuming kilograms of the stuff) as to render the exercise pointless and meaningless, for anything is toxic at a high enough dose level -- even water.
The only experiments demonstrating harm from sweeteners were done at such absurd dose levels (equivalent to a human consuming kilograms of the stuff) as to render the exercise pointless and meaningless, for anything is toxic at a high enough dose level -- even water.
trophywench
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Sat and worked out how much Diet Coke you would need to consume to get as much aspartame as poisons a lab mouse and bearing in mind we can presumably manage MANY times more, once it got in excess of 50,000 litres I stopped .....
Dory
Well-Known Member
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
Love this comment! so true!
honestly, don't worry about the sweeteners. far more dangerous things out there these days.
Good luck with your son. the next few years will be tough but just make sure you're up to speed with latest developments (don't rely on your local clinic or gp unless they're a good one!) and you can help him through it.
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