Replacing sugar in food and drink with sweeteners.

It’s all very well reducing the sugar in drinks, but my partner is a diabetic and regularly drinks Lucozade to bring his blood sugars up to normal. He has a very physical job and they can drop quite low.

However, since the reduction of sugar in the above drink he finds that one bottle alone doesn’t do it for him and has to drink two.

It’s just another ploy by the government to rake in more money.
And replacing with artificial sweeteners. Ugh!, horrid.

I buy 2 litre water for 17p simply for the fizz. In my original attempts at weight loss, tried plain tap water which tasted fine but just didn't 'do it' for me. Accidentally had some of dining companion's fizz and, bingo. Never looked back and absolutely dissuaded me from my lifetime addiction to regular lucozade. I also use stevia and, although it is more expensive than cane sugar, I use so little that I feel financial comparisons may be somewhat odious. I speak as someone who has been fortunate to have had (is having) successful and prolonged weight loss. Only took me many years and a little common sense to savvy!!! I say this from a viewpoint of sheer relief and gratitude. There's no merit in having been an eating idiot for sixty years.

I think that more and more sugar has been added to food over the years. I recently made pancakes with my grandson using a 1970s Bero Book. I was astonished when we ate them to discover they didn’t taste at all like the supermarket pancakes. They tasted bland. Not nearly as much sugar. I can remember making the same pancakes from the same book when in the 70s and thinking they were lovely then. The manufacturers have a lot to answer for.

I tend to look for drinks sweetened with sucralose. I don't like the taste of tap water and usually buy the sparkling flavoured water. Avoid anything with aspartame, it's evil stuff.

MOnica Aspartame is a no go area for me as I too suffer the stomach cramps if I take anything that contains this. Liquid antibiotics that are prescribed for children contain aspartame to make it palatable so if any mums have experienced this with their young ones they will know why.

The 'health risks' of aspartame have been exaggerated - probably propagated by the sugar industry. The NHS website cites reliable examples of research which found aspartame did not increase the risk of leukaemia, lymphoma or brain cancer. It is unsafe only for those with phenylketonuria, a rare genetic disorder. Remember the heel-prick tests for newborn babies which detected that?
So there is absolutely no cause for panic. If you want to replace sugar, aspartame does you no harm and indeed is less harmful to health than sugar!

Martha I don't drink alcohol either.if out I ask for a jug of water for the table. It avoids the choice of still or sparkling at ridiculous price / feeling cheap by asking for tap.

I don't have at all a sweet tooth and never drink soft drinks - water, wine or beer for me! But I agree with the OP; sweeteners contain all sorts of bad and you are probably better off with a bit of sugar.

My OH also can't stand artificial sweeteners. His taste buds detect them all, even stevia leaves a liquorice-type taste apparently. We have been investigating the range of soft drinks still available without sweeteners. As well as Appletise and the Fever Tree and Fentimans ranges, Purdeys Rejuvenate is going down well (not cheap though).

I am diabetic so try to limit sugar and mostly drink plain tap water. However I struggle to swallow medication with plain water, so I have fruit juice at breakfast time diluted with tap water. I've got so used to drinking drinks diluted that I no longer enjoy them neat. Many people don't realise how much sugar is in fruit juices. I've seen teenagers in school drinking fruit juices straight from 1 litre cartons and they finish the whole carton in the day. And don't get me started on 'energy drinks' which they seem to think they need! I only realised recently that the sudden increase in cost of one of my favourite juices is the government's new sugar tax. The brand has different flavours of juice and while they were previously all the same price, they now vary as the fruit presumably has different sugar levels. It would seem that pear has less sugar than peach!

The Italian firm San Pellegrino makes lemonade and two types of orangeade and none of them are over-sweetened, but I have never checked whether they contain sugar or artificial sweeteners, but judging by the taste it is sugar that is in them.

I don't like the taste of artificial sweeteners in soft drinks. In hot weather I do like a drop of squash or something in my water (often fizzy water), and used to look for the High Juice drinks, which didn't have sweeteners, but now almost all the regular squashes have replaced sugar with sweetners. So far, Roses Lime Juice is still sweetener-free, as are some of the more expensive cordials such as elderflower etc. A good quality cordial will still taste good even when it's very dilute, so I don't actually consume much sugar this way.

We recently noticed our usual tonic water had a sickly sweetness to it. It's spoiling the gin! I don't know if they've changed the recipe, but something has changed.

Agree - I have had low carb 'chocolate biscuits' from Atkins (2 mg carbs each) and these things taste so sweet that I've gone off them and all sugary sweets too. Why isn't there more publicity about aspartame I wonder - we all know it's dangerous but it keeps turning up in slimming products in huge proportions.

Sugar is a terrible poison really
Causes all sorts of havoc
Insomnia is a biggy .. if you have that look at sugar and caffeine
Hormone upsets ... acne ... stomach problems ... but most are addicted ...including me ... I get so angry with myself as I know that when I stop eating sugar I sleep so well

I've never liked the aftertaste from artificial sweeteners. When I was young I drank gin and bitter lemon but hated it when given low calorie bitter lemon in error. I went off fizzy drinks years ago. Coke makes me feel ill generally. Carbonated drinks upset my stomach, even water. I don't like very sweet things either so the sugar tax only affects me if buying for the family.

another vote for stevia/not expensive over here.
artificial sweetners can cause all sorts of problems..
www.fitday.com/fitness-articles/nutrition/healthy-eating/top-number-most-dangerous-artificial-sweeteners.html

stevia can lower blood pressure so be aware if trying for first time.

Do you really think the men in suits sit around discussing the best way to get people to buy less of their product? For health reasons??? I wish!

Totally agree Gillybobs, I was looking for a bottle of lemonade today to go with my beer but everything seemed to have added aspartame in it which gives me stomach cramps

About 70+ years ago I remember drinking lemonade in the Summer which was bought as a powder and added to cold water - very refreshing at the time. I wonder what the additives were then! Does anyone remember this powder and can you still buy it?

charjoy, I think I used to indulge in the selfsame product and I think it was called Creamola foam.

I use stevia after watching a programme about it and how it's made using the leaves of the stevia plant. It's the only completely natural sweetener with nothing added and you only need a fraction of the amount that you'd need using sugar.

Coast35, I bought some pancakes from a supermarket last year, and they were so sweet, I really didn't enjoy them, even the lemon juice didn't really cut it.

There is no evidence of aspartame causing health problems as anno and a couple of others have pointed out, with the exception of phenylketonuria which is a rare genetic condition.

Most of these scares have been circulated on the Internet and through unsocial media and are passed on and shared by the gullible.

We'd never eat or drink anything if we believed all the health scares...I avoid artificial sweeteners because of my personal reaction and would love to have a choice of affordable alternatives.
Brands are losing customers by changing recipes.