Good Morning Sweet Friends! Come on in! Grab a cuppa whatever and lets have a little sweet talk. We could talk about all the new lines of fabric soon to be released, or that must have new quilt pattern that is at the top of the bucket list, or the fancy new tool that will make our quilting journey absolutely painless. But no...today's blog post has ABSOLUTELY noting to do with quilting. Unless you are like me and a sweet cup of coffee fuels your day of quilting.
Sweet talk, just what exactly is sweet talk? It sounds so innocent and cutsie. But no, that would be baby talk, which I find absolutely annoying and a subject for another day. So lets look at the definition of sweet talk.
Well that isn't cute at all! And I would never sweet talk you into anything. But I do want to talk to you about the last few weeks of trying to find an alternative to sugar in my coffee. I drink coffee all day. Morning, noon and night, and sometimes the middle of the night. Yes it's an addiction but the coffee is not the problem. It's the sugar in the coffee. So over the last couple of months I've been trying to slowly remove this tasty additive from my coffee. Since hubby is a beekeeper I tried honey in my coffee and it was okay, I could learn to love the flavor. Honey is natural, it has healing properties, and we have an abundance of the liquid gold. But honey just like sugar isn't good for us in large quantities. So with a little word of mouth research I purchased Stevia in the Raw. I know some of you use this and others with great success but my sugar addicted taste buds want to know why I'm switching to powdered ear wax. YUK! This taste just as bad as the little pink packets of Sweet and Low my grannie used. Seriously if you can drink this bitter stuff, why even bother using it, just drink the bitter coffee without making it more bitter.
Then my girlfriend informs me that I just bought the wrong type of sweetener. The liquid form of any sweetener is better. She uses and suggested Splenda. Well why didn't anyone tell me this before? This is a great idea! The cute little bottle would be great to toss in my purse while traveling. I got to have it! Sold! to the gullible coffee junkie needing a sugar fix! That first swig was quickly rejected back into my coffee cup. Now I have ear wax in liquid form....great.
I'm now about 8 weeks into my journey of looking for a sweet alternative. I don't know why I didn't do more research instead of listen to people I know. Google will have the answer. I use it all the time. Hubby and I Google everything. We are information junkies. At least once a day we ask each other a question, neither of us have the answer so we Google it. A few days of hours of reading and I've found the perfect sugar alternative. Swerve is all the rage for many. It's claim to fame is it looks and behaves just like real sugar. So if it's to good to be true it usually is. UGG...dear me. As soon as I opened the package I knew I had been fooled again. The smell...EWW. It smells like a harsh chemical cleaner that would be used to clean greasy car parts. Against my better judgement the foul smelling powder was added to my cup of coffee. Well my friends, they named this product accurately. Swerve, to change direction abruptly. That's what you should do if you think about purchasing this product....dodge it...change directions....veer away...stay away. This is the worst sugar substitute. It's not even bitter, it just taste like a chemical. There's no doubt in my mind that if a person continues to drink it over a long period of time they would have some serious medical conditions.
I've exhausted my search and feel like I was sweet talked into buying these horrible alternatives. My new plan is moderation. Moderation of sugar and coffee. I'll not change the amount of sugar in my coffee but the amount of coffee in a day. Two cups in the morning, 1 cup in the afternoon and 1 cup in the evening. No more coffee in the middle of night. This is about half of what I was drinking. Once I get used to this I'll try to reduce it even more. The plan is to eventually have only 2 cups in the morning with REAL sugar. As I write this I'm wondering about growing sugar cane.....
Good luck with your resolve to cut back on your coffee. I hope you don't get headaches from the caffeine withdraw.
ReplyDeleteCute post, but honestly - who wants an alternative that yes, is just chemicals. The easier way is to just slowly cut back the sugar so your body and tastes accept the new.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to Stevia products, most of them do not even contain real Stevia leaf in them. There are good Stevia products and bad and I am not talking about the taste, but what they can do to your body. Sweet Leaf brand in the liquid form is one of the best brands and tastes better too. The powered forms of any brand have additional additives that can be harmful to you. While sugar and coffee are certainly not health foods, and neither is Stevia, by reducing both the amount of sugar and coffee you consume, you might eventually give it up or come to enjoy it with less or no sweetness at all. Good luck to you. Mr. P loves his coffee without any sweetness and he has quit drinking it altogether off an on since I have known him, so I know he cannot give it up forever. Me I never liked coffee....but dark chocolate that's another story.
ReplyDeleteAs your friendly neighborhood chemist who works for the NIH (not a joke), I'm of the opinion that all of the sugar substitutes are going to eventually be proven to cause cancer and that the best bet is to just cut down on the amount of sugar gradually. On a molecular basis, Splenda is technically the closest structurally to real sugar.
ReplyDeleteI use Truvia and have for years - I can't really tell the difference between any of them but do not like honey in my drinks it just taste weird to me.
ReplyDeleteHow about drinking your coffee black! You might be surprised on how good coffee tastes.
ReplyDeleteI, like you, appreciate real sugar! But I do use Splenda (the powder/grainule version in a yellow bag) and notice no weird tastes or anything. Might be worth a try?
ReplyDeletethe battle is real! I* drink mine black
ReplyDeleteI'm a tea drinker--chai latte, peppermint, chamomille-- any kind. But cold tea in Texas is SWEET tea. Real Sugar. :)
ReplyDeleteGood luck! I can't stand the taste of coffee.
ReplyDeleteI refuse to cut out natural products. And even now, they are getting less natural with farming procedures changing. But I say, better to use what our ancestors used than all the chemical subs from current days. Moderation is key in all things. Except fabric buying, there's no rules in fabric buying!!
ReplyDeleteI stopped drinking my coffee this year when I decided to stop my intake of sugar totally. For me coffee without cream and sugar just didn't get it. I went back to drinking hot tea in the morning with a spot of cream, no sugar. It can be done if you want to do it bad enough. I agree that the artificial sweeteners are nasty. Drinking smaller amounts of coffee with the real sugar is probably your best bet. Love your blog and have followed for years - first time post however.
ReplyDeleteOh how I feel for you. I have gone down the same route with the same results. You shouldn't get headaches if you cut down your coffee intake slowly. I am trying to do that myself. Good Luck.
ReplyDeleteI too have tried artificial sweeteners, never again. Sugar is natural, so why fight it! I have cut back on the amount I use, but there is nothing better than sweat, cream laden coffee!
ReplyDeleteThis post made me smile with your green yuk comments. Many years ago I has 3 teaspoons of sugar per mug of coffee. I slowly used less sugar and now sugar-free over 25 years. I'm down to 3 coffee a day, never drink any after 9pm and feel better for it. Good luck with your new plan of action :)
ReplyDeleteYou dodged a bullet. My friend in MD helped develop splenda (she's a chemist) and said she would never use it. Honey has the same calories, but maybe not the same metabolism issues but moderation is smart. I've tried agave syrup and it's not bad at all. It's processing that changes things.
ReplyDeleteI did give up sugar for a while. It was a good thing while it lasted, brought my baseline down a lot, fruit tasted sweet again, a little was enough, but not til I was off it for a few weeks. I think it's in so many of our prepared foods (like salad dressing, bread, etc) that we lose our sensitivity to it.
I now dislike it in coffee and tea, however I use milk in coffee, and drink tea pure.
Good luck! I'm a coffee junkie, too, but only in the a.m. I use Truvia; previously used Splenda which I like but hubby persuaded me to switch to Truvia. In both cases, I've found that less is better - only half a pack. A whole pack is too sweet to the point of unpleasantness.
ReplyDeleteI was able to get totally off sweeteners in my coffee. Just drink it with a splash of heavy cream and I'm good to go! If I ever use anything it is Sweet Leaf liquid stevia, but rarely use that any longer, except occasionally in my Bulletproof coffee. I've learned to drink it unsweetened and now don't care for sweetened coffee at all!
ReplyDeleteI'm with Alison (fellow chemist, but I don't work for NIH), artificial sweeteners are problematic. Besides the cancer concerns (agree with Alison there too), there have been studies that show using artificial sweeteners actually cause you more problems with insulin balance and thus weight problems then using sugar. As a fellow caffeine fiend who drinks it morning, noon and night, cutting back on the coffee is one way (expect a few headaches, literally, with that plan). The other option is to slowly back off on the sugar till you get used to less in your coffee. Good luck with whatever plan you adopt, making gradual changes is the best route to success no matter your path.
ReplyDeleteGreat choice! I'm learning that most of these "food substitutes" are just confusing our metabolisms. Keep your food as close to unprocessed as you can and your whole body will thank you for it (and run more efficiently)! :-)
ReplyDeleteTry coffee and/or tea without sugar. I just put in a bit of milk. I've always preferred coffee this way.
ReplyDeleteWhat I did is cut back on the sugar slowly in my iced tea. Now I can not even imagine sugar of any kind in my tea. Now my coffee must have cream and I am slowly cutting back on that too.
ReplyDeleteHugs
donna