Latest Moan From You and Me 2024

Sugar makes people turn into beanbags which causes long term problems for the health service with many visits to doctors, hospitals, dentists, pharmacies etc.

Artificial sweeteners just give you a very nasty dose of something or other, so far as I know.

 

A few wealthy people gained hugely. You can't lump everybody in any group, be it rich, getting by or skint under a single banner.

 

What would you class Stevia as then?

 

I don’t pretend to know anything about Stevia other than it’s plant based. I don’t buy artificial sweeteners, I don’t buy more than a kilo of sugar every six months and I try to avoid products that contain sugar and sweeteners. I have been the same weight since I left home at 18. I’m now well past retirement age. I like sweet stuff, I just don’t let it take over my life.

PS Just looked up stevia on an American medical website:

“Using stevia as a sugar substitute can reduce calories in foods and drinks, but it may also have some adverse effects. Possible side effects include nausea, bloating, low blood pressure, and hormone disruption.”

More here:

Stevia side effects: What you need to know



No thanks.

 

I have a type 1 diabetic friend in the patchwork club so I now make cakes with stevia, a plant derived sweetener with no effect on insulin.

Sugar addiction rots every organ in the body and causes obesity as well as diabetes . Combine that with an addiction to trans fats, cheap, overprocessed carbohydrates and meats and you get an epidemic of obesity causing huge costs to personal health, family life and the health system.

 

Artificial sweeteners may alter gut flora, which could be driving obesity. They also may lead people to eat more sweet food, and therefore accompanying calories. They encourage a sweet tooth, rather than portion control. They only occur in highly processed foods, whereas sugar can be used in home baking, avoiding all the additives and preservatives. They are not a free pass, especially when guzzled in copious amounts in soft drinks.

Obesity really kicked off from the 80s, which is when artificial sweeteners started to appear widely in food. That does not prove causation, but it should give pause for thought. People had eaten sugar for centuries prior to this, with obesity being rare.

I would say a diet with sugar in moderate portions is better than one with even a tiny amount of artificial sweetener. The food industry loves artificial sweeteners. That's why they get pushed on consumers.

No one need agree with me, but I have reached my opinion based on a lot of reading over 4 decades. It is a subject I am quite interested in for personal reasons. (And, no, I'm not an heiress to Tate and Lyle, or linked to the sugar industry in any way. )

 

Fair point! A selection of billionaires gained hugely.

 

Sugar like fat does you no harm if eaten in sensible quantities IMO.

We get all this rubbish jammed down out throats about all this is bad that is bad, I dont believe any of it, its the quantities that people eat that makes them appear bad.

If you ate a lot of any really so called healthy stuff I,m sure after a few years it would have an affect on you.
A diet of apples would probably kill you if to ate enough of them.

 

As I understand it, Stevia is a naturally occurring "sugar". I am not aware of much research into its benefits or drawbacks.

One problem with scientific research into food is that most is funded by Big Food, so any results that don't favour their bottom line is unlikely to get published. And now Big Food and Big Pharma have effectively joined forces - make people fat and then medicate them to lose weight - lack of revealing research is no surprise.

 

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Not if you keep active! I have a sweet tooth and probably eat an extra 500 calories a day just in sugary desserts and snacks. I eat Christmas cake a few times a week on top of that. I am probably about 5 lbs over my ideal weight but I am still midrange on the Body Mass Index scale.

Keeping active offsets all that extra, "unhealthy" intake.

I don't take any meds and have good blood pressure and no sugar/diabetes issues. Yes, some people cannot get away with excess sugar intake and develop Type 2 but I only know one person with Type 2 and they aren't a sugar addict.

The only people who turn into "bean bags" are those that don't get off their rump!

And as far as artificial sweeteners. I have some of each kind for adding to hot drinks. I don't use them but sometimes a visitor might prefer them so I have them on hand to accommodate the occasional time someone visiting, would like one.

That said, I've got leftover treats from Hallowe'en. And I'm going to eat them!

 

Re. sugar and fat, for myself I'd rather have a modest amount of the real thing than any quantity of substitutes, mostly because I prefer the taste but also because I think the substitutes aren't great for health. I do have a sweet tooth but not for drinks, so no sugar in tea or fizzy pop/soft drinks in any case, but I do like a biscuit, cake or piece of chocolate now and then. I'm now just within the top end of the healthy weight range so I could stand to lose another 10kg or so (22lb), but I'm doing it slowly without depriving myself. For me that's proving to be sustainable in the long term. Likewise I'd rather have real butter in modest amounts than margarine/spreads which (to me) taste vile and spoil whatever else I'm eating them with.

@CanadianLori , I'm curious, what is Canadian chocolate like? I only once tried the American stuff (a work visitor brought it over for "a treat") and I didn't like it at all - to me it had a kind of sour/off milk taste (slightly reminiscent of vomit, if I'm honest). I think it would be easy to give up chocolate if I lived there!

 

@ViewAhead the link I gave above takes you to an organisation called Medical News Today, which doesn’t have much good to say about stevia:

Stevia side effects: What you need to know

 

@JennyJB, Bill Bryson agrees with you re US chocolate. In Notes From A Small Island, he describes the first time he tasted chocolate here ... and could not believe how fab it was compared to the stuff on sale at home.

 

The Chancellor of the Exchequer has apparently told companies who are complaining about the NI increase that they will just have to give employees a smaller payrise. This suggestion of course only appears after the Government gave in to rail unions and the medical profession with massive payrises. It's these rises that many independent experts are actually blaming for the majority of the supposed £20 billion black hole.

 

There's a selection of American 'chocolate' in our local supermarket. I've never seen anyone buy it.
I think it's the kind of thing you might buy once and warn all your mates.