Clean eating and artificial sweeteners seem about as compatible as a vegetarian at an one of my husband’s barbecues. Lena and I have debated about Splenda, Sweet’N Low, Truvia, Stevia, Agave, Honey, and plain sugar until we have turned blue in the face. In the end, I had been comfortable with my decision to use Splenda. Lena That came to a halt last week after a visit to my neurologist.
I’ve been blessed with relatively good health, praise the Lord. My eyesight is pretty bad and I get migraines, and the two issues may or may not be related. I’ve seen a neurologist, Dr. Scott Lynn, for the past 12 years. We have tried several prophylactic regimens, alternating between a low dose antidepressant and topiramate therapy. As my interest in wanting to get off of medications and lead a more natural lifestyle has increased, we have most recently discussed doing a more in-depth headache diary focusing on targeted food elimination. Some of my early migraines were linked to OCPs and during that time period I went through a thorough analysis of red wine, cheese, and processed meats and how they affect my migraine patterns, I am pretty sure that they don’t affect me and that there is a cyclical relationship between hormones and my migraines that I can’t control, only anticipate. After talking to Dr. Lynn, there are only a couple of things we haven’t really explored. Processed meats won’t be too hard to stop. Cured ham and bacon might be the hardest, but I don’t eat that much of either one.
As I found out this weekend, giving up artificial sweeteners is a little harder than I thought.
I have a love/hate relationship with the things since childhood. Granny Lucille made her “sweet” tea with Sweet’N Low. I seriously believe that stuff could’ve been used as embalming fluid, or maybe to remove love bugs from cars. It tasted the way I would imagine crushed up, dissolved moth ball water solution would taste. It was downright terrible. That’s why when I see my parents use the stuff, I cringe. My father recently commented on the horrible aftertaste of the stuff, to which I responded, “Why do you even use it when there are other options?” My father responded that he didn’t even know about the other, newer (other than Splenda) options until a recent trip to O’Charleys last week. He tried one, liked it, took the packet home, lost it…..anyway. I have my research cut out for me, but I digress. Point is, I cringe watching my parents control their caloric intake with that nastiness and not with other techniques, like say, simply cutting calories in general.
My Mom and I have fought a losing battle for years with my father over his soda consumption. To be fair, I have consumed my fair share of non-diet soda in my lifetime, but it is not an option now. I allowed my son to have Sprite in the past. I am not banning it now because I know he will be at birthday parties and such, especially in Mexico or with someone other than myself, where soda is the only option. However, I will not let him have it if water or milk is available. At home, water and milk are the only two things he and I drink. I will drink unsweet iced tea if we are out. Mom drinks diet drinks. My father, however, has a +20 year coke a day habit that isn’t going to be broken soon. He usually washes down that soda with a pack of nabs. Sometimes he has more than one of those sodas/nabs per day. This worries me, but there isn’t a lot I can do about it. We have talked about this. But after our last discussion, I came to a very sobering conclusion. My father has made a decision. He will not give up the calories in his snack crackers or full flavor sodas and if faced with a condition such as diabetes, he would make other adjustments in his diet in order to try to accommodate these indulgences because he derives pleasure from them. I, on the other hand, would rather derive pleasure from overall more long-term health benefits, so I am going to eliminate soda from my diet in general. Hey, I did this twice when I was pregnant, doing what I believe that God intended for us to do. I consumed water.
I do enjoy coffee and tea, though, so I am going to adjust my overall caloric intake to allow for full flavor sweetener in the form of honey. I enjoy making one minute flaxseed muffins sweetened with stevia. I am going to *try* to replace the stevia with natural fruit alternatives such as applesauce, blueberries, and raspberries. Hopefully I can retrain my taster to recognize the sweetness of good, natural stuff as opposed to nasty artificial stuff.
By the way, if you are interested in Lena’s expert opinion on what sweeteners are acceptable to use, she recommends Stevia or erythritol. Truvia or Nectresse are acceptable. If neither are available, Splenda is acceptable. 
Expat Mexico 