Sweeteners

Q)Can I have sweeteners/sugar substitutes?

A)My advice would be not to eat artificial sweeteners because this book is all about a) eating healthily and b) getting rid of cravings. Let us look at each of these two points:
a) I can’t see how artificial anything fits in with healthy eating. We don’t know enough about sweeteners yet to be sure that they are harmful, but we do know enough about them to know that they don’t do any good (because they have no nutrients – the same as sugar).

b) The second key thing is that we are trying to get rid of cravings and the most common cravings are for sweet foods, whether as a result of Candida, Food Intolerance, Hypoglycaemia, or all three. If you continue to feed your body artificially sweet things, you will continue to want artificially sweet things and the cravings won’t disappear.

What you can have, as an alternative to a sweetener, is something called FOS (Fructooligosaccharide). This is a non-digestible, soluble-fibre carbohydrate that supports the growth of good bacteria in our guts. It passes through our intestines and is cleverly used by lactobacilli and other friendly flora to aid their growth. You can buy it in health food shops and sprinkle it on porridge, or other cereal, if you really long for something sweet.

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Website Comments

    • avatar Zoë
      Reply

      Hi Jen,
      we now run a help forum for all personal dietary questions over at http://www.theharcombedietclub.com/forum
      You’ll need to register (it’s free) and then you can post any personal questions you may have. There’s a great support team to help you out
      We look forward to seeing you over there.

  1. avatar Mike
    Reply

    What about Agave Nectar (which doesn’t have much affect on glucose levels) and Stevia?

  2. avatar Zoë
    Reply

    Hi Kate – as you can probably tell from the above – I’m not a big fan of sweeteners – they just keep an unnaturally sweet tooth going! If you can’t get FOS you are much better off avoiding anything sweet – it will really help cravings subside.

    Erythritol Sweetener is a sugar alcohol that is created by a process that involves fermenting glucose but is used as sugar and to all intents and purposes may as well be sugar! It is reported to have a laxative effect – as stuff like sorbitol etc does. Best avoided therefore!
    Best wishes – Zoe

  3. avatar Kate
    Reply

    Hi Zoe,

    Just wonder about your thought of this sweetener called Erythritol.

    It is hard to find FOS in Hong Kong.

    Thanks.

    Kate

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