Sweetness

With the removal of Splenda/sucralose from our home, a void has been created in the sweetener category. The search for a safe sweetener continues…

When we switched to Splenda in late 2003, I gave away all of my refined sugar. Now, in early 2008, we are ruling out Splenda and any artificial sweeteners (sucralose, aspartame, saccharin). I don’t want to go backwards and start using refined, table sugar again, so the movement has to be forward which means more research.

After some quick research to verify what I found out a little while ago… We are back to using Stevia that we had sort of switched to for a time a little while back, but ended up drifting away from due to cost. However, now I have found that it is a little cheaper than is used to be but is still one of the more costly sweeteners. Really though, what is cost when it comes to your health… pay for it now or pay for it later, right? So, to sweeten tea and when using sweetener in small amounts, we are using Stevia which is a sweet herb that comes in small packets like many other sweeteners. I have so far found Stevia at Giant, Vitamin Shoppe, and GNC.

Then after more extensive research, I found that Black Strap Molasses are not only high in Potassium but are are excellent sweetener. So, this past week, I bought Organic Black Strap Molasses and natural Brown Sugar Molasses that unfortunately only work in certain recipes. Both of these sweeteners have a certain flavor to them that doesn’t go very well with many basic recipes. So, I am back out on the search.

I recently (as in earlier this evening) find out some good information about brown rice syrup. I will look into it a little more, but it looks like the best bet for now when needing to use a sweetener on a larger scale. It is gluten free and a complex sugar (doesn’t spike your blood sugar like simple sugars) – those are pluses – so if I can be organic as an added plus and find it somewhere where I live, then I will get to try it out and see how it goes.

Who knew trying to sweeten foods in a non-harmful way to your body would be so difficult…