How sweet it is ...

By Judy Davie

In nature, nothing sweet is poisonous, which might explain our inherent love of all things sweet. The problem is that sugar, or rather too much sugar, can lead to weight gain, tooth decay, and can endanger the health of people with diabetes.

If you like it sweet, there are many more options than just sugar — a whole range of natural and artificial sweeteners are available to satisfy the sweet tooth. But what’s best?

Nutritionally, sugar provides little more than calories so it’s understandable that many people are tempted to use one of the low joule sugar-free alternative sweeteners. Many nutritionists believe that because there is no conclusive evidence that any of these sweeteners are harmful to the health, it’s okay to use them. But my personal opinion is that the health risk is too great. How devastating would it be to discover after years of feeding a sweet tooth that the substance we’ve fed it on has had some adverse affect on our health? As well, when the sweetener is so much sweeter than sugar itself, it only furthers our dependency on the need for a sweet fix.

The long-term solution is ideally to work hard at weaning yourself off an addiction to sugar or at the very least to cut down your sugar intake. Compromise, cut out sugar in most things and enjoy the occasional sweet treat every now and again. If you take sugar in tea or coffee, cut it out altogether or cut down on the total amount of tea or coffee you drink. Either way you’ll benefit.