Bittersweet

First...I have had complete success staying away from McDonalds.  Given its only been one week, but since there is one on the corner of where I turn to go home at the end of the night...I chalk this one up as a complete success thus far!

Okay...on to the blog...

Do you know why diet drinks have fewer calories, or why some yogurt is light while others are not?  Its something to do with the low calorie sweeteners they put into them.  Aspartame, sucralose, and saccharin...all used to sweeten products while keeping the calorie count low.

I thought this was all good and a good way to pick foods that tasted good but with half the calories.  But then I read an article, or rather several articles, that say these sweeteners may actually do the opposite of what they're suppose to.  Instead of sweetening food without hiking up the calories, these articles claim that the sweeteners make you crave sugary foods more often.  So yes you're eating that low calorie yogurt, but in a few hours you'll turn around and want a large piece of chocolate cake.

These articles all conclude in saying sweeteners like Stevia, a natural sweetener, may be better than aspartame or saccharin.  They also conclude that eating any sweetener in moderation is better than engorging yourself in its artificial goodness.  (We all could have guessed that.)

I guess I'm torn between these articles saying that it makes you crave more sweet foods, and the fact that I can eat strawberry shortcake yogurt (and it tastes very similar to an actual strawberry shortcake) without the calories of a strawberry shortcake.  I guess the lesson is to watch what you eat and not over indulge yourself in any type of sugar.  I guess we'll see what the latest and greatest research will tell us about this little debacle.