Lowcarbezine!

How To Make Dana Cry

I got an email just recently from a reader who had purchased 200 Low-Carb Slow Cooker Recipes, and wanted to know how to convert the recipes that use Splenda to use sugar instead. While people certainly have the right to do what they like with my books once they've ponied up the money for them, up to and including using them to line the cat box, I have to admit to an overwhelming dismay at the question.

Yes, I know that there are some of you who don't like the idea of using Splenda, mostly because it is artificial. Please, if that's the case, just skip those recipes. Or use erythritol, or inulin, or stevia, or something other than sugar. (But not corn syrup! If anything, high fructose corn syrup is worse than table sugar.)

Of all the possible faulty logic in the world, "sugar is safer than Splenda because it's natural" is among the most illogical. Folks, rattlesnake venom is natural. Death angel mushrooms are natural. Botulism toxin is natural. Heroin, cocaine, and tobacco are natural. Natural means squat in terms of safety.

I am not convinced that Splenda is 100% safe, but then I am convinced that nothing is 100% safe. That's not the important question. The important question is "Is Splenda safer than what it replaces, ie sugar?" To my mind, the answer to that question is a resounding "yes."

That being said, I don't use a lot of Splenda; I drink no diet soda, and I only make Splenda-sweetened desserts when I'm working on cookbooks, and for special occasions. I really think the ideal is to wean ourselves away from a lot of sweetened stuff. But using a few tablespoons of Splenda in a slow-cooker-recipe sauce or a marinade? As far as I'm concerned, it's a non-issue, health-wise.

By the way, another reader who took me to task for using Splenda felt I should use organic sugar. I feel the same way about organic sugar as I do about organic tobacco - if you use these things because you think that their being organically grown somehow mitigates the fact that they're sheer poison, you're fooling yourself. I think health food stores embarrass themselves by even carrying such rubbish.

For the record: I have read the FDA test papers for Splenda, and it is absolutely true that sucralose - the sweetener in Splenda - caused thymus shrinkage and kidney swelling in lab rats - in doses that in a 150-pound human being would be the equivalent of over ten thousand teaspoons of Splenda per day. In doses that were the equivalent of just a couple of thousand teaspoons a day, the problems didn't happen. Since it's a really big day when I get as much as 20 teaspoons of Splenda in a day, I'm not sweating it. Always remember, the first rule of toxicology is "Dose is everything."

Anyway, do you have any idea what would happen to you if you ate over ten thousand teaspoons of sugar a day?

Posted by HoldTheToast at April 1, 2005 01:17 PM