by Dan Keizer

Created on: January 15, 2009

Every year it seems like scientists find another way sugar messes people up. Sugar causes tooth decay, diabetes, hyperactivity, it messes up your metabolism, causes Alzheimer's, spreads AIDS... the list goes on and on. Some people even blame stuff like pimples and emotional problems on sugar.

But it's hard to go without sugar. Aside from all the delicious delicacies that contain ludicrous amounts of sugar, like Coca-Cola, yogurt, Slurpees, bundt cake, chocolate cake, lemon merangue pie, glazed donuts, a Starbuck's iced latte, fried ice cream, Taco Bell's cinnamon twists, then you have all kinds of candy bars like Three Musketeers, Milky Way, Payday, 100 Grand, Dove Bars, Mounds, and of course Hostess' entire line of fine pastries and snacks.... Aside from all those, things like ordinary milk have a good amount of sugar in them. A lot of people can't go without the sweet, sweet taste.

Ice cream is good too, and that has a lot of sugar in it. Ben & Jerry's is freaking delicious. That stuff is loaded with sugar.

Anyways, you try to think of other sweet substitutes and it leads you to a whole new conundrum. Which ones give you cancer? Which ones are not going to work with your recipe? Which ones taste like crap?

I remember one time my buddy Dave was telling me about this time he was making Kool-Aid when he was a kid. The household was out of regular sugar I guess, so Dave was about to put some brown sugar into the pitcher. His mom goes, "Don't waste the Kool-Aid!" and she wouldn't let him do it. Dave said to me after retelling it, "...I mean what the hell? She wouldn't let me just try it out? Those Kool-Aid packets cost like 8 cents!"

If you're one of those people that doesn't want to waste the Kool-Aid, it's pretty important to find just the right sugar substitute. Some people will use honey or various sweet syrups instead of sugar, but a lot of those don't work with certain foods. Honey works good with tea, but I'd never put it in coffee. Truth be told, I put it in coffee one time and it tasted like crap.

So you have to turn to the various artificial sweeteners out there. I'll tell you right now that anything with Nutrasweet or aspartame is going to give you cancer. Phenalyline I hear causes headaches.

I'm going to give my wholehearted endorsement to Splenda. It tastes good, and as far as I know it doesn't give you cancer and can be substituted in many recipes for sugar. You're probably not going to get the exact same results baking with Splenda, but what do you want here? I hear Splenda's secret to success is that it's made from regular sugar so it's somewhat natural. I've been putting it in my coffee for a few years now and haven't been diagnosed with cancer yet.

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