Posted on Wed, Feb. 11, 2004

Sweeteners for the sweet

How do sugar substitutes stack up? In baking, at least, it's hard to beat the real thing.

By Helen Bryant, Special to the Star-Telegram

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/living/food/7926850.htm

[The original article had three recipes with more than 20 grams of carbs each. I deleted them below. - gotbeer]

Valentine's Day is all about sweetness.

We call each other "Sugar," stores are crammed with aisles of chocolates, and indulgence is the buzzword of the day.

So let's start with the premise that we all want to eat something sweet on Valentine's Day. Are all sugars created equal? Are Sweet 'N Low, Splenda and Equal created equal? Which is the healthiest option? And can you create a scrumptious dessert without using any sugar?

The answers: Sort of, sort of, it depends and it depends.

Which sweetener tastes best depends, to a large extent, on what you're accustomed to eating. It's like milk: If you're used to skim milk, 2 percent tastes rich and wonderful; if you're into whole milk, you may hate 2 percent.

And whether you can make a good dessert without sugar depends -- at the risk of sounding like a politician -- on what you mean by "without sugar."

Splenda (sucralose) seems to many to have less of an annoying aftertaste than other artificial sweeteners, because it's made by replacing hydrogen-oxygen atoms in a real sugar molecule with chlorine atoms. This sweetener's rise in popularity has been meteoric, thanks in part to an endorsement by the Atkins low-carb diet. Splenda spokeswoman Whitney MacDonald reports Splenda's share of the market went from 16.4 cents per dollar spent on artificial sweeteners in 2001 to 43.7 cents in 2003, roughly reversing its position with Equal, which had 40 cents of the dollar share in 2001 and has 22.1 now.

Anybody who's ever had a Blue Bunny ice cream bar made with Splenda knows the things are downright delicious. The Blue Bunny folks didn't add any sugar, just Splenda, but each bar includes 2 grams of sugar, simply by virtue of the fact that it contains milk.

Similarly, when I tried baking with artificial sweeteners, I found that using them without a boost from a source of sugar, such as fruit, usually didn't work very well. In recipes using a little fruit, artificial sweeteners fared better.

Is this cheating? Not as far as the American Diabetes Association, the American Dietetic Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are concerned. None of them says you need to avoid sugar altogether; they just want you to limit it so you don't get fat -- and, in the case of diabetics, sick.

The USDA says you should limit your daily intake of added sugar -- sugar that doesn't naturally occur in what you're eating -- to 6 teaspoons for a 1,600-calorie diet and 12 teaspoons for a 2,200-calorie diet.

The American Diabetes Association, which once advocated sugar abstinence for diabetics, has changed its mind.

"Now it's believed that sugar can be part of a diet for diabetics," says Patty Vickers, director of the Texas Tech Diabetes Education Center in Lubbock. "However, I believe it should be a very small part, because it contains no vitamins or minerals."

The diabetes association's Web site (www.diabetes.org), says recent research reveals that sugars "don't spike glucose any higher or faster than starches." So, in a diabetic diet, sugar now counts the same as any other carb: If you're going to have a slice of pie, you can't have a baked potato.

When it comes to baking, real sugar emerges a clear winner, not just in taste but in texture -- so, "when these features are important to a recipe or dining experience, it may be worthwhile to incorporate the additional calories," says Cindy Moore, a dietitian with the American Dietetic Association. "I believe that all foods can fit into a healthful diet."

But are some sweeteners better for you than others?

Organic-food aficionados tout the superiority of unrefined or organic sugars, made by crushing sugar cane and crystallizing its juices rather than by extracting the sugar juice (sucrose) from cane or sugar beets, as is done with regular table sugar and brown sugar (white sugar with molasses added). They point to the absence of chemicals or additives.

The Sugar Association, however, bristles at claims that table sugar is processed with chemicals, saying that carbon filters are used.

In terms of taste and texture, the two are different: With unrefined and organic sugars, the granules are larger (except in organic powdered sugar, which has a velvety consistency) and the flavor more molasses-y. But as far as the diabetic and dietetic associations are concerned, sugar is sugar, and you should limit your consumption.

And the artificial sweeteners? They're all safe, says the Food and Drug Administration, and the diabetic and dietetic folks agree.

Early studies linked saccharine (Sweet 'N Low) to bladder cancer in rats, but later research didn't show any risk to humans. Vickers says you'd have to drink hundreds of cans of diet soda a day to consume as much as one of the test rats did, anyway. In 2000, the requirement that saccharine carry a cancer-risk warning label was lifted.

There have been many rumors about aspartame (Equal) risk, but research doesn't back them up, "and they've done over 200 studies on aspartame," says Vickers. If you are among the 1 in 20,000 people who have a condition called phenylketonurea, the aspartame ingredient phenylalanine, an amino acid, can be dangerous to you.

As for sucralose (Splenda), no side effects have been reported.

How much artificial sweetener should you eat? The American Association of Diabetes Educators lists an "acceptable daily intake" -- that is, the most you should consume every day of your life -- as 5 milligrams per kilogram of body weight for sucralose and saccharine, and 50 milligrams per kilogram for aspartame.

I asked Vickers to do the math on this, using my own 140 pounds as an example, and her figures say I can ingest 63 packets of Splenda a day. That's more than I want.

Safety concerns resolved, I turned to baking, using a panel of tasters that included Sweet 'N Low junkie Gene, sugar loyalist Lisa, Splenda guy John and me, the woman who eats everything.

In the sugar cookie test, sugar easily won. Among the artificial sweeteners, Splenda fared best, even with Lisa, who didn't outright hate it, and with Gene, who declared it "creamier" and with less undertaste. But none of the artifically sweetened cookies browned very well or tasted sufficiently sugary.

A dessert that did work was a Splenda cheesecake made with a low-fat recipe posted on the Splenda Web site. It was declared tasty by all, though not as fabulous as regular-sugar cheesecake. However, if you really don't want sugar, this is a good option.

A fudge recipe I tested with Splenda, however, turned out off-the-charts awful, proving that you can't just slap this stuff into a regular recipe and expect it to work.

I tried hard to make a meringue using Splenda, and I was hopeful when I managed, by adding extra Splenda and cream of tartar, to produce something with the consistency of meringue, though its peaks were wimpy. Baked, though, it tasted like puffy cream of tartar. Unrefined sugar didn't fare as well in meringue, either; it just didn't become one with the egg whites the way refined sugar does.

Unrefined sugar did perform exceptionally in cookies, adding a taste dimension. In my mother's Molasses Crinkles recipe, a light-brown Billington's muscovado sugar (popular in Britain) made an especially molasses-y and moist cookie. And we liked unrefined sugar in coffee; demerara, another British favorite, brought out the flavor of the coffee without overpowering it.

Finally, I tested a cocktail recipe: a mojito, based on the recipe on the Web site of the popular La Duni restaurant in Dallas, which calls for cane sugar. I tried Sucanat unrefined cane sugar, regular table sugar and Splenda. Nobody much liked the Splenda cocktail. The unrefined Sucanat mojito was declared the winner, but everyone was pretty happy with the one using regular ol' sugar, too.

The bottom line for Valentine's Day sweetness: Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet, and nothing else will quite do.

Recipes below include two tasty low-carb and low-fat desserts -- cheesecake and raspberry cookies -- that supplement Splenda with fruit; easy, diabetic-friendly strawberry squares; and, for those unconcerned about sugar consumption, a favorite cookie recipe enhanced by adding a rich unrefined sugar called muscovado.

[deleted recipes were here - gotbeer]

Sweetener statistics

Sugar (refined and unrefined)

15 calories, 0 grams fat, 4 grams carbohydrates

Safe to consume. In high quantities, can cause obesity; risk of dental cavities. Diabetics should limit intake; counts as a carbohydrate in meal planning

Sweet, well-browned, fluffy cookie

Saccharine (Sweet 'N Low)

0 calories, 0 grams fat, trace carbohydrate

Early studies linked it to bladder cancer in rats; later research did not link cancer risk to humans. In 2003, requirement to cite cancer risk on package was removed. OK for diabetics.

Less brown and fluffy than with sugar; yield is less. Holds up well to heat but has a very strong aftertaste.

Aspartame (Equal)

0 calories, 0 grams fat, trace carbohydrate

Many rumors, but no research linking it to health problems. People with the rare disease phenylketonuria must avoid it. OK for diabetics.

Browns fairly well for an artificial sweetener when used cup-for-cup like sugar. Yield is less than with sugar. Cookies not as fluffy as those made with sugar. Doesn't hold up to heat as well as saccharine. Definite aftertaste.

Sucralose (Splenda)

0 calories, 0 grams fat, trace carbohydrate

No reported side effects. OK for diabetics.

Very little browning; cookie looks more like a biscuit. Little fluffiness. Yield is less than with sugar. Less overpoweringly sweet than other artificial sweeteners; very little aftertaste.

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Helen Bryant, Special to the Star-Telegram
0 calories, 0 grams fat, trace carbohydrate

No reported side effects. OK for diabetics.

Very little browning; cookie looks more like a biscuit. Little fluffiness. Yield is less than with sugar. Less overpoweringly sweet than other artificial sweeteners; very little aftertaste.