Choosing between Sugar/Splenda & Regular Fat/Light/Fat Free

Earlier in the week, I posted that you should go check out some cookbooks to help you plan your weekly dinners. I mentioned you should look for low-cal cookbooks, not low fat. While it is important to keep your diet low in fat, if you're watching your calories, eating lean proteins, vegetables, and whole grains, your diet will naturally be low in fat.
I know you all know your diet should be diverse, and though you are allowed 1500 calories (or so) doesn't mean you can use 1000 of them each day on a Big Mac, Fries and a Coke, right? Right.
So let's talk about sugar. Refined sugar is EVERYWHERE in everything. It's very important that you get used to looking at nutritional information labels AND ingredients in prepackaged foods. I have personally found that the less sugar and artifical sweeteners I consume, the less sugar I crave. When I do eat something especially high in sugar (like a piece of cake with icing), I feel awful! I get a bad stomach ache, and I want to take a nap. It's not pleasant... it makes me not crave sugar!


This brings me to artifical sweeteners, like Splenda. I became very dependent on artifical sweeteners when I began dieting, which ended up backfiring on me. I started putting sugar free maple syrup in my oatmeal, ate yoplait light yogurt, drank diet soda, are sugar free ice cream and yogurt, and ate sugar free candies. Have you ever looked at the ingredients on the back of sugar free products? There are so many chemicals I can't even pronounce! It kind of scares me to think I was putting all of those chemicals in my body! Now, rather than dump in a splenda, I'll add 1 tsp. of sugar to my iced coffee, which is only 15 calories. I'd much rather have something natural and from the ground for 15 calories, than a chemical for zero.


I'm sure everyone has read and heard truths and rumors about artifical sweeteners. There are some who want to link them to cancer, some who say they're fine... you can find so much conflicting information out there!


Here is my opinion about it, and this has been a gradual change for me, so don't feel like it needs to be your philosophy as well: I eat as clean as possible, I don't like to eat anything that has a chemical name I don't know or can't pronounce. I try to eat all organic dairy and meat, and most fruits and vegetables. It really scares me when I read about everything that can be put in foods, and what it does to the body. And honestly, since I've cut out all of the junk, I feel better than ever. Remember this - you are what you eat!!!
I believe that it's better to save up and have a small ice cream cone with real ice cream or yogurt, than to have sugar free/fat free/who knows what's in there ice cream every night. This philosophy took me years to develop though, so please don't be offended or feel defeated if you're still working on getting over your sugar addiction! I really do believe though that if you gradually cut it out, you'll feel so much better!


Now, on to fat:
Your body needs fat to function. Do not try to completely cut fat out of your diet!
"Fat, along with other nutrients, gives you the energy you need to do your daily activities. It also provides essential nutrients like fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids. Essential nutrients are those your body can get only through food. Your body requires a certain amount of these fat nutrients." Read more about fat at this article!
Make a conscious effort to consume the right fats, and keep even those in moderation.
This article has it all broken out between good and bad fats, as well as where you can find them.


Now when grocery shopping, how do you choose between full fat, light, and fat free?
Here are a few simple rules to follow: Look at the calories. For example, I love Daisy sour cream. If you look at the nutritional info between Regular, Light, and Fat Free (Daisy doesn't make it, so I'm using Breakstone's), you can see the calorie differences:
Regular - 60 cal. 5 g. fat in 2 tbsp.
Light - 45 cal. 2.5 g. fat in 2 tbsp.
Fat Free - 30 cal. 0 g. fat in 2 tbsp.


So then I looked at the ingredients. Often times when a product is made low fat, the calories can be higher, or it will have artifical ingredients to make it taste better. Regular has Cultured Grade A Cream. I looked at the light ingredients, and the only difference was it contained Skim milk and Vitamin A Palmitate. So I looked up what Vitamin A Palmitate is, and it's a stabilizer used in dairy products. It is synthetic, but it is found naturally, and it is good for the body.
Then I looked up the ingredients in Fat Free - Ingredients: CULTURED PASTEURIZED GRADE A NONFAT MILK, DRIED CORN SYRUP, FOOD STARCH-MODIFIED, CREAM, LESS THAN 2% OF MALTODEXTRIN, ARTIFICIAL COLOR, XANTHAN GUM, NATURAL FLAVOR, VITAMIN A PALMITATE.
Um, what is all that CRAP?!
So Fat Free was OUT! 15 calories saved is not worth putting all of that junk in my body!

I know that the last thing you want to do is spend hours at the market looking at all the nutrition labels... so I'll make it easy for you - buy fresh fruit, vegetables, organic meats, dairy, and whole grains that are unprocessed!
I know, that's not going to happen. So how about this - USE THE INTERNET! You can research all of this on your own time. I found all of that sour cream nutritional info online. I went to Daisy and Kraft's websites and it was right there!

So to wrap up this post, READ READ READ!!! You need to make the decision of what is most important to you, though. Will sugar free products kill you? Current research says no. However, do you want to consume all of those chemicals? That's your choice... mine is NO!

You do need fat, so don't automatically always grab fat free. Look at the label, will 15 calories break your diet? It's not likely... so use your best judgement!

After reading this post, Jenn commented: Artificial sweeteners do terrible things to your metabolism. A very well received study came out last year that showed that if when you taste sugar, that taste tells your body to gear up your metabolism to process the soon to come calories. But if you use artificial sweeteners without the calories, then you train your body to not boost up it's metabolism when it tastes something sweet. This means that when you DO eat something with real sugar in it, your body will then do nothing to process those extra calories.
By using artificial sweeteners, you essentially train your body to ignore ever processing sugar.

Here is the link to the article she was referencing. Thank you, Jenn!!!