Sugar Substitutes

Diabetes Question of the Week:

Q: What is the best sugar substitute to use for baking and daily use for diabetics?

A: First of all, sugar substitutes are non-nutritive sweeteners (meaning they have no nutritional value, good or bad). They are essentially calorie-free and cause no glycemic response (meaning it doesn’t raise your blood sugar). Sugar substitutes (or artificial sweeteners) are a great way to improve the taste of food without contributing to weight gain. Sugar substitutes can save you up to 16 calories per teaspoon, unlike nutritive sweeteners (which contain calories) like honey and table sugar. Also unlike nutritive sweeteners, sugar substitutes don’t contribute to dental cavities or tooth decay.

There are five FDA-approved non-nutritive sweeteners on the market. These sweeteners have undergone and passed standard safety tests and current research shows that these have no adverse affects. The five FDA-approved sweeteners are acesulfame-K, aspartame, neotame, saccharin, and sucralose. Of these, sucralose (used in Splenda) is heat stable in cooking and baking, and is therefore one of the most common sugar substitutes used in baking.

It is 600 times sweeter than sucrose (regular table sugar), so you may need to play with your recipes and decide what you like. It also tends to give the baked product a different texture, and cannot be substituted for sugar when making meringue (believe me, I’ve tried). It is best to look on the product’s website to find recipes which work with that particular sugar substitute. Remember that although sugar substitutes replace the sugar, they do not replace other carbohydrate sources (like flour, dried fruit, fruit purees, or dairy). Just because you’ve used a sugar substitute in your baked good does not make it low-carbohydrate. It also doesn’t reduce the fat or sodium, so you still need to watch how much you consume.

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