Splenda, diet cokes,aspartame and carbs

[warbishop]

delte

[boonie stomper]

Welcome to the board! I'm pleased you have been reading the book - I hope it is the 2002 version (completely revised) of DANDR, which we go by here. If you look, you'll see that the number of servings per day is limited. If you did not limit your intake, you could face increased health risks and/or side effects, depending on which artificial sweetener and other factors predominate. Different people are affected in different ways. Another goodie - too much carbonated beverage drinking could thin your tooth enamel (per a TV commercial I saw last week, LOL).

As for the "Zero carbs": this applies to "per serving" in the USA - for ANY food nutrition label - the FDA allows anything with under 1/2 gram carb per serving to round the number to a 0! So, putting 2 and 2 together you can figure it's in the interest of a manufacturer promoting diet products with marginal carb content to make sure they take advantage of this, and our best interest to err on the side of caution and assume such food has 1/2 g per serving, whenever any of the ingredients is a known carbohydrate source. Look at your labels - see words such as dextrose/sucrose/modified food starch etc. - I count 2 servings that say 0g as 1. (note - serving sizes have decreased in recent years for such items; no harm in counting each as 1g, however...)

[not2late]

Originally Posted by warbishop

Now according to the book and some of the postings here, artificial sweetners should be assigned a value of one carb per pack. But the coke bottles, containing splenda, state there is zero carbs. And when I was reviewing some of the recipes on this site, I noticed that some of the recipies assigned splenda /grams of carbs per quantity as well.

So please, someone explain to me if i should be counting carbs with my diet sodas as well?? or not? and if not, why then do i have to count with granular splenda? This has me a bit perplexed.

Thank you in advance....

The Induction Rules are listed twice in the book (DANDR 2002). The first time in Chapter 11. The second time in Chapter 18.

According to the Induction Rules re-explained in Chapter 18

You may use up to three packets of sucralose (Splenda) daily. (More and more products are being made with Splenda so if you use any, include those grams in your tally also.)

Each packet of Splenda is one serving. Each packet contains about 1 carb. So you are limited to 3 servings of artificial sweetener. If the servings includes carbs, then you must count those towards your totals.

But more importantly is that for some people artificial sweeteners have the same affect on their blood sugar/insulin response as regular sugar. We have had some diabetic members in the past actually document a blood sugar spike after having a Splenda product like the diet soft drinks. And we have had non-diabetic members who have experienced the symptoms of "blood sugar instability" (see chapter 12 or 13 in the book for the chart) after using these products. So it makes sense to limit your intake of these artificial sweeteners.

Back when I began Atkins, this was a very touchy subject here on the board. So I e-mailed the Atkins Center (this was shortly after Dr. Atkins died, so his people were still answering questions.) They advised that you don't know if any of the additives in these products raise the carb level to 1 and they also mentioned the shoddy carbohydrate labelling laws in the US, so they advised to count each serving as 1 carb and as 1 of the 3 sweetener allotments.

[Adena]

One more bit of info explaining the difference between splenda in a liquid and granular splenda... Splenda has NO carbs in its pure liquid form. However, liquid splenda is mixed with malodextrin (sp?) in order to make it granular. The malodextrin is what has one carb per serving/packet.

A liquid splenda that I use in my coffee/tea and in baking is called Sweetzfree (you can order it online).

I do have to agree, though, that limiting diet Cokes and upping the water is probably the best thing you can do...

Best of luck to you.

[mirna05]

...So, even though we do drink plenty of fluids, it comes mainly in the form of diet sodas....

remember what the book says:

"drink 8 8-ounce glasses of water a day"

"Dont include decaf coffee, or tea or other beverages as part of your daily water intake"

[warbishop]

Well ty for the help ladies and btw... the last two gals which posted look fantastic!! Hot!! congrats on the weight loss!

[dimar97]

a quick question if anyone knows the answer. I use splenda in cooking and baking - so do I need to count each serving of food ? (IE - broccoli slaw with the dressing made with splenda or almond pound cake made with splenda) as 1 serving (out of my three for the day?)

does anyone know how many carbs are in 1 cup of splenda (granulated) ? thanks