Sweetener or sugar, which should you have?

Artificial sweeteners or sugar, which ones should you have or shouldn't have?

Coke or Coke Zero?

Which is better to have?

It all depends on what your goals are (not medical advice, only my opinion). 

From a weight loss perspective, if you're going to have sugar with things like coffee, tea, flavoured drinks and in your cooking, they are going to add more calories that you could avoid. 

Sugar is also a form of energy used by your body, but if it does not get used, will be converted and stored as fat. So replacing sugar with an artificial sweetener can assist with your weight loss goals.

The downside of this is the sweetener can be artificial. You may not be certain as to exactly what's in them and whether they could have side effects and be detrimental to your health, so it is not something you would want to take for the long-term.

An alternative is natural sweeteners, such as Stevia, which is a herbal sweetener. This can be a better option as it's natural. It's also mainly calorie-free and doesn't affect your insulin and blood sugar levels. The downside is that they can have a bad aftertaste. 

If you don’t need to lose weight, then you might want to consider having the sugar option. 

There is a healthier alternative to white sugar which is more natural and unprocessed. It’s called panela or rapadura. It's evaporated cane sugar at the most natural, unprocessed form of sugar. It's not as strong in sweetness, but it's more natural and has some health benefits to it. It's normally sourced from Colombia and can be difficult to find, but I’ve noticed supermarkets have started to stock them.

The last thing that you should consider is if you really need to have that sugar in your drinks, coffee, tea or whatever you're having. 

One good trick is to try and wean off it. Try to reduce the quantity you use gradually until you get to zero. I went from two sugars in my coffee to half. I can’t have it with zero sugar as I have my coffee very strong, but that's good enough for me. So if I have two coffees a day, I'm only having one teaspoon of sugar for the whole day rather than six.

Hope that helps clear things up for you and can help with your decision when you consider your sweetener or drink of choice.

Andrew Jax

Weight Loss Coach for Dads

DitchTheDadFat.com