Chewymom

I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions. I’m not opposed to them, I just never have time to sit down and actually make them in the busy Christmas season, and then BAM! it’s New Year’s, and I am left resolution-less. One thing I have been working on for a while now, although I’ll admit I took a big 6-week break over the holidays, is eating healthier. My diet in general has become better and better over the past few years. The thing I am really trying to cut out now is artificial sweeteners.

I grew up NEVER using artificial sweeteners. My parents used honey in most things that needed sweetening, sugar in a few others. We ate very healthy, and nobody was overweight in my family. In college I started consuming soft drinks for the first time ever. Although they were Pepsi products (blech), they were available in a little fountain in the dining. Out with the milk-at-every-meal, in with the soft drinks! Sometime in the ’90’s, I got “into” drinking Diet Coke. I blame my sister-in-law. I believed it was a healthier option than the sugary sodas I had learned to consume. I bought DC in 12-packs as often as the budget allowed.

Although I do not generally keep soft drinks in the home any more, I do occasionally buy one at a restaurant. I’m back to regular Coke though. Not that high fructose corn syrup is good for you by any means, but the more I have read about various artificial sweeteners, the more I am concerned about putting them in my body.

So what to do about my coffee? I have discovered the PERFECT blend of coffee, half-and-half, and Splenda to make a delicious cup of coffee. If I use exactly two packets of Splenda, it is right every time. I am bothered by how Splenda is made, though. (News flash! It is NOT just like sugar!) I discovered that I actually have a few sugar packets lying around, so I decided to put two packets of sugar in my coffee. After all, Splenda is supposed to be substituted in equal quantities, right? Okay, ick! Two packets was not enough. I added a third. And a fourth. Now it should be perfect–I have twice as much sugar as my usual amount of Splenda. Still gross. I gave up and dumped a packet of Splenda in. Perfect. Four sugars, one Splenda. (Oh, and might I add that this is a very large travel mug, hence the enormous amounts of sweetner.)

I can’t decide if I need to just dump as much sugar as necessary to make my coffee taste right, or if I just let this be my little “artificial sweetner vice.” I am trying to quit using them…but a girl has to have her yummy coffee.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 6th, 2007 at 8:50 am and is filed under Healthy Living, Yep! I'm Caffeinated. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.