Are artificial sweeteners safe for diabetics?
Artificial sweeteners can help you satisfy cravings without raising your blood sugar. But first, be careful of what you read: there are many different types of sugar, and they don’t all appear as “sugar” on food labels. Look for glucose, fructose, levulose, maltose, and lactose, which are all different types of sugar. Also watch out for sugar alcohols, such as sorbitol, xylitol and mannitol. These are sometimes called “reduced calorie sweeteners.” They have about half the calories of regular sugar. As a general rule, you can subtract half the sugar alcohol grams from the total carbohydrate grams in foods made with sugar alcohols. There are five types of artificial sweeteners approved by the Food and Drug Administration. They are acesulfame potassium, aspartame, neotame, saccharin, and sucralose. Saccharin can be used on any type of food. When saccharin first was studied, it was found to cause cancer in rats when ingested in large quantities. The FDA approved it for human use when studi
