A Many-Splenda'd Thing

About a year before I got married, I read William Dufty's Sugar Blues, a book about all the harm sugar does to the human body; when I finished the book, I gave up sugar (except for moderate amounts of ketchup and the occasional ice cream; I mean, alcohol and tobacco are bad, too, but I like the occasional beer and the quarterly cigar; one must be moderate even in one's moderation). Now, when I was married I fell off the wagon, but I've been exceedingly moderate with my sugar intake since then; I don't add processed sugar to much of anything outside the occasional baking job; I suspect I eat a fraction of the average American's sugar intake.

And since then - in the past 16 years - the number of non-Diet pops I've had I could probably count on both hands.

Put bluntly, pop with sugar in it is just too sweet for me; it makes me ill. While I had the same reaction to aspartame-sweetened pop that a lot of people have, I got over it fast; I've drunk Diet Coke in moderate amounts for years, and don't miss the sugar a bit.

Now, I've been using "Splenda" in my coffee instead of sugar for a while. Note to coffee purists: Shut up. The acid kills me. I need something to take the edge off. I repeat; Shut up.

Where were we? Yes, Splenda in coffee. I love it. And so when I saw Diet Coke with Splenda at the store the other day, I figured I'd have to try it.

Pretty good; perversely, my biggest problem was that it tasted too much like sugar for my tastes these days.

Given the problems that aspartame causes, it might be worth getting used to (until the Center for Science in the Public Interest finds some health problem with aspartame, anyway).