Personally, I’ve found that Splenda tastes the most like real sugar and doesn’t have that chemical aftertaste that diet sodas usually have. It’s what they use in Cascade Ice, a line of carbonated fruit-flavored drinks that are usually my go-to when I’m on break at work.
I’m very much in the Splenda (sucralose) is the best, Sweet’N Low (saccharine) is the worst camp. The second by a country mile due to its distinctively awful aftertaste.
But as we can see in this very thread there are people with the exact opposite opinion. You really have to give them all a try.
According studies, the best sugar substitute is probably erythritol, at least in terms of health.
A good alternarive for sugar substitutes would be whole fruits, like pureed dates or date “sugar” (which is just dates in powdered form) where applicable.
I can’t speak to the science of it, but I have had gastro-intestinal problems from too much erythritol that felt exactly like similar problems with other sugar alcohols. I’m not sure I trust your source here.
Looking into it, you are correct. However, too much anything, including ordinary sugar and yes, erythritol, can cause gastrointestinal symptoms, but it’s still generally better tolerated than many other sugar substitutes, or at least all the other sugar alcohols. There is good evidence it may have additional health benefits that I don’t think any other non-caloric sugar substitutes have, which is why I think it should be the sugar substitute of choice, as long as one doesn’t ingest more than 35g at once.
Gastrointestinal tolerance of erythritol and xylitol ingested in a liquid
If I just taste sweeteners by themselves, they all taste like a mad scientist experiment gone wrong.
So I snitched some packets from a local coffee shop and tried them on my cereal. Stevia passed the “Plain Cardboard-Flavored Mini- Wheats Test” with flying colors, with Splenda close behind.
The blue and pink packets? I could tell there was “diet something” in my cereal (shudder).
I use a combination of Splenda and a sucralose solution that I make from sucralose powder. For iced tea I just use the solution.
Splenda is sucralose with maltodextrin, so it’ll taste a bit different from plain sucralose. To me, both taste so close to sugar that I don’t miss it.
Xylitol is my personal favorite.
Advantages:
- Doesn’t have a chemical taste to it
- Same sweetness ratio as sugar
Drawbacks:
- You will shit like a startled animal
- Xylitol is deadly to pets even in small doses
- Xylitol is expensive and somewhat difficult to find (local mileage may vary of course)