Artificial Sweetener Guidance

So, lately I have been drinking coffee more often at times when a normal respectable person would be expected to be drinking Diet Coke. So far, I have always been adding sugar to the coffee. But, as this sometimes now goes to more than one coffee a day, I don’t want to be drinking so many calories.

The coffee places usually have three other sweetener choices - a pink one, a blue one, and a yellow one. I don’t care what the real names are. Does anyone have any guidance as to which one I should use. Does one taste better? Less likely to kill me? Anything else different? Also, does the sweetness of each packet correspond to the sweetness of one sugar packet.

Thanks in advance for any advice.

The yellow one is sucralose, the pink one is saccharin, the blue one is aspartame. Probably.

Depending on who you ask, they run the gamut from “completely harmless” to “you will get cancer.”

I find the pink stuff to be waaaay sweeter than sugar and not in a good way, and the yellow stuff to be the closet approximation by volume. I’ll generally reach for the yellow.

Yellow [ splenda I think ] and pink [ sacch I believe ] as the blue some are allergic to.
And the poster above me bested me by a minute or so.

If you must sweeten your coffee, you could always buy some packets of Stevia to have on hand. Some shops are actual stocking them now as well. Calorie-free and all natural.

^ And recommended by my doctor. Better tasting than the others, too.

They taste different, and everyone has different preferences. My recommendation would be to try each one and decide which you like best. I personally prefer pink, but will do blue in a pinch. Yellow is not sweet enough for me.

I used to be a Stevia person, still am if I go by taste preference only. But then I discovered that it was (almost surely) the erythritol (a sugar alcohol) they add to stevia that was messing up my stomach something fierce.

Here’s wiki:
*“In the body, most erythritol is absorbed into the bloodstream in the small intestine, and then for the most part excreted unchanged in the urine. About 10% enters the colon.[8] Because 90% of erythritol is absorbed before it enters the large intestine, it does not normally cause laxative effects, as are often experienced after consumption of other sugar alcohols (such as xylitol and maltitol),[9] although extremely large doses can cause nausea and borborygmi (stomach rumbling).”

*90% my ass! (literally) So now it’s one pink and one yellow for me. I find that blending artificial sweeteners yields the best results.

Sweetener? In coffee? Screw that noise, just drink it black. Add some creamer if you must.

Sometimes I’ll add sugar if I need an extra carb-kick but that obviously doesn’t work with artificial sweeteners.

Be careful you haven’t pissed off any meth dealers lately…

Just gradually decreased your sugar, until you don’t add any at all. Discover that coffee doesn’t really taste that bad at all, once you get used to it.

As far as sweetness per packet, as someone said the pink one is equivalent to 2 packets of sugar. The yellow one is, I believe, the equivalent of only 1 packet of sugar. So that could be why someone complained that the yellow one was not sweet enough. I just use more of it if necessary. It tastes less chemical to me (subjectively, of course).

I like sweet things myself. When I make tea I use a Mint Chocolate Rooibos mixed with a Puerh called Hot Chocolate. It’s delicious, but a little bitter, which is why I use both sweetener and milk. I could drink that concoction all day.

This is correct. The brand names are

Pink - Sweet & Low
Blue - Equal
Yellow - Splenda

The taste gets better as you go down. Saccharin is foul. Splenda and Equal have sugar in it too (dextrose) so they are slightly caloric, nothing to avoid though.I think equal has Ace K too, just like Coke Zero.

The science behind the “danger” of any of these is not solved. Almost certainly fine in moderation. Don’t read Mercola.

I’ve seen Breaking Bad, so I am wary of Stevia packets.

Pink is waaaaay sweet, but has a bad aftertaste. Blue also has a bad aftertaste. If I am stuck using either of those, I always add one packet of sugar to cover the aftertaste. The aftertaste is not as bad with the blue, but you need more of it, increasing the aftertaste, and it just doesn’t register as very sweet at all with me personally.

Yellow is the big winner with me. Four packets, exactly as many as I would add of sugar, one cream, and I’m good to go. I don’t actually like coffee, and just drink it for the caffeine. If there’s no cream, I’ll take whatever form of milk or milk-based liquid “creamer” is available. No powders. Rather drink it black.

You cannot make me drink decaf for love or money.

Walter White isn’t trying to kill me, so I’ll go with Stevia if it’s available. If not, Splenda (yellow) is my second choice. Aspartame is tolerable and saccharin is the absolute last resort.

I’ve been using Splenda/sucralose (yellow) since it came out and I’m no worse for the wear. I am very happy I wasn’t watching my sugar intake in the era of Equal vs. Sweet & Low. Yuck.

I much, much prefer yellow (Splenda) to pink or blue. I don’t use much. Just a touch to take a bit of the bitterness off the coffee, but not to make it sweet exactly. A single packet can last me 3 cups of coffee (but I’ve heard Splenda affects people differently – some people can’t taste it at all, and some, like me, find it far sweeter than most people do).

I like cream or half and half too. I used to use powdered creamer, but I’ll just take it black now if there’s no real cream. Black coffee is fine. Good, even. I just prefer a little cream, and a touch of Splenda to go along with it. Especially now that I’m down to one cup of coffee a day. I used to drink a pot a day and was a lot less picky with the beans, the brew, and the mix-ins.

Yup, “probably” is the key here. All three have both name brand versions and generic versions – the makers of the generic versions usually keep that color scheme, for simplicity, but I’ve occasionally seen saccharin in yellow packets, for example.

And, stevia is usually in a green packet.

Saccharin is the oldest of the lot, having been discovered in the 19th Century. I find it has a fairly horrible taste, but back in the day, it was one of the few non-caloric sweetener options. In the 1970s, research suggested that it could cause cancer, and the FDA mandated that saccharin carry a health warning. Later research indicated that, at the levels at which people actually use it, it’s probably safe, and the warning was removed from the packaging. The cancer concerns in the 1970s, linked with the advent of aspartame, cost saccharin a lot of its former market share, but it still has its adherents – I suspect that a lot of people who still use it are older, and who had started using it when the other options weren’t available.

Aspartame was accidentally discovered as a sweetener – it was originally discovered during development of an anti-ulcer drug, during which a researcher discovered that it had a sweet taste. It breaks down under high heat, so one place it’s not used is in cooking and baking, but it works well in beverages.

Sucralose is newer still, and was approved for use in the US in 1998. Unlike aspartame, it works well for baking and cooking.

Unlike the “big three” above, stevia is naturally-derived – it comes from the leaves of a South American plant, and had been known as a sweetener for centuries. It’s only been in the past few decades that it’d started to be used as such in the US, and has only had widespread use over the past decade or so, when the FDA finally approved its uses as a sweetener.

I add sugar to coffee, but even less than the small amount I used to add before.

Works for me.

Aspartame is a safe artificial sweetener, despite the loony alarmism promulgated about it.

It’s important to note that while the packets of artificial sweeteners can legally be labelled as zero calorie since they have less than five calories per serving, they actually do have calories that are supplied by the bulking agents used, dextrose and maltodextrin. Splenda has nearly four calories per packet. If this is important to you you might look at liquid sweeteners.

I find blue too sweet for my taste., but it does taste the most like sugar. In my big 24 oz. coffee mug I usually use one pink and one yellow.

I remember being told that adding saccharine to any other sweetner has a synergy effect–makes them taste sweeter. Kind of a 1 + 1 = 3 effect.

Agreed. For example, I think stevia tastes like ass. I can’t believe there are actually people who like it as a sugar substitute. Sucralose (yellow) is probably the closest to sugar, but has a bit of a residual oiliness or something to it. I can’t quite describe it, but it feels oddly greasy to me. Pink (saccharine) is my favorite of the bunch, but nobody seems to use it anymore, except for those coffee sweetener packets. And it’s got the “causes cancer in rats” stigma attached to it. Blue (aspartame) is somewhere in the middle for me. Has a “dry” mouthfeel in a way that sugar doesn’t, but I like that. Jumps to the top when mixed with Ace K, but I don’t think any of those packets contain that mix.

That said, I don’t generally put sweetener in my coffee. Most of my opinions are based on how I like those sweeteners in soft drinks, iced teas, lemonade, etc.