My mom, age 92, has mild diabetes, but I cannot get her to stop eating candy. She sucks on Jolly Ranchers all day long.
She said she tried some sugarless candy “once” and it didn’t taste good. That doesn’t sound like a conclusive experiment to me.
I got on google and found that Jolly Rancher does make sugarless candy, but it’s like $25 a pound, and she’s still shocked when anything costs more than it did in the 1950’s. I told her that’s still cheaper than insulin, but she wasn’t impressed.
So I am appealing to Dopers: can you recommend some sugarless candy that is similar to Jolly Ranchers (fruit-flavored hard candy) that tastes really good and isn’t super expensive? Thanks a lot.
IME, it all tastes like paint thinner. No, that’s not true. I’ve had some “Harmony” (I think) gummy bears that were decent. And the Russel Stover sugar free stuff is pretty good. But none of that is hard candy.
Sheesh, 92? If I live that long I’ll take up smoking, drinking, and skydiving.
If you do find some for her to try, read the labels; sugar free does not always equal carb free, and carbs are the issue.
Also, if she uses insulin, her current insulin or medication dose is probably adjusted to her current habits - candy eating included. She could end up having low blood sugars if there’s a sudden drop in the amount of carb in her diet. If you can get her interested, work towards a goal of slowly decreasing the amount of sugar candy she is eating and substituting some sugar-free stuff rather than making a big change all at once.
Like all the others have said, sugar-free candy has changed from what it was 20 or 30 years ago, when the vast majority was sweetened with NutraSweet or saccharine, to being sweetened with sugar alcohols, which are pretty much the same as sugar to diabetics. It tastes great! But it’s no good as far as keeping the blood sugars stable. So those $25/pound Jolly Ranchers probably wouldn’t do any good at all.
When you say “mild diabetes” I’m going say you’re talking Type 2 since I’ve yet to hear “mild” associated with Type 1 in my life.
If that’s the case, I’d talk to her doctor or (even better) CDE (certified diabetic educator) and get some ideas for either meds that will cover the sugar, or some other solution to wean her off the Jolly Ranchers.
If she is on insulin, as GythaOgg mentioned, insulin can be adjusted to cover just about anything, including Jolly Ranchers.
As long as she remains a ‘mild’ type II, and her A1cs and blood sugars are not TOO far off (and it will take a doctor or CDE to determine this), the answer may be ‘let her continue to have her candy’.
She’s very elderly, and there is some concern lately about the risk of lowering blood sugars too much in vulnerable populations - I recall a recent VA study that actually showed an increase in death rate as average sugars (A1c) got lower (within certain parameters).
The doctor may say that the benefits of bringing her blood sugar into a ‘normal’ range may not be worth taking the risk of lowering her sugar too much, or, at her age, trying to change her dietary habits. This depends on where her sugar levels are with what she’s doing currently. We see this a lot in geriatric diabetics - depending on situation, her doctor may tell you it’s OK to let her keep on with her current eating habits.
She’s not on insulin; she takes some kind of prescription pill. I guess it’s under control, because her doctor had her taking blood readings for a while, but she doesn’t do that any more.
So if sugar isn’t worse than other carbs, I guess I should just try to get her to cut down. Thanks to everybody for their comments.
I don’t understand all the stuff about aftertaste and gas, though. I eat a LOT of non-fat, artificially sweetened yogurt, and it’s delicious, and doesn’t give me gas. I would think if they can sweeten something sour like yogurt, they should be able to make good candy.
If her doctor’s not worried about it, I wouldn’t be. And yeah, sugar in and of itself is not a problem - if she’s eating bread, potatoes, rice, or any number of other healthy carbs, those are just as much as a problem blood-sugar-wise as sugar is. If it’s a problem at all. It might not be.
The aftertaste/gas thing comes from stuff being sweetened with sugar alcohols. Not all people react to it, but a lot do. Yogurt tends to be sweetened with aspartame or Splenda or other non-sugar-alcohol sweeteners, that’s why you’re not getting gas.
For whatever reason, candy seems to be sweetened with sugar alcohols. I’m not sure why - maybe it tastes better?
With yogurt, you take milk, and enzymes, and cook it the right way, and you have yogurt, and then you sweeten it. The sweetener doesn’t have to cook, and nor does it have any chemical effect on the yogurt at all. By contrast, hard candy is not “sweetened” with sugar, it is entirely made of sugar. Most sweeteners (other than the sugar alcohols such malitol, xylitol, etc.) do not undergo the reactions necessary to form them into hard candy. The once that do melt and carmelize, have poor effects on human digestion.
Making hard candy without sugar is not like sweetening yogurt. It’s like trying to make yogurt out of water. Only fancy chemistry renders the problem somewhat less than obviously impossible.
In my experience, some people can detect artificial sweeteners, and some can’t. And some can detect some sweeteners but not others. The different sweeteners DO have different tastes, to me, and while I can tolerate SOME Sweet’n’Low in my iced tea, I need half a spoonful of real sugar to kill the bitter aftertaste.
I’ve pretty much given up candy, except for a very occasional treat, because I can’t stand the artificially sweetened ones. People keep giving me the candy, thinking that they’re being nice, and it IS nice that they’re trying to give me something that I like and can eat, but I’ve tried a lot of different sugarfree candies. Most of the sugar free ones aren’t worth it.
Also, just because she’s a bit constipated doesn’t mean that eating sugar alcohols will do any good. VIOLENT diarrhea is no fun. I suggest prunes, which are sweet and tasty and gentle.
If she’s 92, and not going into diabetic comas, I’d say just let her have her Jolly Ranchers. Bluntly, she doesn’t have a lot of time left, let her enjoy a little pleasure. If she was a teen, then yeah, you want to modify habits, but at her age, she’s not going to be able to do a lot of damage.
