Sweet News? Allulose: Low Calorie "Rare Sugar" Coming Soon

By Crabby McSlacker

First off, apologies to the subset of Exceptionally Virtuous Cranky Fitness Readers out there who don't give a crap about whatever new low-calorie sweeteners are on the horizon.

Some of you are perfectly content keeping it simple and kickin' it old school with real sugar. You may be one of those level-headed moderation people.

"Sure," you might say, "I have an occasional treat that has sugar in it, but I'd rather have a real brownie on a special occasion and really enjoy it! Doesn't that make more sense than settling for counterfeit replacements like you do, Crabby?"

To which I reply: Harumph.

(Well, maybe not literally. Harumph is not a word real people say. I would say something harumph-like and chances are it would be cruder.)

Anyway, I think "occasional" is a word best reserved for solar eclipses and colonoscopies. Not tasty sweet desserts and beverages. And yes--I am a child. I want to eat sweets at every conceivable opportunity if I can get away with it.

Nor am I all: "Who needs sugar? I just put molasses in my organic green tea or my homemade tempeh/flax cookies. I really don't need any other sweeteners at all, they all taste too sweet!"

I'm sorry, but molasses is no more a sweetener than candy corn is a vegetable.

When it comes to sweets, I want it all: frequency, quantity, and quality. On the other hand, I'd rather not eat too many things that are likely to kill me over time. And thus the dilemma.

My current non-sugar sweetener rotation includes a little bit of splenda, quite a lot of stevia, some coconut sugar, erythritol, and monk fruit. But they all come with tradeoffs in terms of health effects, taste, digestive issues, cost, and cooking-friendliness.

But there's a new kid in town, coming soon: Allulose, also known as Psicose or D-Psicose. It's not available directly to consumers yet, but the wheels are in motion.  The FDA has declared it "Generally Recognized as Safe," and it is already being marketed to food manufacturers for use in their products. It has 90% or so fewer calories than sugar.

So what's the deal? Could Allulose be the holy grail for 'cheaters' like Crabby McSlacker who want to have their cake and eat it too and then eat it again in a couple hours and keep eating it all day long?

Kelp Noodles, Beer, Sin, and Goals

Yep, it's time for this months' goal support post!

For those who are not regulars here, the post is mainly a chance for people to check in and leave comments about what challenges they might be tackling, or how things are going generally, as well as to offer support to others who are doing the same.  Comments and comment replies are thus highly encouraged.

And, as is traditional, I will also cram a bunch of seemingly unrelated things together and force them into a theme involving goals.   In fact I probably should have used a catchier title, one like:

"Surprising Motivational Secret You Won't Believe!"  Or:

"For Every Thing, Turn Turn Turn, There is a Season," Or:

"Gluttony and Sloth, Your New BFFs!" Or:

"Guess What, Kelp Noodles Don't Suck, But You're Not Getting Any For Free!"

OK, maybe that last one could use a bit of work.

(But since I am gonna slip in a mini Kelp Noodle Review I wanted to warn you there is no giveaway because I was too lazy to track down the appropriate PR person and beg. Sorry).

Do We Need a Title?

So alert and/or suspicious readers may have noticed the usual Random Research Saturday post appeared on Friday. Hmmm... Is Crabby trying to shift her schedule around so she can slip away from Cranky Fitness at least one and possibly two days over the Weekend?

Yes, exactly!

Crabby has decided to stop whining so much about Balance in her Life and actually do something about it. She decided she needs to get over herself--nobody is making her post every day. At this rate, she will quickly use up every opinion she has about Health and Fitness and have nothing left to say. And then how would she get you all to come here and entertain her with your comments?

Even when Crabby "takes a vacation," as she pretended to do over the Fourth and Fifth of July, she finds herself back at her computer half the time. She was busy signing up for things and scouting out new sources of traffic and playing with widgets and pondering the Efficacy of Social Bookmarking.

This is silly. She's going to stop it.

As it happens, Sunday is Crabby's Four Month Anniversary at Cranky Fitness and it seems like a good time to re-evaluate her relationship to it. (And she knows she's just like one of those annoying infatuated couples, the way she insists on announcing every passing month! But she's still very much in the Honeymoon period of blogging. She promises after 6 months she'll shut up about it, at least for anything less than an Annual Anniversary). But even while still Honeymooning, it is advisable to take breaks every now and then. And so Crabby will be gone more on weekends. And in fact, she may be out of town for a few days in a week or so.

Crabby may go away now and then for a few days but she will always come back. She likes everybody here and misses her visitors when she is gone. So please, when Crabby goes away for a few days, do not forget about her entirely and stop checking in at Cranky Fitness! This would make her a very Sad Crab indeed.

And she's hoping that those of you who are also struggling with Cutting Back on Something will be doing what Crabby plans to this weekend--getting the heck away from whatever it is and revisiting the rest of your lives.

Crabby made the mistake last time she went off of trying to shut down comments so she wouldn't feel badly if she didn't respond to each one.

That was dumb. She won't do that again.

So please leave any comments you might have on Blogging or Balance or Weekends or Obsessions or Whatever!

Crabby truly does love reading your comments. She may, however, respond generally and not individually to comments left over the weekend. And if you, too, have fun things to do Outside, she will not be hurt or upset if you decide to catch up with her Monday instead. Have a great weekend!

Housekeeping

This is the sort of post Crabby would normally save for a weekend, because other than one sad little research citation, the whole thing is about blog "housekeeping," not health. But she wants to catch all her Beloved Readers before they scurry off to enjoy the long holiday weekend, leaving Crabby alone by herself in her Crab House, pretending she doesn't notice it needs dusting and vacuuming.

Anyway.

Crabby had planned to be discreet and low-key about the Recent Changes at Cranky Fitness around commenting. She did not want to get anyone who may still be lurking out there too riled up. But then she decided what the hell. Readers knew something was up.

So Crabby has decided to stop being all mysterious about it. It may in fact be a good time to set forth a few Blog Commenting Policies, just to prevent any future misunderstandings.

As Alert Readers may have noticed, the Comments, formerly unrestricted, are now being "moderated." Moderation just means that Crabby gets your Comments in her email and has to approve them before they are released for public consumption.

Moderation is annoying from both ends, but probably worse for Readers. Crabby at least gets to see her words in print as soon as she hits Publish, while you all have to wait and come back later.

And then what happens when you come back? Maybe Crabby is still off doing Crabbish things so you have to return yet again. (Or worse, you might decide Crabby's blog is just not worth the effort!) And then when you do return you find Crabby has released a whole bunch of comments at the same time, many of which appear before yours does. And maybe some of those comments say the exact same thing you did! But no one knows you thought of it first! Or whatever--you may not be nearly as neurotic as Crabby. But in any event, it's a pain.

We'll dump Moderation soon, but if necessary, it may return.

Basically, what happened was that a new visitor did not believe it was fair of Crabby to delete his comments, and so he vowed he would outlast her and keep putting them up over and over again until she relented and let him air his thoughts.

But Crabby didn't like his thoughts much, nor the way he expressed them. And Crabby was too lazy to keep deleting the same comments over and over, so instead she enabled moderation.

Crabby wants to be the first to point out that she was indeed being arbitrary and possibly unfair. If hers were the only blog in the world, it would be inexcusable for her to say "some people may speak and others may not."

But since there are something like 75 million blogs out there, Crabby isn't too worried about this sort of unfairness. Those who find Cranky Fitness an unfriendly forum can find plenty of other places to make their points. There is no First Amendment Right to air your thoughts on someone else's "publication," whether that publication be a small blog or Fox News or the front page of the New York Times.

That said, Crabby really does want to keep an open mind about allowing a variety of different points of view. She lets stuff slide in the Comments section sometimes that others might delete as offensive. But then every now and then a comment seems to "cross a line" and she deletes it. It is her blog and therefore her line. (And these sorts of comments have never been from regular visitors; only first timers with no previous connection to the blog).

So for clarification, Crabby reserves the right to be completely arbitrary about deleting comments. But as examples, here are some things she might delete:

1. Spam. (Which does not mean Reader Recommendations. Crabby loves these! She means things that appear out of nowhere and don't seem to have anything to do with health or fitness). If somehow she messes this up (which she may have actually done once before) and you're a regular reader and she mistakenly deletes you as spam, just come back and make it clear you're really Cranky Fitness fan and are not here trying to sell something.

2. Insults or threats directed at other Commenters or Crabby;

3. Graphic sexual discussions that seem to have little to do with topic at hand; (and sometimes our subjects are quite racy, so context is everything) and

4. General inappropriate weirdness of the sort that suggests that you are (a) mentally unbalanced; (b) intoxicated or (c) at the wrong blog.

(Note: there are some #4 type comments scattered about that Crabby let slide; if you're ever REALLY bored and decide to prowl around the archives some of them are quite amusing).

Does this all make sense?

And now it is time for Crabby to direct you to our Health Research Study for the day, a random and not particularly recent paper chosen only because it involves Housekeeping! Or at least the study of "structured tasks such as cleaning dishes and clothes." This thing is so pompous and pointless, that Crabby can't even bring herself to make fun of it!

It starts off: "As the prevalence of obesity has increased, so has sedentariness..." and doesn't get any better after that. She won't even tell you what it concludes. Crabby's hoping a brave reader or two will take a look here and report back to the class what they think of this ground-breaking research.

So, Crabby hopes you'll all be patient with Moderation just a bit longer until it is gone. We have some posts coming up in the following week that could be considered offensive or controversial, so Crabby may leave it on just a bit longer. Or she may take it off and put it back on again as needed. Either way, she hopes this will not keep you from Commenting on Commenting, or on anything else that occurs to you!