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?

Monk Fruit: A Stevia/Splenda Alternative Sweetener That Doesn't Suck? (Review & Giveaway)

So how did I not hear about monk fruit until now? Duh. I somehow missed the whole thing.

Well, actually, I did recognize "luo han guo," a name that monk fruit also goes by, as one of the ingredients in the sinisterly addictive protein bars I've been scarfing down ever since the Quest Bar Review.  But I hadn't really noticed the squat orange jar or packets on the grocercy store shelf until I got a PR email on behalf of the folks at Nectresse. I just thought of it as some obscure ingredient only food manufacturers had access to.

In brief, monk fruit is a natural sweetener with almost no calories or glycemic impact. And you can now get it in most grocery stores as an alternative to splenda, stevia, sugar, agave syrup, or whatever the heck else you use to sweeten things up.

But is it safe? And how does it taste? And what was that bit about a giveaway?

 

Emergency Exit

Please do not be alarmed: this is a test of our Emergency Product Review Broadcasting system.

I repeat, this is only a test. There is an actual post hiding here behind the "read more" below about reducing one's sugar/Splenda/whatever intake.

However, to reach this post you must click on a link. And then, warning: things may start to get weird.

If this were an actual Product Review Emergency, we would be sending you away from Cranky Fitness because we'd otherwise be violating Blogher's rules by posting a review here.

This post does not actually violate those guidelines, which is why it is Only A Test.

Soon, however, we anticipate a genuine product review emergency! We will be doing a review and a giveaway of an awesome-sounding, high-value product that we think you will be excited about having a chance to win. What's the emergency? Well, we wanted to keep one ourselves! We couldn't do that without sending you away to our new, slightly uglier, product review page. In the future, we will hope to score more cool free stuff give you helpful information about other products by conducting extensive testing in our Cranky Fitness Laboratory.



Today, however, it's just a test post about sweetener. But please let us know if anything weird happens when you go to the new page to read more!