I admit that I am a Tim Horton's coffee addict. We have it almost every day of the week. Today I decided to find out how much sugar is really in my large cup. I take 3 sugars and one milk. OMG!!

It's 9 freaking teaspoons! I thought it was 3 teaspoons. I really did. It's 36 grams of sugar.

Now I have to find a way to cut down on my sugar in my Tim's or give up my Tim's except for once a week or something like that.

I must be lucky or something. I'm not overly fond of sweet.

You ARE lucky oskar. Hubby is the same way. I think my sweet cravings come from two places:

1. The South. Southerners love sweet desserts and it's a big part of their lives, not to mention sweet tea.

2. My Mom, who could bake some of the best sweets around. Banana Pudding, Mississippi mud cake, chocolate pudding cake, and at Xmas.....oh my. The best peanut brittle I've ever had, million dollar fudge, M&M cookies. You name it. We had it.

So, from a babe, I was raised on that stuff.

Thanks for the suggestion Chaos. Vanilla sounds good. I use Equal at home and only have my Tim's with sugar. But! 9 teaspoons?? Every day.

So, we are going to stop getting Tim's every day and make coffee in the office. Brought over my Equal to use. However, I will still have my Tim's the "normal" way every Friday afternoon and Sunday for now. It'll seem like more of a treat that way.

Hate to be the naysayer but sugar is less harmful than aspartame (Equal) or sucralose (Splenda). They will leave you unsatisfied as well, and your brain chemistry will prompt you to eat more, eat other sweets or hidden sugar/starches to make up for it. Perhaps you can ease yourself down by cutting out a half a sugar at a time until you get used the new taste. Or maybe a natural substitute like stevia. Or try raw sugar which is sweeter by volume than the processed white sugar so you can use less. Get you Tim's unsweetened and add your own.

I've been using raw sugar ~ there IS a taste difference, but not enough to keep me from using it ~

roseanne, how does Tim Horton's compare to say Starbucks? ~ I'm not a fan of Starbucks coffee ~ it tastes bitter to me ~ but I love love love Starbucks ice cream! ~

Sooz

One food rule: If it's artificial, avoid it if at all possible. That applies to GMOs, as well.

FYI the thought that using artificial sweeteners creates more of a craving is a myth. Several years ago, I cut out sugar completely and used Equal in my coffee and Special K for an entire year. I am a sweet addict, yet I never craved sweets at all. I was satisfied with the Equal. It's when I eat sugar that I crave more sugar.

I've found in the last week since I replaced the sugar in my Tim's coffee, as well as my one cup in the office with Equal, I am craving fewer sweets.

I think the cravings are psychological. People think they can have more sweets when they use artificial sweeteners some of the time, so they eat more. jmo

Starbucks NTY We have Tim Horton's ground coffee at home, but it's not the same. It's their coffee maker that makes the difference, I think.......or they don't sell the same coffee in the tins that they use in the stores.

Raw sugar. Hmmm, I did some research. Did you know that brown sugar is raw sugar with molasses in it? I didn't. lol

Stevia. Don't like it. And:

But not everyone is enthusiastic about stevia moving into the mainstream. Although it has a long history of use, there are fears that introducing stevia and its extracts in a wide variety of products could lead to potential health problems.

For instance, some studies have suggested it can lead to male reproductive problems, interfere with metabolism and cause genetic mutations
......
He said evidence of possible genetic mutations in animals caused by stevia extracts is alarming and that companies should launch rigorous studies on the effects in humans to determine the potential risk.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/hea ... cle572504/


I'll stick with my 4 packets of Equal a day and fewer or no sweet snacks. That's about 1/1000th of the dose they used in their studies on rats.

There is this:

In its report on aspartame, the American Cancer Society concludes that "current evidence does not demonstrate any link between aspartame ingestion and increased cancer risk."

In the newly published study, Soffritti and colleagues speculated that methanol, which is a byproduct of aspartame, may explain the increase in cancers seen in the study. Methanol is metabolized in both rats and humans to form formaldehyde, which is a carcinogen.

Beth Hubrich, MS, MD, of the artificial sweetener-industry group Calorie Control Council, tells WebMD that all kinds of foods contain methanol. She calls the newly published study "seriously flawed."

"You can actually find six times more methanol in a glass of tomato juice than in a beverage sweetened with aspartame," she says. "And there is no difference in the way that methanol is metabolized by the body when it comes from aspartame or from some other source like tomato or orange juice."


http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/200511 ... ink?page=2

No matter how you look at it, it's a crap shoot.

All I know is that it's working for me already and the doc had warned that I am "pre-diabetic, Type II. I'm not feeling as tired by lunchtime and early evening, so that tells me that my blood sugar is normalizing. Now, I want those pounds to magically disappear!

oskar, you ingest more GMOs than you realize. Until they start labeling every product for GMO contents, you never know. Those tomatoes in the tomato sauce you use are probably GMO. The hops in your beer may be too.

80% of our stuff is local and we're right in the middle of a very strong organic farm" community.
Even our suasages are locally made.

That's good oskar.....as long as the livestock from which the sausage is made are fed nothing but organic too. That's what I'm talking about. We never know what is "down the line" with our food.

Nothing grows here, except in hothouses, lol.

I drink my coffee black with no sugar. I'm diabetic and lactose intolerant... not a good combination.

What's with this "organic" craze. Unless it's made out of plastic or steel, etc., it's all organic. A free range chicken and a barn raised chicken are both organic. About the only difference between them is you are more likely to get worms or some other infestation from free range chickens.

I don't worry about "organic" as much as I do about the antibiotic/hormone crap in my meat and milk products. Most beef, dairy cattle and poultry raised in Canada is free of that stuff and you can tell the difference. We bought some chicken breasts in the US once because they were a great deal. Tough and stringy compared to what we buy here. The cheese here is much better too. I think there are stronger laws about those things here.

Organic is only better in some circumstances. It's one way to tell that your meat is hormone free, but it doesn't have to be organic for that. For meat, it means the animals were not fed chemicals or garbage. It's also a lazy way to know there are not trans fats or high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners in your food. That's good when you are choosing food that has a lot of ingredients where those things are hidden, like crackers, yogurt, cookies, prepared foods like mac and cheese, etc. For fruits and vegetables, it means no pesticides or chemical fertilizers. This is important for potatoes, because after the potatoes are picked, conventional farmers kill the above ground vines with chemicals, which go into the soil, where the next years potato crop is planted. It's not as important with citrus fruits or bananas unless you are eating or using the skins in food.