So I've been in an office job for about 7 years now and in each year I've been gaining weight. I imagine this as a consequence of more innactivity, getting older, and eating worse at lunch. So for the past 6 months or so I've been trying to watch what I eat but there hasn't been much effect on the tendancy to gain weight. As it turns out, I eventually determined that my homemade Iced-Tea recipe is pretty much the same sugar and calorie content as the same volume of Nestea or Lipton canned beverage. Since I drink it pretty much like water, the extra 500-800 calories / day I was taking in from it was the 'missing link' in why I haven't been losing weight despite trying to eat less calories on the whole.
I could just drink water but that's not very fun so I've begun to experiment with alternative recipes. Turns out that the sugar is what makes it good.
I don't trust synthetic sweeteners (except for maybe sucralose but even that has limitted supporting evidence and also an undesirable aftertaste). Essentially there needs to be quite a bit of sugar to counteract the lemon sourness and tea bitterness (those 3 being the only ingredients). I've often heard of natural fruit sugars being so much better for you but it turns out these are just basically fructose...
So I'm thinking maybe pure fructose instead of table sugar would work for me. But now I'm reading about how fructose can be so bad and is linked with obesity, etc. But in this application it doesn't make sense to me so I'm wondering what you all think. Since sugar is 50/50 glucose/fructose I'm getting the fructose anyways. And with fructose being almost twice as sweet, I could add about half as much with the same effect. Really if I only use half, all I've done is cut out the glucose which is the calorie-reduction I'm after. For the extra bit to come out with the very same sweetness I could add honey or maybe a very concentrated fruit juice (like raspberry) in order to add another flavour component also.
Curious what you guys think, but the way I see it fructose has no drawback to sucrose in those cases where you only use half as much, and gains from the higher GI index rating and lower overall calorie content...
I could just drink water but that's not very fun so I've begun to experiment with alternative recipes. Turns out that the sugar is what makes it good.
I don't trust synthetic sweeteners (except for maybe sucralose but even that has limitted supporting evidence and also an undesirable aftertaste). Essentially there needs to be quite a bit of sugar to counteract the lemon sourness and tea bitterness (those 3 being the only ingredients). I've often heard of natural fruit sugars being so much better for you but it turns out these are just basically fructose...So I'm thinking maybe pure fructose instead of table sugar would work for me. But now I'm reading about how fructose can be so bad and is linked with obesity, etc. But in this application it doesn't make sense to me so I'm wondering what you all think. Since sugar is 50/50 glucose/fructose I'm getting the fructose anyways. And with fructose being almost twice as sweet, I could add about half as much with the same effect. Really if I only use half, all I've done is cut out the glucose which is the calorie-reduction I'm after. For the extra bit to come out with the very same sweetness I could add honey or maybe a very concentrated fruit juice (like raspberry) in order to add another flavour component also.
Curious what you guys think, but the way I see it fructose has no drawback to sucrose in those cases where you only use half as much, and gains from the higher GI index rating and lower overall calorie content...
