For sometime now, I have been seeing people who, for health reasons having been stopped from taking sugar, using small tablets to sweeten their tea. I was wondering if the sweeteners are healthy for the sick, would it be ok to take them in place of sugar, now that its said sugar is not "very" healthy? Do they have side effects? What are they made of?

Who stopped them;

I believe sweeteners also have some sugar hence its just the amount of "sugar" in the sweeteners

One colleague is diabetic and he says doctors said No to sugar so he went to sweeteners.

And here in lies my answer. Thank you@D32.

Artificial Sweeteners Are Worse Than Sugar

Sweetener lesson 101 is to avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague. There's little doubt in my mind that artificial sweeteners can be even worse for you than sugar and fructose, and there is scientific evidence to back up that conclusion."

Wondering.

Here we are talking about artificial sweeteners for TEA. Not those that are used in making soft drinks, confectionery etc. e.g. Sweetex that costs about 600bob for 600tabs.

I know hundreds of diabetics who use artificial sweeteners (1 or 2 tabs) in their tea with no associated side effects or complications.

If I use 2 teaspoonfuls of sugar in my tea, I would have added 120 calories to my diet. 1 teaspoon of sugar = 4g = 60cal. Artifical sweeteners have no carbohydrates and therefore have no calories. They also improve the taste of the tea (make more palatable), rather than taking sugarless tea.

I agree with @Washiku, anything processed... WACHANA NAYO! If you can

I can dig up articles that particularly say sweeteners are bad news.

Yes, they are a laboratory concocted substances that provide low calorie sweetness without the high insulin response that would occur when consuming e.g. cane sugar.

Wholewheat bread, oatmeal etc...

What exactly does soluble fiber do?

It slows down digestion.

Quoting http://lowcarbdiets.abou...ion/a/fiberbenefits.htm

Soluble fiber, especially the viscous types that hold onto water, will slow down stomach emptying, especially when eaten with lots of fluid and some fat. This is at least partly why soluble fiber tends to decrease the glycemic effect of a meal - the contents of the stomach more gradually enter the small intestine, and from there, the blood.

Note this sentence "fiber tends to decrease the glycemic effect of a meal".

The Glycemic Index is a value that is used to rate different foods on their effect of blood sugar levels - after eating that food. The higher the GI value, the quicker the food raises blood sugar levels, so you want to look for foods that have a low GI.

Tsunami.