Hi,

I was cooking a cheesecake today and SJ uses splenda in her recipe. I have bought xylitol and was trying to find a comparison so I could adjust the carb values. Anyway, I found the below links

Splenda Nutrition Values

According to this, Splenda has 1554kj and 93g carbs per 100g

Sugar Nutrition Values

According to this, sugar has 1600kj and 100g carbs per 100g

There doesn't seem to be a lot of difference. Am I missing something???? What is the advantage of splenda? Is it like xylitol in that it isn't absorbed in the same way as sugar and thus doesn't affect the insulin levels in the same way??? How do you work out the carbs for it? I found a few sites on xylitol and the one below states that only one quarter of total carbs is counted, so I am counting xylitol carbs on that basis -
25g of carbs per 100g of xylitol. Hope that's right...

Calculating Carbs for Xylitol

Any comments???

I don't weigh my Splenda... it's very light. As I'm in the US, I use a measuring cup to measure Splenda... and the carb count is 24 net carbs per cup (a volume measurement).

I do know that 100 g of Splenda is a very very large quantity.

The large bag I have (which lasts me over a year) weighs 275 g. and is 9.75 ounces (compared to a 5 lb. bag of sugar).

I just weighed a 1/2 cup of Splenda, which is what I use in my cheesecake, and it weighed 15 g.

Hope that helps.

SJ - nice to c u!!!

Well, I have checked and 1/2 a cup of xylitol weighs 100g and 1/2 cup of sugar weighs 120g - so that explains a lot. Splenda is about 12% the weight of sugar for the same volume. Now it all makes sense - BTW your cheesecake recipe is fabulous

Dr. Joseph Mercola, http://www.mercola.com/
who is anti splenda, uses xylitol in his energy bars and recipes. I have used a little xylitol in my milk shakes, mainly to add some sugar texture. I seem to be okay with it, no blood sugar spikes or gastric distress. It's cheaper than erythritol and I can get it at my local Vitamin Shoppe.

Many low carb plans subtract the carbs from sugar alcohols, which may or may not be good, depending on the sugar alcohol. As with most things, YMMV and you have to see how it effects you.

Also, liquid splenda is better since it contains no maltodextrin, which is what gives the 24g per cup in the granular splenda. I have been using fiberfit, which is liquid splenda with fiber.