Hi, I am new to the community and I'm starting my 6 month nutrition coaching before surgery, first appointment done. But I was looking to start eating sugar free things and get my mind and body use to them and I started noticing all of them used Aceaulfame Potassium, Aspartame,Saccharin and Sucralose. I always avoided these in the past but now even on this app and the things I find online, all have this as a substitute. So I was wondering if anyone found any pudding, protein powder or shakes or anything of that sort with Stevia or Erythritol instead?

It’s really difficult to avoid all the artificial sweeteners. They seem to be in everything these days.

I wanted to reduce or kill any craving for sweet/sugar after surgery. My way of overcoming them was to prepare & cook most of my food myself. It was the only way I could control the ingredients. I don’t use sugar alternatives either. I know there’s sweeteners in the yoghurt & protein bars I buy but that’s really it. I generally avoid sweet things except for naturally occurring sugars like in fruit & I do put a little bit of honey in my rolled oats to help offset the odd hypoglycaemic episodes I can have in the morning (I used to have them occasionally when I was slim in the past too). As soon as I passed the fluid only stage post surgery I never had another protein shake. I made a lot of soup as I went through the post surgery stages. Now if I want something dessert-like I make chia pudding (lactose free milk, chia seeds, vanilla extract).

Cooking your own food my be a way for you to not consume the sweeteners you want to avoid. I like to cook so it wasn’t an issue for me. These 6 months will allow you to do lots of research into suitable alternatives. In Australia we don’t have the 6 month pre requisite. I had three weeks between the first appointment with my surgeon & my surgery.

This is bit of a thing for me so I apologise if I sound preachy. There’s a lot of interesting research about now about the side effects of sweeteners & the disadvantages. Sure there’s lots of research showing replacing sweeteners with sugar will cause weight loss but of course it will. Going from consuming 100s/1000s of calories in non diet soft drink to 0 calories by drinking diet sodas will result in some weight loss. Dig deep & you will find some research that’s now showing sweeteners can cause weight gain.

Good luck.

Thank you I will look into making some of my own puddings n' such, I was going to cook most of my food but I knew I would have to get so much protein a day and it seemed like everyone drinks protein shakes daily to help with that.

There are a few brands that use stevia as a sweetener or monk fruit, but you generally have to go to places like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. You can also buy plain and add your own stevia or monk fruit.

Protein powder wise, many of the dry powders use stevia now. The Ready to drink shakes are very heard to find without artificial sweeteners.