Here’s the thing about sugar substitutes. I’m sure that there are in fact people out there who enjoy sugar substitutes, and would knowingly choose a sugar substitute over an actual legitimate sugar, and I’m sure that these people are sure that they are either making a health-concious decision, or are, in some way shape or form, making a choice which they find more palatable. This could most definitely be the result of some long forgotten mass media marketing campaign that captivated every living person during the early 1980s capable of reading English letters, and I’ve heard about the whole “low-fat” thing that happened during the 90s, and I know that at some point people started not wanting sugar because even Coca-Cola, the company which is probably the best barometer for what the average consumer wants, ignoring their major mishap of “New Coke,” which they want us to forget yet even though I know very very little about it and will not do more research to expand my knowledge of said phenomenon, I personally will make sure they don’t forget it. It could be some chemistry of aging thing where as soon as you hit a certain age, the chemistry of your body changes and you immediately start craving either Splenda, or Sweet and Low, or Equal, but only one of those three options and never all or two of them, and you start to believe that this highly artificial and manufactured product is much more appealing and appetizing that the sugar you’ve been happily consuming since you were a very young person. The Cheesecake Factory, another company which is doing pretty well, decided to introduce a Cheesecake where instead of normal sugar, as you would expect to be a component of a regular cheesecake, there would be Splenda, and the Splenda would be the primary ingredient of the cheesecake that would provide the cheesecake with at least some sweetness. The thing is, I’ve tried that cheesecake, and I purchased it with real American dollars, or at least I used my Debit Card and I handed it to the woman at the Cheesecake counter at the Cheesecake factory and she took the credit card and swiped the little line on the back of the card on the slot which is conveniently placed on the side of the cash register screen, and then she handed it back to me and told me that my card was declined because I didn’t have enough money on my credit card and the bank which my debit card is associated with said “Sorry, but you don’t have the money to buy this slice of awful Splenda cheesecake from the Cheesecake factory,” and the woman got very uncomfortable, but I said, “hold on just give me one second please,” and I turned on my iphone and transferred seventeen dollars from the money I made over the summer onto my debit card, and then gave the debit card back to the woman who was now both annoyed with me for creating an entire production, and also because there was a line of hungry cheesecake-wanters lined up right behind me, and my cheesecake production was creating a line of traffic as Cheesecake Factory Corporate only allotted one cash register for the Cheesecake counter, and so finally Chase Bank said, “okay, we tried to warn you not to buy that disgusting cheesecake by declining your debit card from purchasing it, but you went ahead and made the conscious effort to add more money to the debit card which puts us in the uncomfortable position of now having to allow you to purchase the cheesecake, so alas now we’ll reluctantly let you purchase the Splenda cheesecake,” and so I got my Splenda cheesecake and walked outside of the Cheesecake factory and sat on the little bench they have out there in that beautiful Lincolnshire strip-mall which used to have a Barnes and Noble, but the Barnes and Noble went out of business and so it’s now a NorthShore medical facility, which is basically what happened to Borders over on Lake-Cook road, which prompts me to wonder if NorthShore Medical Group is trying to drive bookstores out of business, yet regardless I sat down on that bench and used the plastic fork they gave me to try a bite of the Splenda cheesecake and it was awful.

I bet you also didn’t consider the fact that some of the sugar substitutes are actually owned by the same company, and others aren’t owned by that same company. I’m not sure which sugar company owns which sugar substitute, but I am sure that Domino owns either Sweet and Low or Splenda or Equal, but it could be any of them. It is entirely possible that all three of the major competitors, listed in the prior sentence, are owned by the same company, which would make it more logical as to how you always see all three together, and very rarely is one missing from that little injection-molded plastic container they put on your table at breakfast places before you get there. I don’t know a whole lot about Sugar in the Raw. That’s a brown sugar which doesn’t stick together like the brown sugar you might buy from the grocery store, as it’s a fancier and different type of brown sugar with a pretentious name that they list on the little sugar packet which reads “Turbinado Sugar.” I think I like this sugar better in a cup of coffee than a generic white sugar, however I think this is only because my mom insists that this turbinado sugar is much better than white sugar, and it tastes much better and is so much better in the coffee. 

I don’t like how Splenda tastes, but it is very funny, to me at least, that people will ask for Splenda. They want to consume Splenda. They are the target audience for the Cheesecake Factory Splenda Cheesecake. I am not a part of that target audience. I don’t think anybody ever asks for Sweet and Low or Equal, which is interesting because they seem to stock them to the same degree and with the same frequency as Splenda. Maybe when a restaurant purchases sugar substitutes wholesale, the company sends them a whole lot of Splenda, and then a few packets of Sweet and Low, and a few packets of Equal. This would make the people sitting in the restaurant owner’s restaurant very happy because they see a variety of options of sugar sweeteners to choose from, even though they were going to choose Splenda regardless. This would also excite the young children who like to stack the sugar packets on top of each other while they wait for their meals, until they drop all of the sugar packets on the floor because the pyramid they were trying to build just could support the weight of that next layer of sugar packets, and then that would be the end of that sugar stacking game. I feel like if, God forbid, if a restaurant were somehow out of Splenda, the next logical choice would be Sweet and Low. I do not know what Sweet and Low or Equal taste like, but based on zero reasons I am sure that Sweet and Low tastes infinitely better than Equal. 

It also might be worth noting that the reason there are only three, not less than three, major sugar substitute competitors, is that there are only three primary colors. I feel like every so often I’ll be in a restaurant and there’ll be a green sugar substitute packet mixed in with the Splenda and the Sweet and Low and the Equal and the Domino White Sugar and the Sugar in the Raw and it’ll say something like Truvia on it, which just looks and sounds often. Green is not a primary color, and therefore I don’t want a sugar substitute which comes in a green packet. 

It’s also interesting how people will be so concerned about the sweetener they put in their coffee in the morning, and will go as far as to abstain from sugar to be healthier, and have less sugar overall, when in reality these sugar packets are some of the smallest portions of sugar you’ve ever seen! Is that nothing of an amount of sugar worth substituting--is it worth making your day notably worse to avoid that half a gram of sugar, not even a teaspoon, that I’m sure your body wouldn’t be able to even recognize as a sugar? Why is everyone putting themselves through such pain?

I’m just waiting for an article banning Splenda for having asbestos as the primary ingredient. There has got to be asbestos in there somewhere.