Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

[vakkotaur]

I saw some Reese's "1 gram Sugar carb" peanut butter cups at work and decided to try them. I also got the regular kind for comparison.

The ingredients lists are interesting. The regular kind starts off with milk chocolate while the "1 gram" kind starts off with peanuts. I think the wall of the regular kind is thicker than the wall of the "1 gram" so there may be more peanut butter filling. The "1 gram" also uses a couple artificial sweeteners, sucralose and acesulfame potassium. Oddly, while being more artificial, it seems to be more like actual peanut butter. It's still not what you'd spread on toast but it does stick to the roof of the mouth some.

Regular: Milk chocolate(sugar; cocoa butter; chocolate; nonfat milk, milk fat, lactose, soy lecithin and pgpr, emulsifiers); peanuts; sugar; dextrose; salt; tbhq

"1 gram": peanuts; erythritol; cellulose gel; chocolate; inulin; cocoa butter; polyglycitol syrup; cream; less than 2% of: salt; soy lecithin and pgpr; emulsifiers; glycerin; sucralose; vanillin; artificial flavor; tbhq; aceulfame potassium

The nutritional label shows that the "1 gram" has less of almost everything except for dietary fiber and "sugar alcohols." I'm not going to copy the nutritional labels, but the "1 gram" is 160 calories (110 fat) while the regular is 230 calories (120 fat).

It's certainly best to avoid both the regular version and the "1 carb" but if you don't have problems with what's in the "1 carb" (I prefer to avoid artificial sweeteners, myself) then it seems to be a little less bad for you than the regular version.

Comments

[kiwihunter8.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the chocolate update. I've been wanting to try those dietetic ones but was afraid the sweetners might have...bad gastric effects...

Speaking of chocolate...

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

Last year I brought some Pearson's Nut Goodies to RCFM. I had no idea who all sampled them anymore (I'm great with names and faces - I can forget everyone...) but I do remember someone commenting that they were what Snickers wanted to be. Did you get to sample any?

I also brought some Twin Bing but they didn't seem to go over all that well. I'm wondering what else might be regional and available here that might be appreciated there. Any ideas or suggestion? Even "don't do that" is a valid suggestion.

[tenax.livejournal.com]

There's an awful lot of misinformation out there about Splenda and sucralose. In particular, I've found a lot of sites which hype their so-called natural herbalistic solutions, with little to no actual scientific research on whether those have harmful side effects.

I particularly like the argument that sucralose is bad because it's made of chlorine, the same chlorine that goes into your swimming pool!!!!1!eleven (As opposed to the same chlorine that goes into table salt!)

As one of my friends put it, as an alternative sweetner, he'd rather trust sucralose. Who knows what's in the herbal sweetner packets. With sucralose, he's got a chemical name, formula, and reams of scientific studies.

I do know some people have allergic reactions to products with sucralose. If something bad is found later on, he can avoid anything that contains that chemical.

[vakkotaur.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of nonsense. I simply prefer to avoid artificial sweeteners as I'm not sure just how safe they really are, but natural sweeteners have been around a long, long time and generally acceptable. A good argument can be made against refined natural sweeteners, too. I tend to drink plain water or unsweetened juice as that neatly avoids the issue of added sweeteners of any kind.

There was at least one study that I read about in Science News (http://www.sciencenews.org/) that had an interesting result. Evidently the body doesn't like being fooled by non-caloric sweeteners and compensates by trying to get more, which makes some sense. If a person eats a low calorie item, more calories will be needed to make up for that deficit - which is a great system, but not for those trying to shed or or at least not gain pounds.

If you can get to it (I'm a subscriber, so I see all the articles), the Still Hungry? (http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050402/bob9.asp) article in the 2 April 2005 issue has some interesting things to say about hunger regulating hormones and how they are affected. While blaming all obesity on high fructose corn syrup is certainly silly, there may be some truth in it as a contributing factor. Fructose seems not to switch off the hunger signal all that well. That's fine - if you only get fructose from eating fruit.