evil artificial sweetener

[jinian]

I was going to say that I found a migraine trigger, but I'm not sure the awful headaches and lethargy of the past week-plus really crossed the line into migraine, though I saw a few sparks. In any case, please allow me to warn you all against sorbitol. It can be detected by a bland, smooth sweetness that sort of coats the roof of one's mouth, and it hides in Dreyer's "Whole Fruit" popsicles. You might think that, like the "Whole Fruit" sorbets or the Dole all-juice popsicles, they would contain fruit juice without tons of sweetening, but you would be wrong. In the case of the tangerine-flavored one, sorbitol is the second ingredient, after water. I failed to notice it until after I'd been eating the things for several days.

Fortunately, I don't like artificial sweeteners, but how irksome to have to look in detail at everything to see whether they're sneaking them in. Look I shall, though, I'm not doing three days of misery for one exposure again.

Comments

[cheesepuppet.livejournal.com]

Weird! My strawberry ones are all fruit, except for "sugar". I looked up sorbitol and migraines on Google, and I couldn't find anything except that sorbitol is an ingredient (I assume a sweetener) in many migraine medications. Could it be the tangerines?

[jinian.livejournal.com]

What brand are yours? The Dole ones have always been okay, it's just these nasty Dreyer's ones. The ones in my freezer have all got it -- strawberry and raspberry have it as ingredient three, after the actual fruit.

Why would you sweeten a migraine medication? Sheesh. Mine has lactose, so they do put some weird crap into them.

I have no reaction to tangerines the actual fruit, and I felt like hell after any of the popsicles.

[cheesepuppet.livejournal.com]

Mine are Dreyers too. I have a box of strawberry and a box of "wild berry", and both list sugar as an ingredient, no sorbitol anywhere.

They were on sale a few weeks ago, maybe they were getting pushed to make way for some new and "improved" ones? I dunno. Sorry it's giving you problems though. I was going to suggest that you try to find a new favorite flavor, but if you have strawberry and yours has the sorbitol, then maybe they're transitioning all of them to that.

As for sweetening migraine medication, the pills I saw were things like Advil for Migraines, and I know that if I hold an Advil in my mouth longer than a few seconds, I start to taste sugar. I suppose they put it on the "candy coating" to help it go down. I'll be happy when all medication, from aspirin to chemo, comes in the form of chocolate.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

A recent grocery-store trip revealed that there are "No Sugar Added" ones and normal ones still available, so I blame Wim. :)

[wiredferret.livejournal.com]

Rat bastards.

Artificial sweeteners are de debil. I just noticed that my cereal bars are now lower sugar. Happily, the sub of choice was sucralose, which is not a trigger for me, but still. Grr.

[elynne.livejournal.com]

Glargh. Sympathy.

[simonelo.livejournal.com]

i agree on the annoyance that is having to read Every Last Label to see what they've snuck in now. i managed to discover that both aspartame AND sucralose are migraine triggers for me, which means i'm pretty well out of artifical sweeteners.

i'm curious, though, if you managed to grab a box of "diet" popsicles.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I didn't grab them personally, or I'd have been suspicious. "No sugar added" doesn't mean that they have, reasonably, allowed the fruit juice to taste like fruit; it means there's something evil in them. There do seem to be sugarless and sugared versions out in the world, of Dreyer's and the formerly trustworthy Dole, so I'm just going to have to keep my eyes open.