Sun Crystals are a new low-calorie sweetener. You can get a free sample so you can decide for yourself whether you like it.
And my response. Sun Crystals are made from natural can sugar and “Erythritol” which the company calls natural as well. It, like phenylalanine and xylitol, is said to occur naturally in many food products. I still don’t think that counts as “natural” but then sugar itself is extracted and processed.
It says one packet equals the sweetness of about 1 teaspoon sugar – I put half a packet in my iced coffee this morning and it’s far sweeter than that.
I take it that Erythritol has has been used in other products and the pairing of it with cane sugar is what is new. It has 4 calories per teaspoon instead of about 16.
Taste – is interesting. It really does seem to taste like sugar, better than sucralose/splenda – but there is also a cool almost mint like sensation. It’ll take more than 2 packets to figure out whether I like it in things. It says that you can use it in cooking and baking.
Reviewers on Amazon had mixed reactions. It seems to be to be rather expensive right now and Wikipedia apparently warns of a strange after-sensation (the cooling) when consumed in large amounts. Some of the complaints were strange but aren’t they often on Amazon? One person said they take forever to dissolve and I wouldn’t say that at all. They disappeared pretty well instantly in my iced coffee. Others complained it wasn’t sweet enough but that would actually be a plus for me. The problem with the flavor of artificial sweeteners is how overwhelming sweet they are.
I guess the main thing holding me back from it right now is it’s expense. $25 for 250 packets on Amazon. We’ll see what the cost is when it makes it to regular stores.
Anyone else tried it?
That price is a bit steep. I agree with you that most sugar substitutes are very sweet. I learned from my mother 45 years ago to use about half of what the instructions suggest as an equivalent for sugar. The new granulated sweeteners don’t seem to be quite that bad, but I cut them by about a third, too. As for erythritol, it sounds like a sugar alcohol to me. Although I keep reading that carbs from sugar alcohols don’t count, my diabetic educator/dietician says it isn’t so. You might be able to discount half the carbs from that source, but you need to test carefully to see just how they affect you. If you’re getting unexplained highs maybe you should be careful of discounting those carbs.
By: adamswife on November 2, 2007
at 7:12 pm
Yes its a sugar alcohol, I have not tried it, but it is apparently for the most part it is passed on into the urine unchanged, as such it should really not have much of any impact on the energy intake (won’t cause fattening and such) but I wonder if it might have other side effects from buzzing around the blood till the kidneys decide its garbage and toss it out.
Personally I use stevia to sweeten things, and rarely (when stevia’s taste is not working with something) I use xylitol or fructose, last one of those is slower to be used up than normal sugar, xylitol has some neat other effects, but some people think it might be bad.
By: TheDarkWraith on November 3, 2007
at 2:00 am
I have not tried it either.Of all the artificial sweeteners I prefer to use fructose,but rarely use it.When I bake,I use about half the sugar called for in most recipes.My old European baking recipes use much less sugar in the recipes than the North American ones though.We don’t add sugar to coffee,black and herbal teas.
By: schnuckiputz on November 3, 2007
at 10:58 am