Many people have GI issues from various artifical sweeteners. Xylitol, which is in a lot of chewing gum, is one of the worst. Splenda is, I believe, sucralose, which can also cause problems.

True, but better not to chew gum at all than spend a lot of time in the bathroom!

I avoid all artificial sweeteners with the exception of stevia. I never add it to anything, but I've found some of the herbal teas I drink contain it and it doesn't cause me issues.

Xylitol is deadly to dogs and we will not have it in our house. We do not eat many sweets or drink sodas. I use honey in my herbal tea, that's about it. I don't bake. We will occasionally splurge on a shared dessert in a restaurant but that is a rare occasion. But I avoid all artificial sweeteners.

Stevia is not an artificial sweetener.

Splenda makes me have this horrible sinus drainage/gunk in the back of my throat. I had to stop using it!

stevia is plant based ... not quite as sweet as the pink no-no C causing thing in rats. Stevia works well with my system/diabetic; one packet does three cups of mornin' joe

Me and sugar have gotten along fine, luckily though I have no sweetener related health issues to contend with. If I did I'd rather not use any artificial sweeteners and just get used to it. Lately I started using honey in my morning cup of coffee rather than sugar, not that I need to, just like the taste. From what I've read honey is only marginally better sugar.

I went back to white sugar to sweeten my tea.....only a teaspoon. I ate honey on a banana yesterday as a sweet treat. But......I LOVE those packets you flavor water with.....I need to wean myself off those. Thanks for the reminder.

I bought some Monkfruit sweetener, which looks and tastes like sugar but has no calories. The drawback to this is that it is difficult to get to dissolve, but you can cook with it the same way you would with sugar.

I do not know what erythritol is, and I'm not sure what monkfruit is.

I have no problems with Splenda and will go back to using Splenda instead, since it is easier to dissolve.

Thank you Seagrass for mentioning that Xylitol is absolutely poison for dogs.

I know a little dog that died from eating a "sugar free" desert that his human had no idea was deadly. Heartbreaking loss for a pet parent.

I drink a lot of iced tea in summer so I switched to artificial sweetener. Equal For Baking was fine but went off the shelves for a long time, so I switched to Splenda. Towards the end of summer I started wondering what was going on with my innards, because they’d been going on for a good while. Thinking back, I began to wonder if it might be the Splenda so I stopped drinking iced tea. The issue went away.

Luckily Equal For Baking is back on the shelves and it doesn’t affect me.

I like Monkfruit in my coffee but don't like it sprinkled on my cold yogurt so I use Splenda on my plain Fage yogurt with fruit in the morning.

Interesting...never heard of neotame.

I have read each comment (thank you) and am planning to use them as a guide to further experimenting. Since the majority of the sweetening I do is for water and plain yogurt, I am continuing to try different commercial water flavorings. Today I bought some Stur which is made from stevia extract. The fruit punch flavor tastes good to me, so now it is just a matter of waiting and seeing whether there are any unwanted symptoms. I figured I'd give it a week (unless something shows up immediately).

I know nothing about sweetners as I don’t use them, but my husband used Stevia because according to his physician, it was the healthiest of the options available.

I've been using Sweet Leaf, which is a stevia/sugar blend. Only a pinch in my tea is plenty of sweetening (when I want sweetening - I weaned myself to drinking it black a few years ago) and in coffee as well. A bag has lasted me for well over a year so far. I have a little airtight jar that I use for my sugar bowl on the counter and keep the rest in a sealed bag in the pantry.

I do drink diet soda occasionally, and am weaning myself to plain, unsweetened yogurt.

i haven't read all of the comments so forgive me if i'm repeating but, as has been said, xylitol is deadly for dogs. some products are labeling it as "birch bark" which is also deadly to our pets.

Erythritol and Xylitol, Sorbitol and Mannitol and all those various tols are something called Sugar Alcohols. They are naturally occurring compounds but for commercial uses are lab created through different processes, usually fermentation. The sweetener in Stevia is in the same class called polyols. They all tend to have side effects for some people. Some of them have been known since the mid-19th century. The normal way to make them is to alter glucose from corn. Oh no, not corn!!! The process creates compounds, usually stereoisomers, that our bodies cant use but that we can taste. Tons of fruits and vegetables have these compounds in them naturally. Too much though creates issues as it has to be excreted.

I don't care for the taste of these compounds. That they are sweet is beside the point to me. To me Splenda tastes of beans. Sorbitol is especially obnoxious to me.

The stevia product created the same sort of issues. I've decided that I want cold sweet beverages so I will just pay the issue toll that non notritive sweeteners apparently bring for me and just try to use less of any of the flavorings..

I don't use the same reasoning on sugar sweetened items because they are so harmful to me and make me feel really miserable. I'm not paying that toll.

Lucille, for you sucrose takes it toll on you. That is standard white sugar. So one assumes it is not the item but the sugar it contains that causes you grief. That is your biology. For me I have problems with some of those Sugar Alcohols. They make me feel weird. I dislike the taste. I think paying attention to your own systems makes all the sense. The idea that any one of them is necessarily bad is not a truth. If it is bad for me it is me that has the problem. Lots of people consume this stuff with impunity. So it goes.

I once tried a stevia hot chocolate product and spent a good deal of the next day running for the bathroom. I can‘t definitely say that it was the stevia, but I haven’t been willing to try it again.

I dislike most artificial sweeteners. I cannot tolerate Stevia at all. I can taste it immediately in something I wasn't expecting it in. Everyone I know loves it but it literally makes me sick.

Xylitol, forget it! I wind up spending the day in the bathroom! Horrible.

I use very little sugar, about 1/2 teaspoon in my coffee. I can drink coffee and tea without sugar. I will use a little honey on oatmeal, yogurt, Grapefruit, pancakes, fruit.

Jane

Any artificial sweetener, and I am classing Stevia in this also, though I know it is plant based, causes heart palpitations in my aunt, myself, and my daughter. My aunt went to the ER thinking she was having a heart attack. All tests were run. No issues with her heart at all. The attending Dr. took the time to do some research before he let her go. He was determined to find out that was causing it. He finally came and asked her if by any chance she had consumed anything with artificial sweeteners in. She normally only drinks water, but had had one diet soda that day. He told her to never never NEVER ever have anything with artificial sweeteners in it again! This has become a developed allergy in the family. My parents and uncle were diabetics for years, and mom made any pudding or jello in the sugar free. If she baked she used sugar, but anything she bought was sugar free, and we all ate it with no issues. Until the last 10 years at the least. Even Stevia does it to me, so I avoid them all. Please be aware of what your body tells you when you consume these things.

When DH was diagnosed with diabetes, we experimented with lots of alternate sweeteners - stevia, erythritol, allulose, monkfruit, and agave syrup. We both agree that the monkfruit/erythritol blend posted by Lars above tastes the best. I use their brown monkfruit blend in baking, too.

"The sweetener in Stevia is in the same class called polyols."

This is incorrect. Stevia is a glycoside that has a much lower threshold for tasting sweet that "sugar alcohols" aka polyols. Because of this, stevia is sometimes blended with polyols to enhance their sweetness.

The confusion might arise from the fact that, in general use in food science and dietetics, the term polyol is reserved for compounds they are fully hydrogenated, only having -OH functional groups replacing the ketones or aldehydes of sugars and other carbohydrates. Some organic chemists may use that term slightly differently for compounds that are inedible. The moieties attached to steviol "core" of the various stevia sweetening glycosides are definitely sugars...this is what is meant by 'glycoside'.

And, FWIW, Stevia is not considered toxic to dogs...with the caveat that in some products it is used to sweeten, it may be combined with xylitol, which is toxic for them.

Years ago I drank Diet Coke. Loved it! Not a huge amount, but probably 3-5 cans a week. And, then the evening before a Thanksgiving one year, I was drinking one and all of the sudden my tongue started to tingle and then swell! Thank goodness my DH is a family practice physician, as he hit me up with Benadryl and I can’t remember what else. Since that night I’ve been very allergic to the sweetener, Aspartame, that’s used in most diet drinks and some food. I’ve learned the hard way to never, ever order a regular soft drink in a restaurant unless they bring the can to the table and pour it right in front of me. Three times I’ve specifically ordered a regular soft drink, and have been accidentally served a diet one and had an allergic reaction right there in the restaurant. No more! In my opinion, it’s never a good day to die!
But, because type two diabetes runs in my family I’ve had to be very careful with my carb and sugar intake since I turned 40. I’ve found that the sugar substitute erythritol works very well for me and I have no side effects from it. I’ve been using it exclusively for about two years. I order mine online via Amazon.

I gave up any kind of sweetener years ago and artificial sweeteners give me a headache and just taste plain bad to me. I make my husband sweet tea with sugar. I stopped drinking the sweet tea months ago and just from that change I lost close to 10lbs. I prefer unsweetened coffee and tea.