Sweeteners — My Hot Take
Don's honest breakdown of what I use, when, and why.
There's no single "healthy sweetener" — every option trades something for something else, and which one I reach for depends on how much of it a recipe actually needs. Here's how I actually decide.
Allulose
Allulose is my go-to for small amounts — a dressing, a marinade, anything measured in teaspoons. It's rare sugar, it's zero-glycemic, and in a small-batch recipe like my raspberry vinaigrette, it does exactly what I want without the blood sugar spike.
Where I draw the line: baking. If a recipe needs "too much" allulose to hit the right sweetness or texture, I won't use it. It's not that I think it's dangerous — it's that it's a newer sweetener, and I don't feel like the amount of long-term, large-quantity data is there yet for my own comfort level. Small amounts, sure. Bulk baking, not yet.
Monk Fruit
Monk fruit has the opposite problem. It's so intensely sweet that a realistic recipe-scale amount is sometimes a few grains — genuinely hard to measure without a micro-scale. Great for a drink or a dressing where a tiny hit of sweetness goes a long way. Not practical when a recipe needs actual volume, like sugar does in a baked good, to work structurally.
Stevia (Powdered)
I'm not really a fan of powdered stevia. To me it just tastes grassy — there's an aftertaste I can't get past, no matter the brand.
Liquid Stevia
Liquid stevia, on the other hand, I really like. I keep toffee-flavored on hand for coffee, and lemon for teas and lemon drinks — no grassy aftertaste at all in the liquid form.
One thing worth saying: not all stevia is made equally. Some of what's on the market (I'm pretty sure the Coca-Cola version is one of them) is synthetic, not the real extract. I won't touch that stuff — if it's stevia, I want the real thing.
When the Substitute Doesn't Fit: Just Use Sugar
If a recipe needs more allulose than I'm comfortable with, and monk fruit can't supply the volume, my answer isn't to force a substitute to work — it's to use real sugar and deal with the calories honestly. That's always on the table. It just means portion control becomes the discipline instead of the sweetener. Known ingredient, known math, no guessing how a novel sweetener behaves in bulk or at oven temperatures.