Saying that someone is like a princess-and-the-pea for being able to distinguish artificial sweeteners from sugar is like saying that someone is like a princess-and-the-pea for being able to distinguish the big E on the eye chart from all the other letters on the chart. Most people can taste a difference.
I don’t eat fake sugar, and I don’t eat a lot of real sugar, either. I’ve worked hard to re-set my taste buds to more cavemanish (cavewomanish?) settings. Modern humans should be eating about 4 lbs of refined sugar a year. They average over 100.
Not cool.
I’ve gotten my husband on the non-sweetened wagon, and we were recently at a party that had a Publix birthday cake. We both had a slice, stuck a bit in our mouths, and promptly quietly gagged at the same time over the overwhelming sweetness. It was funny how we made eye contact over the cake like “oooohhh ewwwww”. Neither of us felt so good aftewards, either-imagine eating a whole bag of jelly beans. That’s how a tiny slice of heavily frosted cake made us feel.
Watermelon and raspberries taste like candy to me now, so that’s nice =).
I used to put a packet of splenda in my coffee but I was having some digestive issues and I read that artificial sweeteners can cause digestive problems so I switched to real sugar to see if it made a difference. After a few months it hadn’t made any difference so I tried to go back to the splenda to save the calories and I don’t like the taste anymore. I think you can get accustomed to some tastes over time. I used to like Tab but don’t think I could choke one down now. Also, a little pomegranate juice in a glass of sparkling water is really good!
My D is a super taster, she can distinguish flavors in a portion so small you can barely see it.
ohh boy, watermelon. you’re talking my language. i could eat a whole one for dinner and be very happy about it.
it’s also excellent for regularity and nutrition-added hydration, and i would suppose it’s got gobs of potassium and vitamin C.
oh and i have a hard time with those store-bought birthday cakes b/c the frosting has a petroleum-like texture and residue that’s really off-putting. it just doesn’t taste like icing is supposed to taste. and yes, it is far too sweet.
pom juice + fizzy mineral water is amazing and beats soda by a country mile.
i just like milk or half/half in my coffee. that’s sweet enough.
Ha, I’m having a Zevia soda and it tastes just fine to me! It’s called Dr Zevia and it tastes like a Diet Dr Pepper.
you humblebragging special snowflake !!! 
“oh and i have a hard time with those store-bought birthday cakes b/c the frosting has a petroleum-like texture and residue that’s really off-putting. it just doesn’t taste like icing is supposed to taste. and yes, it is far too sweet.”
We love Jewel cakes (Jewel being the name of a big grocery chain here). We buy them for birthdays and special events. It’s actually a running joke in our family about how superior a Jewel cake is. It would be a big disappointment to have a homemade cake or another brand!
Hey, I am not a foodie!! I own it!
Food fight!!! 
@motherofdragons:
Your experience mimics mine, when we consciously stopped using sugar as much, your taste buds do re-align (and yep, I think that is true with artificial sweeteners, after a while it becomes ‘normal’) and more importantly, your sensitivity to sweetness goes way, way up when you stop using it routinely. I enjoy an occasional piece of chocolate, and tend now to eat chocolate that is not heavily laden with sugar. I had a piece of a hershey bar and I couldn’t eat it, to cheapen up production they use a lot less cocoa and replace it with a ton of sugar. Same way if I drink Soda, I can take ginger ale, but when I drink coke or the like, it is overwhelming. I used to use sugar in my coffee or sweetener, now I mostly don’t or a little maple syrup as a treat, and I mean a little, fraction of a teaspoon.
I tend to agree with eating and going back to more ‘pure’ food, but without turning this into a discusson on the paleo diet, I also think if they could have had it our ancestors would have glommed onto sugar, they tended to eat whatever they could get, and in many cases claims for what they ate or didn’t eat were false (they did eat grains, though not in the quantity we did after we started cultivation). But with sugar, I totally agree that cutting back on added sugar and eating it only through natural sources (berries, fruit, etc) is much better:)
Sugar cane was domesticated in 10000 BC. Does that make it Paleo?
It doesn’t bother me at all that some people don’t like Stevia, I am the pickiest eater, ever. If you tell me there is something in my food that I have an aversion to (mayonnaise, ranch dressing, mustard, icky stuff), even if I can’t taste it, it will disgust me. However, what bothers me is that people keep referencing “artificial sweeteners”. Stevia is a plant, a natural sweetener, that is up to 150 times sweeter than sugar. Like it or not, it is NOT an artificial sweetener.
Use too much, it tastes bitter. You might like it in some foods, and hate it in others. You might like one type, but hate the others. I guarantee you would like my banana, sour cream chocolate chip muffins, sweetened with Stevia and applesauce, added flax seed and crushed walnuts. If you don’t put too much Stevia in, and add plenty of other flavors, I doubt that you will notice the difference.
I have never tried yogurt or other things from the store that were sweetened with Stevia, except for chocolate (yummy). I don’t know if I would like them. But I do like the things I cook with Stevia. I am really particular to taste and very picky, and the type I use just tastes sweet…I use less. I wouldn’t give up trying Stevia just because you tried one thing and didn’t like it, it’s quite variable.
Yeah, my “cavewomanish” joke was meant to be somewhat tongue in cheek, since humans have also known how to ferment for at least that long. But sugarcane is only in season for a short time, and they had no ability to refine it or store it like we do today. So you had about a month of eating sugarcane like crazy, and then it was done. Unlike today where you can get sugar 24/7/365.
But too much sugar (and alcohol falls into that category for me) is just not good for your body. Artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharine, and xylitol (which is lethal to dogs) are even worse.
You can get used to eating things that aren’t as sweet, and it’s appalling how much of American’s diet is sweetened (like salad dressing-why does that even need sugar in it???). Break up with sugar.
I started by not putting sugar in my tea in the mornings, just milk. It was easier when I realized that milk has 12 grams of sugar in it per serving-that’s as much as a serving of Honey Nut Cheerios. I really am getting plenty of sugar already in my morning tea without adding sugar to it.
I’m looking at grass fed cow milk now because it appears that it’s naturally lower in milk sugars. Probably because corn is pretty much all sugar, and if you’re feeding cows sugar all day long, everything they produce is going to be sweeter.
From the Mayo Clinic:
@motherofdragons:
Try goat milk, it is lower in sugar, too, I believe. I have had people tell me that nut milk you buy is much healthier, lower in sugar, but many of them add sugar (my wife makes her own in a blender). That 12g of sugar is for whole milk, and that is for a cup of milk, you likely use maybe an oz of milk, so you are prob taking in 1.5 g of sugar with your tea.
I agree totally people are getting too much sugar in their diets, from a variety of sources they aren’t even aware of. And yes, the problem with artificial sweeteners is while they are calorically low, they cause issues with the bodies sugar regulating mechanisms and with glycolic reactions, people who drink a lot of diet soda find they can gain weight because they end up eating more calories because their ‘full’ mechanism isn’t working right. Not to mention potential other issues, if your body can’t digest it (hence the zero calorie), what is that doing to it? Some things that are indigestible, like fiber, are beneficial, others are not.
I have heard people call Splenda natural, because it starts with sugar, but it has been processed by treating it with chlorine, which makes it indigestible. Stevia is natural, but often it is treated to try and take out the bitterness, or is mixed with other things to take out the bitterness (like maltose, malt sugar) that may themselves not be that great for you, it is why it is important to check on things. Me, I try to avoid the artificial sweeteners, and I simply cut down how much sugar I use in daily life, and if I get sugar it is likely in the form of whole fruits like grapes and berries and apples, and even those I keep in proportion. There is a pretty good op ed in Today’s NY times about the sugar industry, and how powerful it is, and part of the confusion with sugar to me looks like it is deliberate, that the government with one hand is talking about the obesity epidemic and its problems, and on the other is heavily supporting the sugar-economy, with heavy subsidies to sugar growers and producers, and of course the infamous corn subsidies that corn farmers love and companies like ADM and Cargill thrive on, that produces subsidized, dirt cheap HFC that while it may be just sugar (the jury is out on whether or not it is worse for you than table sugar), is orders of magnitude cheaper than sugar so it is used in a ton of products, many of which people don’t even know, because I believe by law if it is used as filler below a certain level, they don’t have to put it on the label (gee, I wonder why).
The government in effect is subsidizing people making the country sick, and this is especially true of poorer people, the cheap juice and soda, the cheap bread, the cheap food products, that help poorer people survive are often loaded with sugar. One effective way to help cut down sugar consumption would be to get rid of the subsidies for growing and processing corn if it is used to make HFC and get rid of the subsidies for growing sugar, and use those subsidies to fund production of food and food products that are healthy for people, making them more affordable. Not going to hold my breath, the farm lobby and the food companies and agribusiness aren’t going to give up easily, the same way tobacco hasn’t (as far as I know, we still are paying subsidies to tobacco growing,though the artificial price supports ended in 2004 and the payouts to transition to a free market ended in 2014).
I can’t drink any of those diet sodas they taste disgusting to me. I like my coffee with just milk. I drink a coke once in a blue moon. I think the last one I had was when I was moving my youngest out of his dorm on a hot summer day. It tasted great! I’d rather just use real sugar in moderation. Sometimes if I’m having plain yogurt with fresh fruit I’ll add a teaspoon or so of real maple syrup.
I’ve actually felt sorry for PizzaGirl in the past - she doesn’t care for wine and doesn’t like to cook. 
BTW I like grapefruit, but it definitely has a bitter edge along with the sweet and sour. It’s great with seltzer and something a bit sweet like cranberry juice.
I have both Truvia and Stevia in the house. By itself it definitely has a bad taste or a bitterness to it, but in a hot beverage, I find no hint of it. A little bit goes a long way.
I don’t cook, but I definitely like wine and food (and beer)! I can’t drink sodas with sugar. I’m too used to diet colas (Diet Pepsi is my favorite). I would rather eat my sugar than drink it. I can’t understand it when I see parents giving young kids sodas with sugar- realizing, of course, that sodas with artificial sweeteners are bad, too (but at least not high calories). Checked out at the grocery store this morning behind a family and the mom handed the chubby kid a 20 ounce Sprite.
I add it to my coffee. Tastes fine to me.
During the rare times I do drink soda*, I’m the complete opposite. I can’t stand diet sodas as there’s always an unpleasant and sometimes nasty chemical aftertaste.