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So my wife had her pancreas removed we have been watching (trying to) her sugar. Now her mother and her brothers have her convinced that she cannot have anything with artificial sugar in it at all. Will the occasional diet pop, baking once every blue moon with fake sugar, or eating something sweet have much of an effect on her?
Why are they saying that? I'd think you could experiment with it and see what causes problems and what doesn't and keep an eye on the blood sugar. I think probably the healthiest thing you could do would be to grow your own stevia, though I've never tried that. I plan to next summer though. I heard somewhere that you take the dried leaves and soak them in some kind of alcohol like vodka, to make an extract. Your wife may not be able to have alcohol either though.
Experimenting can be deadly, to someone whose body can no longer secrete insulin.
Basically - anything made with sugar, any sugar, and anything that converts to sugar in the body, needs to be eliminated from the diet. Alcohol is definitely not an option. Stevia, depending on whose study you believe - will either increase insulin response, or increase insulin sensitivity. Some studies say one, the other studies say the other. Regardless - someone who doesn't have a pancreas, can't have something that will trigger either one. And so stevia is not an option.
Sugar, bread, anything made with yeast (because you need sugar to make yeast do what it does to dough), yogurt (which is also made with yeast, and thus, sugar) - even the teaspoon of sugar needed to activate yeast in a 4-loaf recipe of bread dough - is not an option, for someone without a pancreas.
If artificial sweetners produce an insulin response, then those are not options either. Aspartame (aka Nutrasweet in commercial prepared products) has been tested and shown to have no affect on insulin secretion. So that might be a possibility.
Also - carbonated beverages are not an option for someone without a pancreas. Meats have to be consumed in small quantities - literally. That means chew thoroughly before swallowing, in very small forkfulls.
Generally, anything that would normally need bile to digest in the body - has to be either eliminated, avoided, or kept to an absolute minimum, and in thoroughly-chewed (or pulverized) morsels.
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