You've just been seated by your waiter while out for lunch at a local restaurant. You sit down to a white napkin with a fork and knife neatly placed on top of a little centerpiece of flowers on the table. Equally familiar, you notice a little box with different colored sugar packets neatly organized in a row...
Each color is a different answer to the same question: how to make things sweet. There is cane sugar, of course, and then the family of substitutes - each with its own origin, its own flavor, and its own devotees and skeptics.
The sensible view is the moderate one. No single packet is a villain or a miracle. Know what you are reaching for, use it in the amount that suits you, and spend more of your attention on the meal itself than on the box beside it.
Originally published in View AZ Highlife Magazine, Dec 2007 / Jan 2008.