The Ugly (and Woefully Inadequate) Stepsisters

Life has lowered the boom on me and my sugar-glutton self and I can no longer dive in and indulge in desserts like a happy, wallowing hog. Thus, I have searched for alternatives. It has been less than successful.

Let's pretend that the handsome prince is searching for his lovely Cinderella. She'll be, say, a big honking square of tiramisu, glowing in multi-layered goodness. The prince enters the humble cottage where he hopes to find his fair maiden. Instead, there is a grievously ugly, cheap-perfume-wearing, St. Bernard-faced hag in Cindy's place. We shall call her Splenda. The prince recoils from her, from the fake and bitter sweetness radiating from her, grabs the precious glass slipper and runs out into the busy ox-cart-travelled path and is run over and flattened.

I will elaborate. While I was in Arizona with my boyfriend, who also happens to be the best guy in the universe, we searched for options that might satisfy my infamous sugar cravings. He brought home some Breyer's No-Sugar-Added Chocolate Ice Cream. Brimming with Splenda. We each ate a bowl of it. OK, he ate one bowl and Miss Heifer had to have two. A couple hours later, we went to bed. So far, so good.

The boyfriend, who rarely, rarely, gets headaches, woke up early in the morning with a blasting one. I, on the other hand, had heart palpitations pretty much all night long. They kept waking me up, my chest pounding like a monkey humping a mongoose.

I googled "splenda side effects" and guess what? That shit is straight from the bowels of hell. About a zillion people have left detailed descriptions on a message board, some of them having gone to the E.R. for what they thought were heart attacks. And many had seethingly bad headaches. There was a whole long list of maladies seemingly caused by Splenda, including the stubborn plateau-ing of weight loss. I will never eat that nuclear pus again.

There have been other forays into the strange land of dessert alternatives. More on these other stepsisters as our tale unfolds.