substitutionssugar
Such as:
Can they be used interchangeably in recipes or do they have to be used at different proportions?Aside from nutritional differences, can I expect drastically different flavors?
Sugar, as in common table sugar from sugar cane, is sucrose, which is a chemically weak linked combination of glucose and fructose. Your stomach acids will split sucrose very fast. So the difference in using natural cane sugar and factory split glucose may only be a matter of minutes once you eat the stuff
Same goes for almost all the sugars other than the "artificial sweeteners" which are generally not sugars at all, they just taste very sweet
Some artificial sweeteners are very natural in the general scheme of things when compared to processed sugar etc.
Nearly everything that comes in a packet with a barcode is not "natural". White table sugar is not natural. Buy some sugar cane stem, and crush and boil it, then you can see the difference
I would rather use the white table sugar though, as it is more likely to be clean and tested as being non-contaminated
Sugar Substitutes
There is a great list of sugar substitutes including artificial sweeteners on Wikipedia. Many of which would be better for you if sugar levels was of a concern in your diet (it is for some people). Many are useless in baking
The list of "artificial sweeteners" is thus:
And the sugar alcohol's, which are also a form of "artificial sweeteners"
Nice info-graphic from Washington Post
If you can find a copy, Graham Kerr's "Minimax Cookbook" has guidance and several recipes for low-fat baking. He used to be the galloping gourmet, and produced recipes with outrageous amounts of fat, sugar, and so on. Then his wife had a stroke and he re-examined how he cooks in order to be able to meet her dietary requirements while not losing flavor, texture, and mouth-feel. It covers much more than baking, and is a good guide to low-fat cooking in general. Unfortunately it's out of print (published in 1992), but there seem to be lots of copies available from second-tier distributors.
Best Answer
Splenda, besides giving you the runs, is very hard to bake with. My wife had gestational diabetes so we tried baking with splenda and nothing turned out right. Splenda has no nutritional value.
Raw sugar is great, but it has a slightly different taste than processed sugar, similiar to brown sugar.
Artificial sweetners would probalby have similar issues to splenda, but I've never tried them outside of sweetening tea.