Cream and Sugar?

Remember when we chose our friends according to whether they liked the Backstreet Boys or NSYNC? Barbies or Pollypockets, Furbies or Giga Pets? These preferences were not inconsequential, the answers spelling either the doom or success of your friendship. Now that we are a little older, there is just as important a compatibility test for today’s twenty-somethings, and that is whether you favor real or fake sugar. (Fake sugar being Splenda, because no one likes any of that other crap).

Now we all know that Splenda “causes cancer.” But it’s so hard to care about that when it makes my Starbucks latte go from an A to an A+ on the Richter scale of close to godliness. And besides, the science behind that has yet to be fully embraced by us humble bourgeois, so until I see the hard facts, I will embrace my sparkling little yellow packets of happiness.

Plus, real talk: it takes like four times the amount of real sugar to make something nearly as sweet and delicious as one little innocent packet of Splenda. So in the rat race of sugar choices, I think I’m winning.

But apparently, fake sugar is not en vogue. Fake sugar shows that you do not care about your health, are not savvy about the latest scientific research, that you are a heathen that does not read the New York Times, drive a Prius or care about the rainforests.

Let’s be adult about this. I’m sure we can find some common ground upon which to build a friendship other than our sweetener preferences. But a word to those who look down upon my fake sugar choices: stop holding mini interventions every time we hit the coffee bar. I respect your choice to eat undelicious, bland, normal sugar, but I can’t be friends with someone who does the eyebrow raise when I pour myself a little coffee with my cream and Splenda.

Oh and just for the record? Lance Bass was my boy.