busybodies, the earnestly helpful, and the food police

On one of my favorite cooking websites they have a feature highlighting readers' questions. Yesterday's was from a woman whose spouse was just diagnosed with diabetes and who was thus wanting to bake sugar-free Christmas cookies this year. Her question, which seemed rather basic and on-topic for a cooking forum, was whether it was truly correct to replace the sugar in baking with artificial sweetener (i.e. Splenda, stevia) one to one, or whether that ratio needed tweaking.

The first seven--that's right, seven--responses, however, did not even attempt to answer. They instead took her to task for baking cookies in the first place, since white flour was gonna kill her husband as surely as sugar, and/or sniffed at her to take a diabetes education class, or informed her that the proper way for a diabetic to eat cookies was to eat a tiny portion of a real sugar-filled treat after carefully checking one's insulin levels and screw the Splenda.  Then one person took a stab at answering the actual query before more people dropped by to yell at her. The final response (as of this writing) informed her that her (presumably) fatass hubby should step away from the cookies and get to the gym, 'cause obviously that's what brought him to this impasse in the first place. Oooo.

While any or all of this advice may or may not be true: who THE FUCK asked you, snippy self-righteous internet commenters? And if you feel the need to lecture, either because you really really care about the health of someone you have never met or, y'know, because you like to be right, how about attempting to answer what was asked before (or at least after) you launch into your sermon/verbal instructional manual?

In summary--I hate people.  Merry Christmas, etc.

xoxo