(Isabelle Z.) By now, most of us are aware of the health dangers of high-fructose corn syrup and do our best to avoid it, and most health-conscious individuals won’t go anywhere near sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose. However, sticking to natural sugar isn’t as straightforward as it sounds given the many options available. Which type of natural sugar is superior from a health standpoint? The answer is complicated.
Related Study Shows What Happens To The Human Body When It Goes Just 10 Days Without Sugar
by Isabelle Z, April 2nd, 2018
First of all, it’s important to note that natural sugar is still sugar, and everyone should aim to reduce their intake of every type of sugar to minimize their risk of type 2 diabetes, cancer and other illnesses. Quite simply, if you consume too much sugar, your body will pay the price, and it doesn’t matter whether it came from sugarcane, beets, dates, coconuts, cactus or bees.
Nevertheless, there will be occasions when you need to use sugar for a recipe, whether it’s a dessert or something savory, and you might wonder which is the best type to use. Here is an assessment of some of the most popular natural options.
White sugar
This is the sugar that most people use at home for cooking and baking. It comes from refining and processing sugarcane or beets. During that process, the minerals and other compounds that color the sugar are taken out, leaving refined white sugar behind. It is highly processed and void of nutrition.
Raw sugar
Raw sugar is made much like white sugar, but the process stops before the final refining, which enables it to retain its brownish hue.
Molasses/Brown sugar
The byproduct that is created when the minerals and compounds are taken out of refined sugar is known as molasses, and it’s mixed back in with refined white sugar to create brown sugar. Therefore, it has more minerals and antioxidants than its refined white counterpart and has a slight edge from a health standpoint. Nevertheless, the antioxidants found in molasses are pretty meager compared to antioxidant-rich foods like blueberries. Molasses contains nutrients like magnesium, selenium, iron and calcium, and blackstrap is considered the most nutritional variety.
Support our mission and protect your health: Organic Seeds of Life combines Red Raspberry Seed Power, Black Cumin Seed Power and Red Grape Seed Powder into the most potent nutrient-rich supplemental superfood powder you’ve ever experienced. Loaded with flavonoids, antioxidants, anthocyanins, OPCs, ALA and a vast array of vital nutrients. Learn more here.
Agave
Agave syrup comes from the sap of a type of cactus known as agave. After extracting the juice from the cactus, it is then filtered and heated before being concentrated into syrup form. It’s considered 1.5 times sweeter than white sugar, so you can use less of it to get the same general taste. It contains very small amounts of calcium, magnesium, and potassium, and the raw, organic variety is best.While agave is much lower on the glycemic index than white sugar and other varieties so it’s not as likely to cause rapid insulin spikes, it’s important to keep in mind that its high fructose content can be problematic. Because fructose is mostly metabolized by the liver, it’s considered one of the most damaging types of sugar.
Coconut sugar
One of the trendiest sugars right now is coconut sugar, which is made by boiling down the sap from the coconut palm tree into a syrup and then drying and grinding it into a fine powder. It has a lower glycemic index than refined sugar, and it retains some of the nutrients found in coconut such as potassium, calcium, zinc and iron.
Honey
This is a syrupy nectar that is collected by bees from flowers, and its relatively high fructose content makes it sweeter than other choices. This means you may need less of it than white sugar to reach the same sweetness level. In addition, its 17 percent water content means that a direct substitution by weight yields a lower sugar content than white sugar. Honey is also considered a superior choice because of its antimicrobial power; its ability to kill germs is not found in other types of sugar. Opt for raw honey whenever possible as it’s one of the least processed sugars you can get.
Once again, you want to minimize your intake of all types of sugar. It might be wise to use honey instead of corn syrup, for example, but don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s safe to consume as much as you want – especially if you’re diabetic.
See Sweeteners.news for more coverage of natural and artificial sweeteners.
Stillness in the Storm Editor’s note: Did you find a spelling error or grammar mistake? Send an email to [email protected], with the error and suggested correction, along with the headline and url. Do you think this article needs an update? Or do you just have some feedback? Send us an email at [email protected]. Thank you for reading.
Source:
I have bad news. There is no safe sugar. Worse yet my friends, there are no safe carbohydrates.
The top 5 diseases in the United States, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes and obesity all share in common an impairment in metabolizing glucose.
The main culprit is a critical step in the Kreb’s Cycle, pyruvate dehydrogenase.
A high fat, low carb, low protein diet bypasses the pyruvate diet by the conversion of fatty acids into D-beta-hydroxybutyrate.
DbHB (the most powerful ketone) enters the Kreb’s cycle later in the process, bypassing the pyruvate dehydrogenase impairment.
Ketones shall be to the 21st Century what antibiotics were to the 20th Century.
In the next five years, the highly pathological food pyramid deriving 80% of calories from carbs, shall be flipped on its head.
Sugar shall be reserved as the rarest of treats for all but the very unfortunate sugar addicts. God help them.
Go Keto my brothers and sisters. The sooner the better.
I’m sorry, but anything I read from Mike Adams or as he calls himself “the health ranger” or “Natural News” I have to be skeptical. This guy has made mistakes in his assessments of products. IE: Adya Clarity. He poo-pooed this product and hurt the sales by saying that because it has aluminum in it and that it’s unsafe and essentially battery acid which is not true. I’ve used this product myself for over 2 years and I’ve not had ANY health issues at all. In fact, this product is endorsed by the Hippocrates Institute which is not easy to come by. While aluminum may be unsafe in high doses, so is Iron and Selenium. Too much Selenium can KILL YOU. Too much WATER can kill you. It’s all about balance and he, like so many other Americans buy the lie that ANY aluminum is unsafe and it’s just not true! There are many forms of aluminum and there is even one that is used in the processing of sewage water in waste water treatment plants to clean it up! He is a self-trained lab tech and while I give him kudos for doing that, if one doesn’t get some kind of formal training, one ends up re-inventing the wheel so-to-speak. His mistake in this article was not breaking down how sugars are processed, what kind of chemicals are used and to say that honey comes from flowers is eliminating part of the process that bees sip the nectar from flowers, process it in their digestive system and then re-gurgitate it. Most people don’t want to hear that because honey is essentially bee vomit. lol He also made a major mistake in plugging a product which is a big no-no. He comes off as biased and his article reflects that. He may be right about a few things but the mistakes he makes causes me to look elsewhere for my truth.