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A Guide To Natural Sugar Substitutes
by Liz Bygrave (Jan 2009; updated June 2010)
This is an exciting time to be involved in the world of natural sweeteners. The list of healthier alternatives to sugar gets ever longer, so I thought it was high time I listed my top favourites here and explained what’s so good about them. So here goes…
Xylitol
There’s a separate article about xylitol on the site so I won’t repeat myself too much here – suffice it to say that xylitol looks and tastes like sugar but has a glycemic index* of just 7 (whereas that of sugar is 68). It also has only 60% of the calories of sugar and bacteria can’t grow in it, so it won’t rot your teeth. You can use it just as you would sugar, the only things it won’t do is caramelize or make yeast rise. Xylitol is recommended by many leading alternative nutritionists as a good alternative sugar.
In the UK, xylitol is relatively freely available from many supermarkets and health food shops. Xylitol should be suitable for most diabetics (but of course consult your doctor first).
Disadvantages: it can have a slight laxative effect until your body gets used to it. It is therefore recommended that you don’t eat more than 50g a day at first. 50g of xylitol is however quite a large amount so you would be unlikely to exceed this anyway. Like chocolate, xylitol should not be fed to dogs as it can be poisonous for them.
Like chocolate, xylitol is not safe for dogs – so don’t feed it to them!
It is difficult to find out how processed xylitol is – some say it is quite heavily
processed, others that the only catalyst used is water. It is also not possible to
get organic xylitol at this moment in time, although the make I use, Perfect Sweet,
is definitely non-
Raw food eaters – please note that xylitol is not a raw product.
Click here to buy.
Agave Syrup
Also known as agave nectar, and with a taste and texture akin to golden syrup, agave
comes from Mexico and is made from the agave plant, the same plant that tequila is
made from. Agave is a fructose. Fructose is usually seen as being only a little more
healthy than sugar, ie not an ideal food for the body. But because agave has a medium
to low glycemic index -
Recently (in 2010) there has been a lot of negative press about agave. Some people believe, for instance, that it is not good for the liver, whilst others have doubts about the production methods. I am sitting on the fence about this one for now, but want to keep you informed so that you can make your own decision. I will update the website as soon as possible, but in the meantime,sign up to the newsletter (top left of this page) to keep up to date.
Disadvantages: the raw version is expensive; unlike xylitol, agave is bound to have some effect on your teeth, though this should be less than that of sugar.
Click here to buy.
Yacon Root SyrupYacon root is from South America. It gets its sweetness mainly from ‘fructooligosaccharides’
(FOS) which cannot be absorbed by the body and which feed the friendly bacteria in
our guts. It is therefore seen as a low-
Yacon can also be obtained as a powder (though it went rock hard in my cupboard before
I had time to experiment with it – the downside of not using anti-
Disadvantages: Yacon has a slightly bitter taste. This isn’t unpleasant, but I find that it does restrict its use in sweet recipes. I use it primarily to sweeten things like muesli, porridge and drinks, though I did once taste some chocolate someone had sweetened with yacon and it was delicious. Yacon is also expensive – it retails at around £12.50 per 250ml.
Click here to buy the syrup.
Sweet Freedom
This is a fairly new natural sweetener, having only just come on the market here
in the UK in the last few years. It is made from apples, grapes and carob and, like
agave, has the texture of golden syrup. Taste-
Sweet Freedom is available in two varieties: Sweet Freedom Mild which has a lovely neutral sweetness and works for all uses from sweetening tea through to baking, and Sweet Freedom Rich which has a richer, deeper sweetness. Whilst I prefer the mild version, in my workshops I’ve found that people divide fairly equally down the middle in terms of which one they like better. At £2.69 for a 300ml bottle, Sweet Freedom is reasonably priced.
Sweet Freedom has a low GI (35) and GL** so it is suitable for diabetics as part of a balanced diet. It also has 25% less calories than sugar but despite that it is actually sweeter. It contains no colours, additives or preservatives and is water extracted without chemicals or enzymes. It consists of only naturally occurring sugars from fruits and is suitable for vegetarians and vegans.
Disadvantages: not suitable for raw food eaters as it is not a raw product. The effect on teeth is not yet known though the makers do intend to carry out studies on this in the future.
Click here to buy.
Lucuma Powder
This is the dried yellow powder of a Peruvian fruit and tastes absolutely divine – of butterscotch and shortbread. It’s not hugely sweet but using it in a recipe does mean you can use less of other sweeteners and it is low glycemic. It is also nutrient dense, being especially high in betacarotene, Vitamin B3 and iron. Lucuma powder is raw.
Disadvantages: you would probably need to use another sweetener as well.
Click here to buy.
Mesquite Powder
You will either love or hate this one! Mesquite comes from the mesquite tree of South
America and is a relation of carob. It is lighter in colour and has a more caramelly
flavour, though it is quite bitter & has quite a ‘distinctive’ taste. Again, it is
not that sweet (less so than lucuma I would say) but adding it to recipes -
Disadvantages: not sweet enough to use as the only sweetener in a recipe.
Click here to buy.
Other sweeteners
There are other sweeteners out there – apologies if I haven’t included your personal favourite – this will either be because I have decided not to use it, or because it’s not available in the UK, or because I can’t find enough information on it to know whether it’s something I would use. I will update this article as more information comes in.
*What is Glycemic Index?
The glycemic index (GI) represents the rate at a which a food is broken down in our digestive systems and released into the blood stream. The more slowly a food is broken down, the lower the glycemic index, and the better that food is for us, as it keeps our blood sugar stable. Foods which are broken down quickly (sugar is one such food) are regarded as less healthy, among other things because they force the pancreas to release lots of insulin all at once in order to transport the glucose extracted from that food from the bloodstream into the cells. In the short term this can lead, among other symptoms, to that well known sugar rush, quickly followed by an energy slump. In the long term, it is likely that this kind of eating over taxes the pancreas and the cells, and may be a factor in weight gain and diabetes.
**Glycaemic Load is another way of measuring the rate at which a food is broken down in the body. It is regarded by many nutritional experts as a more accurate way of assessing a food’s affect on our blood sugar as it measures the effect on blood sugar of eating a normal portion of a particular food, as opposed to the amount of that food that contains 50g of carbohydrate. This can mean eating an awful lot of a food that contains a lot of water for instance. Most, if not all, of the sweeteners mentioned in this article would have a low GL as well a as low GI.
You can buy these sweeteners from the Sweet Sensations online shop.
Other articles on this site:
Xylitol: Ahealthier Way To SweetenYour Food?
My Top Six Favourite Ingredients
A Beginners’ Guide to Raw Chocolate
Essential Equipment for a No Cook Sweet Treats Kitchen