Avoid These Healthy Sweetener Mistakes

How Sweet It Is!

In all my years, I have never met a person who didn't like a sweet, but eating sweets and keeping healthy these days, is not easy.

Many years ago we used juice from sugar cane, raw honey, real maple syrup, molasses, and fresh squeezed juice from sweet fruits to sweeten our cakes and pies, candies, ice creams, other deserts and foods. Healthy stuff all around.

Today we have nasty aspartame for sugar free foods, and for sweetened foods, candies and soft drinks, unhealthy high fructose corn syrup or plain corn syrup, or both. Now sugar is bad enough, but these substitute sweeteners, they are just plain poison for our bodies.

So what are the alternatives? What about barley malt sweetener, maple syrup and honey?

It should be noted though, that each of these three nutritional sweeteners is a highly concentrated sweetener with lots of calories, although calories alone are not necessarily a bad thing.

Unlike standard refined sugar and the sugar substitutes with which we are being bombarded, the highly concentrated sugars in maple syrup and malt sweeteners usually retain the vitamins and minerals needed for their metabolism making it easy for our body's to digest.

For people other than diabetics and those with weight problems, these sweeteners can be called "healthy" sweeteners, (if you can call any sweetener healthy), and they don't carry any of the chemical risks of the artificial chemical sweeteners that are used in such huge quantities today.

The other healthy substitute we talked about is honey, but not for those of you with the sugar metabolic problems of hypoglycemia and diabetes.

Honey is a unique sweetener if it is not heated. In its raw state, honey contains enzymes and nutrients that can be very useful to the body. Unfortunately, heat destroys many of them, and commercial honey is heated to keep it from crystallizing. Buy only raw honey. You should be able to find it in your local health food store.

A New Sweetener Of Choice

For those of you who must avoid sugar and yet crave a sweetener, the favored recommendation is the plant derived natural herb stevia.

Stevia is used all over the world as the sugar free sweetener of choice in processed foods, cakes, deserts, ice creams, candies and soft drinks of all kinds, except in the United States.

Here the FDA has banned the use of stevia as sugar substitute and approved aspartame, a controversial chemical sugar substitute, for all manufactured foods and drinks. Good thinking on the FDA's part.

The FDA did approve stevia, however, as a nutritional supplement, (that's legal---calling it a sugar substitute is not), so you can use it as a sugar substitute (so long as you don't tell the FDA) in the foods and drinks you make for yourself. Makes good FDA sense, doesn't it?

Stevia is about 300 times as sweet as sugar and should be used in very tiny amounts.

Stevia will taste bitter if you use too much. You'll need to experiment with the quantity starting with a tiny amount and working your way up. The amount that will satisfy you will vary depending on the brand you buy.

Another sugar free and natural alternative to highly processed chemical sweeteners is xylitol, a birch wood extract that has 40 percent fewer calories than sugar, and does not cause a spike in blood sugar levels.

In one study, reported in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the glucose and insulin responses of 80 healthy, non-obese men were measured after ingesting xylitol.

Results showed that both glucose and insulin were less affected by xylitol intake than by glucose intake, and researchers concluded that xylitol is suitable for diabetics.

Xylitol can be hard to find in local stores, but can be found through Internet sources.

I personally don't use sugar in my drinks, and I never use chemical sweeteners. I don't drink soda and do not buy any products that contain high fructose corn syrup or aspartame. I read the labels to be sure. I choose to eat healthy for a healthier life.

If you must satisfy your sweet tooth, make the healthy sweetener choice --- and you too can live a healthier life.

To Your Good Health And Longevity!

Ira Marxe
CEO, Good Health Supplement

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Article by Ira Marxe of AntiAgingLifeExtension.com featuring Good Health Supplements dedicated to offering you affordable, leading edge technology in healthy heart support, breakthrough anti-aging, superior multi-vitamin, invaluable digestive supplementation and more!

Read past Health Matter Minutes articles and consumer reports:

Avoid These Healthy Sweetener Mistakes

Health Matters Minutes Article Sep 10, 2004

Avoid These Healthy
Sweetener Mistakes

Health Matters
Minutes Article
Sep 10, 2004