As Valentine's Day approaches, many of us are thinking about the sweeter things in life. It is likely  that in the next week you'll be surrounded by mounds of sweet things. For optimal nutrition, many of us try to limit the sugars we eat, yet not all sugars are created equal. Some sugars make us feel terrible, while other sugars make us feel great! Some sugars have empty calories, while others have significant nutritional value. How do you know what to eat? Do you know what sugars are really best for you? Which sugar is best for which use? This overview will help answer these questions.
What is Sugar? Sugar is a pure carbohydrate--a nutrient that supplies energy to the body. The chemical name for sugar is sucrose. Sucrose occurs naturally in every fruit and vegetable, as it is the major product of photosynthesis. For a long time, fruit and cane sugars were the most common sweeteners on our table. However, over the past 50 years, dozens of sweeteners have been developed. Many of them are very useful for helping us enjoy the sweet things in life without taking our blood sugar for a roller coaster ride. This article outlines many of the sugars available on the market today.
CANE SUGAR
Refined, crystallised sugars will raise blood sugar levels. The more refined the sugar, the more it raises your blood sugar.
Rapadura is evaporated cane juice--it's also known as Sucanat. It is the least refined cane sugar available. It's just the juice extracted from the cane in a press, which has then been evaporated to dry it into granules. Rapadura has not been heated or refined, simply spun to change it into crystals. As a result, rapadura has an rough taste, heavy on the molasses but still quite sweet.
Because Rapadura is not heated, the vitamins and minerals have been retained. It also still has the natural balance of sucrose, glucose, and fructose, and contains components essential for its digestion. It is metabolized by the body more slowly than white sugar, and therefore will not affect your blood sugar levels very much at all. Rapadura is available in crystal form. But it can also be ground (in a blender or coffee grinder) to a fine powder. Thus, it's a great replacement for powdered sugar in any recipe. Rapadura can be used cup for cup as an alternative to sugar in all your raw dishes and baking.
Muscavado, Turbinado, Demarara and even "organic raw sugar" are all refined, though not as much as white sugar. They are the products of heating cane juice until crystals form, then spinning it in a centrifuge so the crystals are separated from the syrupy juice, but still have some juice coating them. The syrupy "juice" (molasses) contains vitamins and minerals, and is recommended for a healthy diet, but the crystals themselves are pretty much "empty carbs."
Once sugar cane juice has been heated and spun, the resulting sugar (Muscavado, Turbinado, Demarara, raw) is not as healthy a product as the evaporated versions. "Raw" sugar is not really raw--it has been cooked, and a lot of the minerals and vitamins are gone. Still, it's better than refined sugar because it has a little of the molasses still clinging to it.
White sugar is refined much further...the raw sugar is centrifuged again, then the crystals are dissolved, boiled, and crystallized again into white sugar and any lingering goodness has completely disappeared! All other sugars--confectioner's (also called powdered or icing sugar), castor, superfine, etc--are all refined sugar of different sizes.
It seems that brown sugar is just white sugar mixed with molasses. Some sugar is sold as "organic" raw sugar. Do not be fooled into thinking this means it's unrefined. It's grown with organic agricultural methods, then refined as usual...the juice (molasses) has been removed, and there's not really any goodness in it. Granulated refined sugars are pure sucrose and contain no nutrients beyond calories. They are a pure industrial product, and can hardly be considered a food. Some would say they're closer to a drug, which affects our bodies adversely and is very addictive. Not only do they not give anything beneficial to our bodies, they actually take away from the vitamins and minerals in what we are eating. People who get headaches from eating refined sugars usually find they have no problem with Rapadura.
When possible, use more natural sweeteners such as dates, fruit, yacon syrup and others. Click here to read the full article - it covers all the natural sweeteners including many you probably have never heard of.
|
