Thursday, January 27, 2011

Sugar subsitutes; the truth behind the sweetners

Since the entry of man made chemical based sugar substitutes, information regarding their contents and healthy benefits or detriments sometimes gets confusing.  Understanding how they're made and what they contain may help you decide which one is right for you:
*Splenda - contains sucralose, is bonded with chlorine (aka bleach).
*Sweet'n Low - contains coal tar.
*Nutrasweet - converts to formaldehyde (same chemical used for embalming corpses).

More natural and/or organic sugar subsitutes have now become readily available and are healtheir choices by comparison to other substitutes.  Here are just a few (there are many more):
*Stevia - derived from the stevia plant, powderized or liquified.  You can grow stevia and produce an organically made sweetner on your own.
*Agave - produced mostly in Mexico from several Agave plants.  The plant is processed from the core of the plant, filtered and heated to produce simple sugars.
*Honey - made by bee's from the nectar of flowers and stored into honeycombs.  Bee keepers then remove the combs and drain/package.  One of the most purest forms of sweetners.
*Unrefined sugar cane - purest form of natural sugar, avoids the contents of cane sugar (sulfur dioxide and phosphoric acid).  

The most important thing to remember when ingesting sugar is that they affect your health one way or another.  The best method to follow is to limit your daily sugar intake (natural or not), use sparingly, stay away from refined sugar and avoid highly processed sugar substitutes.  Sugar is well known to be the culprit behind many health diseases (i.e. Diabetes Type II, heart disease, food addictions, etc.).  Unless you can eat your sugar (i.e. fruit) then what you're adding to your food/drink may not be a healthy option (except where noted above). 

If what you're eating needs a touch of "sweetness" choose the most natural organic form available.

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