Tag: Sweet Foods

Stevia and Honey – Safe and Sorry

Society today has slowly seen the negative side of sugar. This is why most people would prefer to avoid eating sweet foods, which is quite next to impossible. People love sugar and will probably give up all the other stuff in life before giving up on it.

To answer this need, companies have come up with several alternatives to sugar that are much lower in caloric and carbohydrate content. Unfortunately, because it is not as natural as the ordinary table sugar, people feel that too much consumption of these sugar substitutes can be harmful to the body. They are afraid that just as it took forever for them to discover the problems that sugar can cause, it will also take forever before they will find out just how harmful the sugar substitutes are to the body.

One substitute though that is still considered safe is the honey, which directly comes from honeybees. Because honey is a combination of different kinds of sugars such as fructose, which can be seen in fruits, maltose, glucose, and sucrose, honey is more balanced and has a better effect on the body. It is better absorbed by the body and presents lesser load for the pancreas, which filters the sugar and activates the insulin system.

One disadvantage though that honey provides is the fact that it is very vulnerable to industrial chemicals being a very natural product. Genetically-modified pollen can cause pests like the Varroa mite. This in turn will increase the possibility of the use of some chemical pesticides that may affect the honey that it being produced. Another potential problem is the use of antibiotics that may be potentially harmful to people when ingested indirectly through the honey. In addition to this, honey although quite a healthy alternative for people with normal conditions, cannot be used by diabetics.

Another potential sugar savior is stevia, which is a South American herb that has been used in Japan for centuries. Records also show that native Americans also use this herb in their food. It has a low caloric content and provides great therapy for thrush, which is exacerbated by the consumption of too much sugar. In fact, stevia is believed to be capable of stabilizing the sugar level of diabetics.

However, despite its glowing reviews and resume, stevia has failed to gain an approval from the United States Food and Drug Administration when the agency rejected the call for the herb to have a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status.

Faking Away Sweets in Sugar

When one speaks of sugar, first thing in mind is the advantage of having a sweet taste of food. It is difficult to find someone who does not like a taste of it, one time or another in a person’s life. It maybe, he refuses intake of it at present for health reasons but in the past he admits, had the joy of eating many kinds of sweet foods.

Children like candies because it is associated with something tasty-sweet. In the earlier days of our grandparents, when people know nothing about calories and disadvantages of some excessive food intakes the elderly finds joy in the thought of having chocolate for breakfast because of the pleasant sweet taste associated when the native chocolate is sweetened with plenty of sugar as a beverage.

Low calorie sweeteners became a household word recently, for reasons that today’s generation is more aware of cases of diabetes and obesity associated with eating excessive sweets. Uncontrolled intake of carbohydrates, which has plenty of starch and sugar, is not advised to people who suffer diabetes, or those prone to obesity.

Researches in the earlier 21st century have proven that low calorie sweeteners had been introduced in the market to substitute the use of actual sugar. Actually some chemical contents are substituted, reduced, or refined to certain degree as to fake the sweet taste in natural sugar. It becomes in a way synthetic, but beneficial to the general health of the public. The faking of the sweet taste reduced the calories present in the actual glucose sugar. It is not surprising that consumers products displayed in the markets today include grocery items on low calorie sweeteners.

Why such preference on the synthetic-made sugar, rather than the organic sweet? Table sugar or sucrose is our common table sugar. There are many kinds of sugar in different sweeteners around, both in fruits and manufactured table sugar. Fruit contains fructose sugar, and milk contains lactose. Reducing or transforming natural-sweet-taste sugar to certain low calorie level is that which makes it more healthful.

Today’s market offers various brands in the making of low calorie sweeteners. The FDA of the United States had an extensive evaluation and test for the assurance of safe use for public consumption. Safety measures against complications in the reproduction; genetic effects, risk to cancer, the central nervous system, and body metabolism were strictly
considered.

Kinds of manufactured low calorie sweeteners:
*Sucralose – the only low calorie sweeter that is made from actual sugar, made 600 times sweeter than our table sugar. It’s available in a very wide range of food distribution with a need of sweetener, branded in the name Splenda (granular and packets) in several outlets. *Aspartame a non-calorie sweetener used in beverages, 200 times sweeter than sugar. They’re several others of similar values.