Sweeten Smartly

By now you probably think of sugar as a pretty bad food choice and it most certainly can be! Refined white sugar, genetically modified beet sugar, high fructose corn syrup and artificial chemical sweeteners all have health risks that can cause lifelong problems—from diabetes to cancer. We can’t completely dismiss carbohydrates either. Glucose is necessary for your brain to function, for your body to produce energy and for your cells to do some important work. So it’s not about eliminating glucose and sugar from your life completely, but a matter of choosing the right types of sugar.

Decreasing your intake of refined sugars can greatly improve your health. Foods that are rich in naturally occurring low-glycemic sugars are a wonderful way to sweeten your day without the health risks connected to refined sugar that include diabetes, obesity, mood swings, irritability, decreased immune function and more. Using alternatives to refined sugars can satisfy your sweet tooth the healthy way!

Smoothie Secrets: Smart Sweets

Some examples of healthy sugar alternatives include the Yacon root—a South American tuber that produces healthy fructooligosaccharides (FOS) —indigestible long chain sugars that taste sweet, but can’t be absorbed through the intestinal wall. Yacon Syrup tastes somewhat like molasses and enhances the flavor of any food needing an extra sweet touch. Another excellent source of low-glycemic sweetening comes via Lucuma Powder, a South American fruit that tastes a lot sweeter than it actually is! A very popular alternative sweetener getting a lot of attention lately is Coconut palm sugar. It can be used as a 1:1 substitute for regular sugar in any recipe, but with about half the actual sugars per serving.

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