Unrefined, natural sweeteners are a gift for us to treasure. Like any good gift, they can become corrupted and abused, a tendency we must watch out for. But properly used they add depth and sweetness to a myriad of savory dishes and they make heavenly sweet treats.
This guide is not meant to be comprehensive, but rather give you an introduction to the wonderful natural sweeteners I personally am familiar with and use (in other words, the ones that work for me!
Maple Syrup
Real, pure maple syrup is not just for pancakes! I have used it in a variety of desserts with great results. Grade A is sweeter and less robust than Grade B, which has a stronger maple taste. It sweetens apple pies and ice cream very well, and makes wonderful maple sweetened cakes as well.
(For a very sweet pancake syrup, mix half honey and half maple syrup to stretch it out more, since honey is significantly cheaper. This half and half mixture is also sweeter, which those just going off of sugary fake maple syrup like. )
Maple Sugar
This maple granulated sugar is one of my favorites. It’s not as strong as unrefined cane sugar, and so adds a lighter touch to many desserts. It can be used in place of white sugar (though like all natural sweeteners it will have a stronger taste). The only disadvantage is that maple sugar is one of the most expensive ones to buy, so I use it sparingly.
Molasses
Molasses is a by product of white sugar. It has a very dark, robust flavor, and contains the minerals and vitamins from the sugar cane. Since it has a fairly high iron content, it has often been recommended for those with low iron. It makes wonderful gingerbread cakes and cookies.
Sorghum
Several years ago a friend gave me a jar of sorghum, and I had no idea what it was! But I soon found out how wonderful it was. It’s similar to molasses in flavor, though not as strong. While molasses is a by product, sorghum is a “whole food” product made from sorghum grain. You should also know that there are different types of sorghum. That first jar I was given was very light in color and flavor, while the second jar I bought recently is so dark it looks like molasses. The dark type works great in place of molasses (I prefer it to molasses because it has a sweeter flavor). The lighter type, however, I find to be much more versatile. I have found it a wonderful substitute for corn syrup in many recipes including caramel popcorn, and even made a traditional pecan pie with it (which I loved, though my family was a little unsure of it).
Rapadura or Sucanat
This unrefined, whole, cane sugar is sweet and dark in flavor and full of all of it’s natural minerals. It can be used in a one to one ratio with white sugar, though it will have a more molasses like taste. We have used it in a myriad of desserts and find it very versatile.
Stevia
Stevia is a green herb that is very sweet. The Japanese have used it for about thirty years as a no calorie sweetener. The ground herb is very green, so it is usually refined to a white powder, with its sweetness concentrated. If made incorrectly it can have a bitter after taste. Because I prefer to use whole food sweeteners, I try to buy the extract made from the whole leaf (the NOW brand has one I like). It can also have a herby after taste, so it is best used in small amounts. I find a few drops work well to sweeten salad dressing, and of course, I love lemonade sweetened with it. My only caution with stevia is to use it in moderation, especially if you are using a concentrated form. The leaves were traditionally used to chew on, but they weren’t consuming baskets full of it! It is only in more recent years that we have started to use it in mass.
Agave Syrup
I don’t recommend the use of agave syrup as it is both highly processed and high in fructose, which is hard for our body to consume in large amounts. But don’t worry! There are plenty of other natural sweeteners to choose from.
Coconut/Palm Sugar
I wrote more extensively about coconut/palm sugar here. In a nut shell, coconut sugar and palm sugar are used interchangeably, made either from the coconut flower or certain palm flowers. If you get one that is made with the coconut flower it is actually a low glycemic sweetener (33-35 on the glycemic scale)! Depending on how they made it, it can have a more robust, caramel like flavor, or if you are able to find it in it’s moist form (usually found in a jar, looking a bit like raw honey), it will have a lighter taste. Pictured above is the paste type found at Asian stores. Now there are many granulated forms of organic coconut sugar to be found from many brands! I love using it in in almost all of my baked goods and desserts.
Honey
What I can I say about honey that you don’t already know? This sweet substance can have different flavors depending on where the bees were getting their pollen, making honey have so many shades of flavor. It is the first sweetener that many people turn to when taking white sugar out of their diet as it is easy to find and very sweet. I recommend raw honey because it still has many healing properties to it when kept raw. To read more about raw honey’s healing properties, check out this search on Dr. Mercola’s site. Since I have been able to find a good price on raw honey, I even use it in cooking to avoid highly processed honey (which is heated way higher than if you were simply cooking with it). This really is a heavenly sweetener. Do try to avoid generic honey as it unfortunately been found that much of the cheap honey at the store is in fact, not honey at all
Substituting Natural Sweeteners for Refined Sweeteners
I prefer not to think about “substituting” other sweeteners for white sugar because after all, working with honey is really working with a whole different type of sweetener. But still, it is helpful to know how you can substitute certain sweeteners for the usual refined sugar.
White sugar: Equal amounts of rapadura, coconut/palm sugar (in granulated form), maple sugar. Or use 3/4 cup of honey in place of 1 cup of white sugar. With many recipes you can use maple syrup or the wet type of palm sugar as well, you just may need to adjust the wet ingredients.
Brown Sugar: Muscovado sugar, or Rapadura/Sucanat
Corn syrup: Sorghum, Honey, Maple Syrup
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Hey Kimi! You forgot Brown Rice Syrup! That’s okay, not many folks use it. I do, mainly because is very low glycemic.
Brown Rice Syrup is a sweetener derived by culturing cooked rice with enzymes (usually from dried barley sprouts) to break down the starches, then straining off the liquid and cooking it until the desired consistency is reached.
Brown Rice Syrup is a nutritive sweetener that is about half as sweet as sugar. Brown rice syrup is a tasty alternative for those who watch their sugar intake. Bake with it, pour it over ice cream or pancakes, or stir it into your morning coffee.
Brown rice sugar is rich in natural maltose, which supplies a more prolonged source of energy than most concentrated sweeteners.
It is a polysaccharide, a complex sugar, which, due to the structure of complex carbohydrates, releases slowly into the bloodstream, breaking down slowly and not altering blood chemistry.
Brown rice sugar provides fuel for the body rather than causing an imbalance in blood sugar levels.
Being that I’m insulin resistant I use this all the time.
It can replace corn syrup in most recipes calling for it. I used it in my pecan pie this past Thanksgiving and it was wonderful!
Anita: Being that Brown Rice Sugar uses enzymes from Barley spouts, could this be inappropriate for Gluten Free diets? Do they make a GF version?
Hey Anita,
I thought about mentioning it, but decided against it since I haven’t used it for years (I am afraid I didn’t like it at all when I used it in the past, but maybe I need to give it another try!). This list is definitely not comprehensive, like I said, as I left out some other nutritious sweeteners that I am curious to try, but haven’t as of yet.
So if anyone else wants to add to my list, like Anita did, please feel free too! I would love to hear about what sweeteners you like.
And thanks Anita, for all the great info on brown rice syrup. It sounds interesting (I just may need to get over the taste. *wink*)
Yacon root is a great sweetener! I’ve been experimenting with it only recently, it is very dark, rich and thick like molasses but dosen’t absorb through your intestines into your blood stream therefore it’s low glycemic.
I recently tried it in a recipe with great success, the ladies at my neighborhood pcc deli really loved them, which makes me confident in entering this recipe in the carnival so if your curious you’ll have to wait:p
I am excited to see what your dessert is! 🙂
Don’t forget date sugar! It is my personal favorite for certain cookie recipes. Like maple sugar, it is very expensive, but I love the idea of eating ground-up dried dates as a sweetener! It is a darker, heavier sweetener but granulated, not liquid. I will have to look into whether its glycemic index is on the low end or not.
Have you tried it?
Dates! I never think about them! I bet you could cook dates over low heat, put in the blender and strain and use it for sweetner for bread etc. I will have to try that! Thanks for the good idea!
The glycemic load on dates isn’t so good but it has to be better than sugar (?) For thousands of years the whole area around Iraq had made Dibs or dates syrup — boil em up, puree, strain and cook till like molasses. I wonder if this is where the phrase give me dibs came from? Oh, I recommend medjool dates for meatiness. This is great for authentic Jewish recipes and since they didn’t have bees, see to be the honey in the bible — Just FYI 🙂
Hi Kimi,
What a great post. I remember my Mom talking about muscovado awhile back but I forgot about it. I’m anxious to try it now.
BTW – this is a bit unrelated but it involves baking which includes a sugar. If you made a cake in the traditional way – but then put it in the fridge overnight and baked it in the morning – would this sort of take care of the soaking problem? I am struggling so with this soaking thing! LOL!!!
Thanks so much.
All the best,
Mary
My Year Without,
I also love the idea of date sugar (though I’ve heard it’s a little hard to work with in baked goods). The only reason I didn’t include it (which I was very tempted too) was because it’s a sweetener I haven’t personally tried yet and I was trying to keep the post limited to those I could honestly say I’ve tried and liked.
So I would love to hear from others, have you tried date sugar? Do you like it? How do you use it?
Hey Mary,
I understand your concern. As a worrywart, I too worried a lot about soaking grains at room temp overnight. I think if I didn’t have friends and family who used the method with good results, I wouldn’t have been brave enough to try it.
One thing of comfort, once I was trying to make a sourdough starter and like will sometimes happen it started growing a bad bacteria, and it stunk to high heaven. It was so gross. Sally Fallon says that you can tell if something went wrong because it will smell! If everything smells okay, you should be okay.
Further more, the reason that happens to sourdough is because there is nothing acidic in it to prevent bad bacteria from growing, like buttermilk, or vinegar, or whatever you are using. I soak grains and flours for cakes/,muffins etc and haven’t had a bad odor from it once.
It also helped me to realize that I soak beans overnight, and don’t think a thing about it. My great grandparents soaked their oatmeal overnight and also didn’t think a thing about it.
Anyway, all to say I understand why you are worried, but it seems pretty safe to me.
But to answer your question,:-) I think that leaving it in the fridge is worth something, just probably not as effective as at room temperature.
Nice roundup. I found you from Kristin’s Food Renegade. Thanks for the tip on mixing honey with maple syrup, I could definitely stand to stretch ours a little.
I actually just posted a recipe for sorghum pecan pie. I wasn’t aware there are two kinds, and made mine with the dark version. My wife was also unsure about it, but I might have found my new favorite pie.
For a lighter version of sucanot (for white sugar replacement), try sucanot with honey aka honey granuales. Very tasty- I have it in my coffee every morning, and I use it in recipes that call for white sugar, while I use regular sucanot aka molasses granuales to replace brown sugar. Also, you can put the honey granuales in your blender or food processor to make a powdered sugar substitute.
One other note, if you use freshly milled grains to make your own flour, you can avoid the need to soak them. Just FYI.
Thanks for your post!!!!! I enjoyed it, and there needs to be more education out there for these things.
in joy, Troye
Drew,
Welcome! I don’t know why my family didn’t like my pecan pie made with sorghum, because I thought it was ten times better then a regular one. 🙂
Troye,
Now that you mention it, I do remember one time seeing honey sucanat. I would love to try it! Where do you buy yours?
This is a great resource, thank you for posting all this. I’m so glad I found your blog – I will definitely be back. 🙂
This post was very informative. Will refer back many times and pass on the info. I am wanting to make applebutter and wondered which sweetener you would recommend?
I have a feeling this will be one of your most frequently visited posts (like your soaked grains post, which is how I arrived at your blog for the first time).
I would love to see an update as you try more sweeteners (as a Southerner I’m personally wondering about cane syrup, as I recently made home-made pancake syrup from muscovado and coconut sugar, and realized I basically turned it back into cane syrup! But I never see any references to it as a sweetener, and I don’t know if that’s because it’s substandard or because it’s so regional.)
Blue Castle,
I am so glad that you find out me too! Hope to see you around. 🙂
Desiree,
I think it depends a bit on what you are looking for. Rapadura would give a more robust, dark sweetness (a little like sweetening with brown sugar), honey would be nice and sweet, but can be overpowering, if you use a high amount, the pasty type of coconut sugar that I have found is actually very light in taste, so could work well. Maple syrup goes wonderfully with apples (my mother in law makes the best apple pie sweetened with maple syrup), but it is a bit spendy. If I were making it, I might try a combination of maple syrup and honey. I actually like to use combinations of sweeteners a lot because they balance each other out a bit. Another good combo might be rapadara, sucanant, or muscovado and honey.
I hope that ramble is helpful!!!
Bren,
Updates would be a great idea. As a “northerner” I hadn’t hear of cane syrup until I recently saw it in my well stocked store. What is it like? Your syrup, by the way, sounds yummy!
I found this post fascinating, as I am in the process of trying to find another alternative to white sugar
Jskell911,
Welcome to the wonderful world of unrefined sugars. 🙂 I think it’s great fun experimenting with new sweeteners and discovering their depth, so have fun!
Kimi, Purely as a short little lesson in Suthuhn Shugah, as I know you’re willing to learn about anything foodie:
Down here, (I’m in North Florida) we have “cane boils” this time of year. Mostly at nature centers and demonstration farms. But some folks still hold them old style and sell the syrup. Usually there is fiddle and/or banjo playin’.
The cane is cut, and a horse hooked up to a halter that turns a cane press. He walks in a circle which turns gears that pull in each cane as it’s fed into the press. The cane juice is squeezed out into a bucket. The bucket is then dumped into a giant cast iron cauldron over a fire, and it’s boiled down into syrup.
My grandfather grew cane – I remember the worn down horse path around the press at his house.
As a southerner, I didn’t have my first taste of maple syrup until I was in my 30’s. I love it, and that’s what we began to use, but the recent doubling in price has made me look elsewhere (like home-made syrup) or locally (like cane syrup). But there is NO information on how it stacks up nutritionally against other sweeteners!
And I think I might as well use cane syrup, but my home-made syrup went something like this:
3/4 cup brown muscovado sugar
1/4 cup coconut sugar (thanks to you)
3/4 cup water
1/2 tsp vanilla
boiled for 5 minutes or so. It tasted like cane syrup since muscovado is basically dehydrated cane syrup!
Here’s a comparison of Coco Palm Sugar against Brown (cane) Sugar and White (cane) sugar.): COMPARISON OF THE ELEMENTAL CONTENT OF 3 SOURCES OF EDIBLE SUGAR – Analyzed by PCA-TAL, Sept. 11, 2000.
PS
I tried copying the table but the format got messed up.
Bren,
Thank so much for the very informative comment! 🙂 That was really helpful. It sounds like the cane syrup really isn’t refined at all, is that right? So it seems like it would also be a “whole food” sweetener, which is pretty cool. But all cane sugar products to have a higher effect on blood sugar, so your part palm sugar syrup would be a better choice for some of us. It really does sound delicious. Do you use it for pancakes?
I do use it for pancakes, but it’s a better match for old-fashioned biscuits (cover your ears, but we do biscuits and grits and bacon and oh, mmmmmm).
It’s a bit molasses-y for the kids, and I’d like to figure out a way to bring it closer to mild (though they DID like it). And I imagine it’s the coconut sugar, but when refrigerated it congeals into something resembling tar. But heat it up again and it’s good to go. Still working on it, but for the time being, it’s a happy medium between taking out a loan for maple (I assume it’s more expensive here where it has to be brought from so far) or buying Aunt Jemima.
Oh, and yeah, my gut says “not refined, plus it’s local”. I mean, I was there to see it go from field to press to cauldron to bottle, all within a few yards of each other. But my research doesn’t give me any good feedback on cane syrup (though I hear a lot about muscovado, which is the same thing in a more processed form, right?). I’m drawn to favoring things that are local or would be something people in my area would have depended on a century ago. Though there may be no logic to that.
One question about Rapadura and Sucanat. I’ve tried both and prefer Rapadura and I’ve also read that Rapadura is better for you than the Sucanat that we get nowadays. Is this true? What are your thoughts on that?
I can buy Sucanat locally but not Rapadura, unless the same thing is offered by another brand and I don’t recognize it. The sweetener shelf can be so confusing at the health food store!
I’m still making baby steps towards replacing refined sugars and I’m just really confused about all this.
Thanks for your help!
Hey Mary Ann,
I think that the reason you have heard that is because in Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon didn’t recommend using sucanat, because they were processing it more at that point of time, but they have since changed their methods for a whole food sugar, so Sally Fallon does now recommend it. 🙂 So I would use what is easiest for you, or whatever one you like better.
Hey Bren,
I may be wrong, but I also thought that sorghum was used on biscuits in the past. Ever see that tradition still around?
This is a great article–thanks! One clarification on honey (we keep bees) … the different flavors actually come from the nectar of the different flowers, not the pollen. The pollen is used to feed the bees not to make the honey. Honey is wonderful! 😉
I am one who is trying to transition from refined sugars, too. Just picked up some blue agave nectar today. Are agave nectar and agave syrup the same, or not?
Hey Shirley,
Thanks for correcting my info mistake. I will change my post this weekend to fix that. 🙂
And yes, agave nectar is the same as agave syrup. 🙂
I feel like we’re having a conversation here! Yes, sorghum goes on biscuits too, and I’ve heard it mentioned as a cheaper alternative to maple, but it’s not local to my area, where cane grows much better. It’s traditionally grown further north, in the Appalachian foothills, so I’ve not yet encountered it in a store. I’d have to order it. Which I plan to do. The Appalachians still “Feel” local to me 😉
I think I just figured out what to ask Santa for – an assortment of alternative sweeteners to try!
I’m always the wet blanket when it comes to the “natural” sugars and sweeteners. There is no free lunch when it comes to sweet stuff. We humans didn’t evolve to eat concentrated sweets of any sort every day, all the time, no matter how “natural” or “low glycemic” the label says it is. As much as I admire the WAPF and follow many of their principles, I find too much sugars of all sorts (not just refined white table sugars) in their recipes and many of the recommended foods. Some cling to the rational that there are minerals and trace nutrients in the less refined sugars, but those nutrients can be consumed in other foods without the sugar. That’s like drinking wine to the point of drunkenness for the antioxidents.
Between studying pre-agricultural diets (how we humans evolved eating paleolithic foods, which shaped our genetic code and did not prepare us for the concentrated sugars we face daily now) and my own situation managing non-obese impaired glucose tolerance (basically the beginning end of the diabetes spectrum) with diet, I have spent a lot of time looking into the sugars. Like I said, no such thing as a free lunch, no matter how “natural”. It’s very important to keep concentrated sugar content low in the diet and fairly infrequent. And even though modern fruit varieties are far more sweet and large than the seasonal fruits available to our paleo ancestors, they are still far lower in sugars (all sugars, not just sucrose, glucose, fructose, etc.) than the concentrated sweeteners used in kitchens and food manufacturing facilities. Honey was one of concentrated sweeteners available to our paleo ancestors and you can be sure procuring it wasn’t as easy as choosing a package from a shelf. Same for maple syrup by the Native Americans (btw, both of these sugars are used in my household, but in very small amounts and not generally daily).
Some of those “low glycemic” sweeteners, like some brands of agave syrup are nearly 92% fructose, which is a heck of a lot higher than the 55% fructose that makes up HFCS that everyone thinks is so scary. The process to make agave syrup is nearly identical to making HFCS from corn, too. Yet I see moms squeezing it with abandon into all sorts of foods for their kids and themselves.
Fructose doesn’t immediately raise blood glucose, because it goes to the liver for processing, o it might seem like an ideal sweetener and is often recommended to diabetics. But a fructose molecule is a fructose molecule in the body, no matter what the original source, unless one is burning lots of calories as a lumber jack or a Marine carrying a 70 pound pack around Iraq, most people are not going to burn those concentrated fructose calories and the liver will convert them into triglycerides (fat) and store them in fat cells in the liver and in abdominal fat stores. Yes, lots of fructose contributes to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (cirrhosis), which is on the upswing, including in young adults and children. And lots of fructose in the body does damage things significantly enough to eventually indirectly raise blood glucose levels due to loss of regulation of glucose concentration in the liver, stuffing fat cells, insulin resistance, and by killing off beta cells in the pancreas. Fructose in constant unnatural quantities is nasty indeed. And fructose damage is especially dangerous for diabetics, because those AGEs contribute to the tissue damage throughout the body and loss of glucose control, actually advancing the disease, not helping. One of the standard tests diabetics must take periodically is a hemoglobin A1c, which measures the average amount of sugar (fructose) attached the protein in red blood cells). http://www.labtestsonline.org/understanding/analytes/a1c/glance.html
Fructose is also very prone to creating AGE’s (advanced glycation endproducts) which is essentially sugar toxicity, from excess sugar in the blood inappropriately attaching to proteins and “gumming” them up, causing damage and dysfunction. Caramelization in the eyes, kidneys, nerves, etc., if you will. Fructose is especially prone to forming AGEs and diabetics make lots of AGEs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_glycation_endproduct
Sorry if I’ve rained on the sugar parade, but I think this is one of those situations where the Emperor is sooooo naked but too many people can’t see it because they want to believe the marketing hype (and yes, “natural” food marketers do hype their products, too; it’s not exclusive to the conventional food manufacturers). Restraint is the key with sugars, and almost no one recognizes how much restraint is needed with any sugar these days, no matter what the pedigree of the sugar.
Hey Anna,
Thanks for the comment. I always appreciate hearing other people’s opinions, even if they differ from my own. 🙂
Oh, and last time I checked, I didn’t feel any rain on my parade. *wink*
Just because I did a post talking about natural sweeteners doesn’t mean that I think that everyone should eat them in excess (which I think many people do), or even everyday. I have mentioned on this site before, but if you are a new reader you may not have read this, but I did a sugar free diet for several months, (including not only sweeteners, but also sugar forming food). I am very familiar with the fact that most of us consume way too many sugar forming food, and we usually choose to have a pretty controlled diet.
You will probably be more interested in my future planned posts (in the new year) talking about cutting back on sugar, and eliminating sugar cravings, then you will be in our dessert carnival, and other planned posts this month which involve sweeteners, but that’s okay. 🙂 I am actually excited about some long planned posts talking about how to reduce sugar consumption (in the form of many different kinds of food) because I do think that it is a much needed topic on this blog.
Though I have a philosophical difference with you in our “evolution” and I do eat grains and think that most of us should do just fine with that in a balanced diet, I do agree that sweeteners should be consumed in moderation.
These two ancient Hebrew proverbs are good words of advice for us today.
“If you have found honey, eat only enough for you, lest you have your fill of it and vomit it.” Prov 25:16
“It is not good to eat much honey, nor is it glorious to seek one’s own glory” Prov. 25:27
And I have been at the place with my health, where no sweeteners at all was the best choice for me.
Hope that clarifies my position a little better.
Oh, and as far as the “restraint” needed, I think that once you have eliminated yeast issues and sugar addictions, there is very little restraint needed because you don’t even want it, most of the time!
I have been buying real maple syrup for years and feeling pretty proud of myself. Thank you for the organic tip, I don’t need to ferment my organs any further! Great post, very comprehensive – I appreciate it.
Thanks for the article. I use agave in all sorts of dishes, cakes and even drinks. I started with small bottles and now buy gallons at a time and am very happy with the results.
The last few times I ordered it online at Whole And Natural.com. They have all sizes at very reasonable prices and ship fast.
Healthy Holidays to all,
Debby
I have just stumbled to this site, and I am quite happy with the find. I am currently attempting to ditch the refined white sugar habit. I started with soda in November, and have been supplementing my sugar cravings with tea sweetened with Agave. I like the amber one more, it’s flavor is nice in teas. I wonder if the high amounts of fructose is what made soda an easier kick. If fructose is seen the same in the body, then my liver must have felt that it needed some, and the agave helped me stop drinking the devil ; ) .
Thank you so much for this blog, and the brown rice syrup comment, I like to make my own Teriyaki sauce with it. Just mix equal parts with soy sauce, very yummy!
Hi Rosy,
Thanks for the comment, and welcome to my site! Good for you for kicking the soda habit. 🙂 That is curious about the agave… I wonder if it was acting like the corn syrup in your body!
Thanks for such great info. I do have a comment on the maple syrup. I wanted to know if the maple syrup I was buying at my store (not organic) was processed using formaldehyde so I contacted the company. What I was told was that in Canada -Quebec – (where almost 100% of commercially sold syrup is made) formaldehyde is illegal to use and the law is strictly enforced. Another company commented that they didn’t know of any company that used formaldehyde anymore. Formaldehyde was used to keep the sap flowing from the trees. I don’t know the laws in Vermont. Do you have other information on the use of formaldehyde?
Thanks again!
When the sugar cane is harvested in my home town and brought to the mill we get fresh brown sugar. Would that be considered Muscovado?
Thanks,
Joan
Where do you find your raw honey at a good price? I would love to get some but never thought I could afford it.
Hi, I’m a new blog reader … stumbled upon your site a week or so ago and I’m so enjoying all this wealth of info … wow! this is just what I was looking for — some encouragement to a young Mom trying to feed her family nutrition on a budget!!! thanks so much!
I want to know your thoughts on xylitol as a sweetener ??? I’ve recently read about it’s dental benefits and since then done alot of extensive research and so far as I can tell there are no “cons” to the situation … so I tracked down a company selling organically grown birch xylitol grown/produced in the usa and I’ve switched entirely from white sugar!!!! The taste is fabulous !!!!!!!!! I’m so excited to have something that I can feel good about feeding my little ones!
Please keep the info. coming — I’m learning lots!
Jodi
Hi Jody,
Great question. I have been getting many different questions about sweeteners lately, so I think I will try to do a new post to answer them. Look for it soon!
Hi – I totally love this blog. A question for “Jodi” regarding the xylitol product. Can you share information on the company/brand? Thanks.
Thank you so much for this post! I am caught a bit between a rock and a hard place, because my dear husband is not all that concerned about eating healthy. He doesn’t like the taste of honey-sweetened desserts. So I’m hoping that the Rapadura will help with this. I would like to change over our diet without a big change in taste. Do you have any recommendations for me?
Kimi,
According to Wikipedia, rapadura (Brazillian name) is also know as panela in Central and South America. One of the many Spanish names for it is piloncillo. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panela Winco carries piloncillo regularly in their bulk bins for a very affordable price– I never knew what in the world it was, it just looked strange to me! 🙂 What do you know about this? Would this be a good choice for an unrefined sweetener? Thanks! Sharon
Hi! I’m new to your blog, and love it! I gave up refined sugar (with a few small exceptions) in October, and feel SO much better! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on sugar substitutes. I have a questions–where do you do the bulk of your grocery shopping? I am trying to balance this new healthy lifestyle with frugality, and being that we have 5 young children, I need some advice!
I just want to say that this comment: “Just makes sure that you buy organic maple syrup because unorganic is processed with formaldehyde, which is toxic” is absolutely NOT true. My husband and I own a maple syrup business and know first hand how it is processed. In order to be able to label your maple syrup as organic one of the things you have to be able to do is show that the land where the maple trees are that you tap have not been fertilized or anything for a number of years. That can be difficult to do if you have trees in multiple locations. It is also an expensive process and so a lot of people don’t bother with it. However, NO ONE uses formaldehyde in their syrup! People used to put formaldehyde tablets in the tap holes after the season had ended thinking that it would help the tree to heal. That is not done anymore and has not been done for some time.
Hello Stacy,
In more recent posts I have taken away this warning as it was based on old information. I find that it’s interesting that you find it hard to label your maple syrup organic because another farmer contacted me and said that it’s actually quite easy and cheap to do (he was an organic maple syrup farmer). I am curious as to what the majority of maple syrup farmers think.
However, my encouragement to people is to get good quality maple syrup of organic quality (I buy many things not labeled organic, but is probably a higher quality than many organic labeled foods).
hallo. so glad to have discovered your website.
i’d like to comment on Sorghum. sorghum syrup comes from the cane, not the grain. there are, though, certain varieties that are grown for their grain. sorghum cane can grow to 10 or 12 feet tall. the cane is pressed and the resulting juice is cooked down. the reason some batches of sorghum are darker as well as thicker than others has to do with how long the juice was cooked.
According to Rapunzel sweeteners there is a difference between rapadura and sucanat.
“What’s the difference between Rapadura and Sucanat?
The way it is processe ! Although very similar in appearance and taste, Rapadura is made by just evaporating the water from the organic sugar cane juice. Sucanat is manufactured in a way that the sugar stream and the molasses stream is separated from each other and then carefully re-blended to reach a consistent product. The taste and appearance of Rapunzel’s Rapadura on the other hand can vary according to sugar cane variety, soil type and weather. But it is a whole product in its true sense.”
Nourishing Traditions recommends Rapadura not Sucanat.
Hi Amanda,
Sally Fallon actually does recommend sucanat now as they produce it the same way as rapadura now. Here is how Wholesome Sweeter produces theirs.
“Wholesome Sweeteners Fair Trade Organic Sucanat® (which stands for Sugar Cane Natural), is a whole cane sugar. It’s made by simply crushing freshly cut sugar cane, extracting the juice and heating it in a large vat. Once the juice is reduced to a rich, dark syrup, it is hand-paddled. Hand paddling cools and dries the syrup, creating the dry porous granules we call Sucanat. Nothing is added and nothing is taken out! ”
http://www.wholesomesweeteners.com/brands/Wholesome_Sweeteners/Fair_Trade_Certified_Organic_Sucanat.html
I have been telling people for years that our bodies treat refined sugar like a poison. The trap I feel into was using artifical sweetners. Any recommendations as to what is good to use in coffee? Honey works ok for tea, but it is not the same in coffee.
Hi,
I love this site and have learned so much. I am having a hard time finding sucanat and rapadura. Dipping my toes into all these new forms of sweetners and feeling a bit overwhelemed. We love sweet tea and a good chocolate chip cookie. Any ideas on the best sweetner to start with and where to buy.
Thanks for the help,
Danielle Spence