* The first in an ongoing series about how to read between the lines of ingredient labels, and choosing the healthiest ingredients for mind, body, and spirit. LABEL SAVVY! Part 1 explores the harmful effects of sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and artificial sweeteners like saccharin and aspartame versus healthier, less processed natural sweeteners with a low glycemic index – like stevia, raw honey, and agave nectar. Yum! *
TAPPING SAP FOR MAPLE SYRUP. Full-time carpenter and part-time maple syrup artisan, Brian explains tapping trees for maple syrup is best done when day temperatures are warm and night temperatures remain cool in early spring when the sap is flowing. Washington County, Wisconsin, April 2006.
THE HOT POTATO
Serving Up a Weekly Helping of
Sustainable & Organic Gardening, Food, Health, and Community
by Adam Brockman & Aireen Joven, May 2007, # 17
THIS WEEK’S DISH: LABEL SAVVY! Part 1 -
The Sweet And Low-Down On Healthy And Unhealthy Sweeteners
ATTENTION smart shoppers! Here’s an interesting exercise to try out at the grocery store: grab any item off the shelf and read the ingredient label from start to finish. Unless you’re in the organic section or at a health food store, chances are you’ll find one or more of the following ingredients listed: sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated oil. Whether you’re in the cereal aisle, perusing the frozen foods, or choosing your favorite peanut butter or jelly, virtually every jar or box you pick up will contain one or more of these ingredients. We know. One day, we told Adam’s little brother he could choose any snack at the store as long as it didn’t have any of those ingredients. We ended up in the organic aisle.
So many of us have eaten these ingredients not knowing what they were doing to our bodies. For the most part, manufacturers are not required to disclose potential negative health effects of ingredients, even if research proves they’re harmful to human health. Common processed ingredients such as preservatives, artificial food dyes, so-called natural and artificial flavors, and refined flours can be found in cheap gas station grabs as well as in a pricey restaurant entrée, but these ingredients carry a hidden price tag beyond being fattening, cavity-causing, or “bad for you”. Welcome to the first of a series of articles about how to get LABEL SAVVY! and read between the lines on ingredient labels. How are we affected by refined sugar and other sweeteners? How do we kick the sugar habit once and for all? Which natural sweeteners and sugars in fresh fruits and vegetables satisfy the sweet tooth and support a healthy mind, body, and spirit?
SUGAR: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE ADDICTED
The word “sugar” typically conjures the image of white, granulated, refined sugar – the most commonly used sweetener in the U.S. The white stuff is a kind of sugar most commonly derived from either the sugar cane plant or, surprisingly, beets. As those who have tasted pure cane and beet juice can testify, the flavor and overall energy imparted by white sugar is nothing like the juice from which it originates. In the process of refining cane and beets into white sugar, all of the original nutritional and medicinal qualities are stripped away, and you are left with an empty sweetener that can actually be harmful to the body.
During the refining process, raw sugar is stripped of its natural molasses coating, melted down, and treated with chemical “clarifying” agents like calcium hydroxide, phosphoric acid, polyacrylomite, and carbon dioxide. In the case of cane sugar, the resulting syrup is then filtered through bone char, a filter and decolorizer made from the bones of cows. Lastly, the sugar is crystallized and evaporated in a vacuum pan, spun in a centrifuge to separate the crystals from any remaining syrup, washed, and dried, resulting in the white sugar.
Even in small amounts, refined white sugar is unhealthy. Studies have shown that white sugar suppresses the immune system, decreasing and weakening white blood cell counts. White sugar also raises the acidity of the blood, making the body more vulnerable to toxins, bacteria, and viruses. It is a high-glycemic food, meaning it spikes blood glucose and insulin levels, overtaxing the pancreas and potentially having a negative impact on digestive enzymes, body weight, and insulin levels. The higher a glycemic index, the faster the food raises your blood sugar level. Too much overtaxing of the pancreas can result in diabetes, where the pancreas no longer produces enough insulin to regulate blood sugar levels. Loi-Natalie Laing (www.loilaing.com), a local certified Holistic Health Counselor accredited by The American Association of Drugless Practitioners, explains that refined sugar “requires extra effort for our body to process since our body has to deplete its own store of minerals and enzymes to absorb it properly. Refined sweets wreak havoc on our blood sugar levels and overconsumption can lead to diabetes and hypoglycemia.” The explosion of diabetes in this country and the increased proliferation of refined sugar in the average American diet (an average of 43 pounds a year per person!) are no coincidence.
Like white sugar, high fructose corn syrup is another sweetener with a high GI (glycemic index), whose negative health effects are identical to its granulated counterpart. Laing also notes, “The sad thing is that food manufacturers sneak [refined sweeteners] into many things like children’s cereal, canned vegetables, baby food, bread, and tomato sauce. High fructose corn syrup is very addictive and added to many products, especially for kids. It’s cheap to use, but unhealthy for us. The bottom line is that it will put more money in the manufacturers’ pockets.” Not only does it convert to fat more quickly than any other sugar, high fructose corn syrup carries an added risk: it is made from corn, the majority of which is genetically-modified. The huge amount of non-organic products containing corn syrup greatly contributes to the industry estimate that over 70% of processed foods on grocery store shelves in the U.S. contain GMOs.
The artificial rollercoaster of sugar highs and lows goes a long way towards explaining why millions of Americans, including children, are literally addicted to sugar, corn syrup, and the foods that contain them. Like a drug, a tolerance is gradually built up to the point where the sugar addict cannot feel the effect it’s having on their body. Like coffee junkies, some soda addicts report headaches and other withdrawal symptoms if they don’t get their daily fix. Our society has come to think such addictions are normal rather than what they really are, a health epidemic.
The story behind artificial sweeteners like saccharin (Sweet’N Low), sucralose (Splenda), and aspartame (Equal, NutraSweet) will also leave you with a bitter taste. Banned in Canada except for use by diabetics, saccharin has been shown in laboratory tests to cause cancer in animals. Until 2001, U.S. federal law required warning labels for foods containing saccharin to state: “use of this product may be hazardous to your health. This product contains saccharin which has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals.” Aspartame consists of at least three different substances which act as neurotoxins when broken down in the body, and has been shown in numerous studies to cause brain cancer in laboratory rats. This, along with a laundry-list of nearly 100 reported symptoms including dizziness, nausea, memory loss, and impairment of vision make aspartame an unsafe and unsuitable replacement for sugar. Splenda, also known as sucralose, caused shrinking of the thymus gland, enlarging of the kidneys and liver, and even aborted pregnancies in animal tests. “These artificial sweeteners can actually cause cravings for sweets,” Laing warns. “They’re all chemical products produced in a lab and can lead to headaches, weight gain, heart palpitations, etc.” Laing’s bottom line: “Personally, I don’t believe people should use artificial sweeteners.”
HEALTHIER SWEETENERS TO THE RESCUE!
Not all sweeteners are bad. Sugar is a natural component found in fruits and vegetables in the form of fructose and glucose, also known as simple carbohydrates. They are our body’s main source of energy. Simple carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables are a clean-burning and healthy source of fuel, and they taste good too! For anyone looking to kick their sugar habit, sweet fruits and vegetables are one of the best places to start, because unlike refined white sugar and high fructose corn syrup, they provide a stable source of energy and don’t spike blood sugar levels. Look out for fruit juice-sweetened jams; pocket a banana, carrots, or an apple on the go; and try sweet fruit and veggie juice combos like carrots, apples, and beets. Yum.
Bottled and packaged natural sweeteners come from plants, but it’s best to consume those that are minimally-processed and kept as close to the way Nature intended them as possible. Raw honey is better than the popular high-heated honey. Raw honey is unheated or minimally heated during processing, and therefore retains much of its original nutrients, enzymes, flavor, and healing properties while having a lower glycemic index than the average supermarket honey. Darker than conventional white sugar, organic sugar is slightly healthier because it’s not separated from the molasses stream during processing. It’s processed 50% less than conventional white sugar, and as a big bonus, it’s grown without pesticides and chemicals! For thousands of years before refined sugar was developed, cultures used another natural sweetener, what we now call evaporated cane juice. Many foods marketed as being healthy contain evaporated cane juice, which is less processed than refined sugar so retains more nutrients, but still has a high glycemic index.
If you’re going to go the granulated sugar route, your best bet is one of Laing’s favorites: unrefined evaporated cane juice, also known as sucanat or rapadura, both essentially dehydrated cane juice, higher in original vitamins and minerals. Another of Laing’s favorites is stevia, made from the leaves of the stevia plant. Read the label first, because many commercially-available forms of this sweetener are diluted with inulin fiber and other fillers. Go for 100% pure stevia for 100% sweetness. Stevia also rises above all other sweeteners, because it has a zero glycemic index while being many times sweeter than sugar. You can even try your green thumb at growing it as an edible container plant!
Our favorite sweetener of all has one of the lowest glycemic indexes, yet it tastes amazing, is versatile in the kitchen, and is one-and-a-half times sweeter than sugar, requiring less in drinks and recipes. Agave nectar, derived from the agave plant commercially grown mostly in Mexico, is slowly gaining repute among health-conscious eaters for its subtle flavor and powerful sweetness while still being diet and diabetic-friendly. Those looking for a natural sweetener that is not high on the glycemic index like sucanat, not animal-derived or as pricey as raw honey, but still raw with all its health benefits can bring raw agave to the table. Our only caveat concerning agave nectar is that, sadly, it is not even close to being local to the Midwest. Last year as garden interns, we helped a local maple syrup artisan in Washington County, Wisconsin collect deliciously pure and clear sap from box elder trees in early spring, and tasted the indescribable sweetness of freshly tapped, local syrup. Being sugar-sensitive and partial to the raw sweeteners, though, it’s hard to want to give up on the exotic and oh-so-good-for-you (your body and your sweet tooth) king of natural sweeteners – agave nectar. Another sweet friend we treasure for it’s high iron and mineral boost plus great flavor in baked goods is organic, unsulphured molasses.
For two sweet charts that sum it all up, check out www.vegetarianorganiclife.com/sugartable.htm and www.bodyandfitness.com/Information/Fitness/sugar.htm.
Until next week, the Hot Potato is in your hands. Pass it on!
TO DOWNLOAD a PDF of the article, click on hot potato 17 label savvy sweeteners.
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