Sugar Alternatives
Posted on July 16, 2013 by Kristen Byrd Strother, One of Thousands of Health and Fitness Coaches on Noomii.
This blog was originally posted to my website on October 31, 2012. Here are a few healthy sugar substitutes.
Happy Halloween everyone! Do you have big plans for the day? My fiancé and I will be helping out at a harvest party at church. It will be so fun to see all the kids’ adorable costumes!
In my most recent newsletter article I talked about sugar. I thought I would expand on that topic a bit today by talking about great sugar substitutes! We all need a little sweet in our lives, right? I mean, there is a reason God included the sweets taster on our taste buds! But the good ol’ world of refined sugars is wreaking havoc on our bodies. Here are some awesome things to use to take care of our sugar tooths that our bodies will appreciate more:
Maple Syrup: This is my ultimate favorite sweetener. I use it most mornings in my hot rice cereal, along with fruit, sunflower seeds, and cinnamon. It’s also one of the tasty ingredients in my favorite 5-ingredient raspberry crisp! Yum! Of course, I mean PURE maple syrup here, not what store shelves tout as being maple syrup, which is usually corn syrup with flavoring. As with any sweetener, though, quantity definitely matters. One quarter of a cup of my favorite maple syrup has 50 grams of sugar! I use less than a teaspoon in my cereal.
Honey: Nothing beats the delicious stickiness of honey. It’s great for making desserts, especially raw food desserts because it can bind things together. Really, honey can be subbed in almost anything-baking, salad dressings, in your tea. Just remember to up the dry ingredients in a recipe when you use sugar substitutes with more moisture if the recipe calls for granulated sugar.
Coconut Sugar: Speaking of granulated sugar, I absolutely love this sweet substitute! I was so happy when I found a dryer sugar to use as some recipes don’t have enough extra dry ingredients to make up for the wetter nature of the other alternatives. Do you know why else I love coconut sugar? It has only 3 grams of sugar per teaspoon! Super great for staying away from blood sugar swings. Of course, this means it isn’t as sweet as some other sugars. Something to keep in mind if you are early in making the switch to healthy substitutes.
