I commonly receive the question, “(insert sweetener) bad for me?” My response, “It depends.”
First off, why are you using the sweetener, and how much are you using? Secondly, what are your fitness and health goals? After answering these questions (honestly), I can give recommendations on what an individual should do about adding sweeteners to their diet.
Let’s take a dive into some common sweeteners before I give my commendations:
Sucrose-Table sugar, honey, white sugar, confectioners sugar, sugar in the raw, are all made up molecularly of a glucose and fructose molecule (equally).
Fructose-These include agave, maple syrup. Though fructose has a lower glycemic index than table sugar or glucose, the gut cannot absorb fructose. Fructose must be processed by the liver into glucose so it can be used by the body. This reaction is called fructolysis. If 30g or more of fructose are ingested, the excess sugar conversion causes an increase in triglycerides, a precursor for cardiovascular disease. Moreover, fructose is also the sweetest tasting sweetener, we’ll learn why this is important later on.
Dextrose- Corn Syrup/Cassava Syrup-Though this is a high glycemic sugar that will affect blood sugar, it bypasses the liver.
High Fructose Corn Syrup-Found in sports drinks and soft drinks. Think of HFCS as sucrose on overdrive. Up until the 1970s, soft drinks used cheap sugar: corn syrup. Corn syrup is made up of glucose, which doesn’t taste as sweet as fructose on the pallet. Rather than using sugar, Scientists combined the sweetness of fructose with the cheap cost of corn syrup to produce a super cheap and addictive substance that runs havoc on your liver and blood sugar. HFCS-55 contains 55% fructose and 45% glucose.
If your goal is improving body composition and long term health, then you should RARELY be consuming sweeteners. RARELY. Notice I did not say sugar. Sugar occurs naturally in fruits and vegetables, however it is VERY hard to over consume sugar when you eat whole foods, but EASY to over consume sugar when you are drinking juices or eating dried fruit. For instance, to get the sugar in one 8 ounce glass of orange juice, you would have to eat 3 oranges. Add in the fact that you are consuming a lot of fiber which slows down digestion and negates the spike in blood sugar, and you are working with two completely different scenarios. My recommendation is to keep sugar consumption below 30g each day and consume your sugar as fibrous foods.
There is so much more to unpack about sugar, but hopefully you can look behind the BS when the next sugar company says, “Sugar is sugar,” or your buddy tries to feed you muffins and says they are healthy because she used, “Agave Syrup.”
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