Sweeteners: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I feel that the worst sweeteners to use are the artificial sweeteners. They have many bad effects on you, including making you fatter. Many have reported many disease like symptoms that appear like diseases like MS. Artificial sweeteners are many times sweeter than sugar. They are not really foods and are more like drugs.

Sugar cane is not really that bad for health. What makes it bad is the process that they put it through.They do a similar thing to with wheat and rice. They take the nutritious part of the sugar cane out. It is a thick black liquid called blackstrap molasses. You can get this is in health foods stores and it is sweet. It is very nutritious with lots of iron, potassium and chromium in it. The part that is left is called sugar and has calories, but has no nutrition.

Advertisements say that people should buy chromium supplements since it is needed to metabolize sugar. The sugar robs your body of the chromium and other things. If blackstrap molasses is sold in the health food store, where is the sugar sold? You can say that it is sold in the sick and fat food store.

Health food stores now have Succanat, a superior version of dried cane juice. This is the sugar cane without taking out any of the good stuff. It is not brown sugar. Brown sugar is just sugar with a little bit of molasses added to it. It is not healthy.

Large manufacturers try to use the cheapest ingredients they can find to save money, no matter how bad it is for you. So they like using artificial (chemical) sweeteners and corn syrup which is slightly worse than sugar.

Health food stores have healthy alternatives and they are ingredients in some health foods. You will find some products containing sugar cane or invert cane sugar. The former is regular sugar even if it says organic sugar cane. The latter is just like corn syrup which is a little worse than sugar. Refined sugar is fattening and very bad for health.

The healthy sweeteners are raw honey, pure maple syrup, agave (from a cactus), barley malt, stevia (a healthy herb that is sweeter than sugar), blackstrap molasses and rice syrup. Agave enters the blood very slowly, making it especially good for diabetic and weight loss.

The dried cane juice may not be the healthiest sweetener, but it is fine as an ingredient in something. The Succanat is better than dried cane juice. Maple syrup is used in the Master Cleanse lemonade diet.

Bottom Line's Super Foods Rx, by Steven Pratt M.D. and Kathy Matthews says, "Honey contains at least 181 known substances, and its antioxidant activities stems from phenolics, peptides, organic acids and enzymes. Honey also contains salicylic acid, minerals, alpha-tocopherol and oligosaccharides. Oligosaccharides increase the number of good bacteria in the colon, reduces levels of toxic metabolites in the intestine, help prevent constipation and help lower cholesterol and blood pressure."

Sugar that is already in foods, like in fruit, are the healthiest sweet things to eat. This information is applied to when you are preparing something or reading the ingredients in a product. It is much healthier to eat fruit on an empty stomach like strawberries, avocados, blueberries, kiwi fruit, watermelon, peaches, grapes, apples, oranges, mangoes and pineapple. Try to get organically grown fruit when it is possible. Copyright 2008 by Chuck Bluestein www.phifoundation.org.
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The author, Chuck Bluestein, was a chemist for the federal government. He worked at the Defense Personnel Support Center in Philadelphia, home to the baseball World Series winners, the Phillies. He is a nutritionist, herbalist and is an expert on fasting.
His free information website has information on curing colds and flus quickly, Nutition Articles-- The Biggest Nutrition Myth Ever, fasting, curing depression and anxiety, natural cures, losing weight, health related articles, lemonade diet, Amazon herbs and Euphoria: Self Improvement for More Health and Happiness.