Good Sugars, Bad Sugars :: Food and Nutrition

Good Sugars, Bad Sugars
by author Heather von Stackelberg

Our society’s collective sweet tooth is an adaptive response. It goes back to caveman days and it’s what encourages us to eat foods that are high in energy and nutrients. The problem is that the refinement of sugar has removed all the beneficial nutrients, enzymes and other plant compounds that give naturally sweet foods their goodness.

In small amounts, sweeteners cause no problems to most people, especially when they are eaten in natural forms like fruit. Large amounts of sugar on a regular basis however, cause insulin resistance, a state in which the body does not respond to the hormone responsible for controlling blood sugar correctly.

Insulin resistance is a significant step towards adult onset diabetes. The resulting chronic high blood sugar is usually converted to fat, leading to obesity. Of course insulin is a hormone with many factors affecting it, not just sugars in the diet. Things like binge and starve eating patterns (including eating only one or two meals a day), stress and lack of sleep can all cause problems with blood sugar, which lead to the seldom-diagnosed hypoglycemia.

We might not even be aware of how much sugar we consume. Soft drinks are the form in which most sugar is consumed. Sugar is also added to hamburgers to reduce shrinkage and add juiciness, to breading in deep fried foods or to give frozen fish a sheen. It is commonly added to canned and frozen fruit and vegetables to maintain color and juiciness.

Consumers have become more aware of food labels in which ingredients have to be listed in order, largest amount on down to the lowest, so manufacturers have been listing several types of sugars instead of one. This way, the sugars can be further down on the ingredient list, even though the total amount is quite high.

A Sugar is a Sugar is a Sugar

White sugar, "brown sugar" and molasses do not differ in health value, only in taste. They all come from the same source, either sugar cane or sugar beet. The two types are used pretty much interchangeably. Though some individuals who are particularly sensitive or allergic to one or the other can tell the difference, most people can’t. White sugar is the final result of processing and is 99.9-per-cent pure sucrose (a chemical).

In some places, brown sugar is made by cutting short the refinement process and leaving some molasses in the sugar for taste and color. In others, they add caramel. Sometimes brown sugar is produced by processing white sugar with animal bone charcoal to brown it.

Raw sugar is often called "unrefined" or "natural" sugar, but that is a misnomer. True "raw" sugar is illegal for sale, since it contains sand, soil, mold, bacteria, yeast, lice and other impurities. Turbinado sugar is raw sugar washed just enough to meet filth tolerances, but might still have impurities. Often what is sold as raw sugar is white sugar with cane or beet pulp or molasses added.

Molasses is the crushed up plant material with or without some of the sugars removed. It has some nutrients, but not really a significant amount. Its real value is its characteristic taste and a mild antioxidant quality that can delay the spoilage of food to which it is added.

The quality of molasses depends on whether it is the primary product or a byproduct of sugar production. Good, unsulfured molasses is made with a 200-year-old process using mature cane and aged before selling. Sulfured molasses is a byproduct from sugar production using green cane. It contains the residue of sulfur extraction of the sugar. Blackstrap molasses is the lowest grade of molasses–the remaining product when all the profitable material has been extracted. It can contain concentrated contaminants.

Cheaper, But Not as Sweet

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Heather von Stackelberg has a BSc in botany and a keen interest in health, fitness and organic growing.

Source: alive #211, May 2000

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