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Healthy Choices for Sweet
Tooth
Healthy choices are available to replace table sugar and artificial
sweeteners, which means you can indulge your sweet tooth now and then.
Agave syrup is a sweetener
commercially produced in Mexico, from several species of agave, including Agave
tequilana (also called Blue Agave or Tequila Agave), and the Salmiana,
Green, Grey, Thorny, and Rainbow varieties. Agave syrup is sweeter than honey,
though less viscous.
Agave syrup is produced in the Mexican States of Jalisco, Michoacán,
Guanajuato and Tamaulipas, according to Mexican laws pertaining to certificate
of origin, although most is produced in Jalisco.
Agave syrup may be substituted for sugar in recipes.
- Use 1/3 cup of agave syrup for every 1 cup of sugar in the original
recipe.
- The quantity of liquids in the original recipe must be reduced due to the
moisture included in the syrup.
- Some chefs also reduce the oven temperature by 25°F in recipes requiring
baking.
Barley malt tastes much like
molasses. Blackstrap molasses is the thick, dark syrup that results after sugar
crystallization has been carried out three times. It adds some B vitamins,
calcium, phosphorous, and iron to the diet.
It’s great in carrot cake, spice cake, and squash dishes.
Brown rice syrup is a sweetener
derived by culturing cooked rice with enzymes (usually from dried barley
sprouts) to break down the starches, then straining off the liquid and cooking
it until the desired consistency is reached. The final product is roughly 50%
soluble complex carbohydrates, 45% maltose, and 3% glucose. The glucose is
absorbed into the bloodstream immediately, while the maltose takes up to one and
a half hours to be digested, and the complex carbohydrates take from two to
three hours, providing a steady supply of energy. Rice syrup has a shelf life of
about a year, and once opened, should be stored in a cool, dry place.
Brown rice syrup is not suitable for consumption by diabetics, as the glucose
and maltose cause rapid rise in blood-sugar.
Brown Rice Syrup is produced commercially by cooking brown rice flour or
brown rice starch with enzymes. These enzymes are usually gmo-free although
sometimes synthetic or GM enzymes are also used by some producers. The final
carbohydrate profile is adjustable depending upon the desired sweetness and
application. The syrup is then filtered and excess water is evaporated to
achieve desired consistency. These are produced on a commercial scale by several
companies in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Frozen juice concentrates are an
easy and flavorful way to sweeten sauces and salad dressings. They do retain
many vitamins of the fruit, which they were pressed from. Look for varieties
like apple, orange, pineapple, and grape in the frozen foods aisles.
Honey is a sweet and viscous fluid produced by honey bees (and some other species of bee), and derived from the nectar of flowers.
Honey is significantly sweeter than table sugar and has attractive chemical properties for
baking. Honey has a distinctive flavor which leads some people to prefer it over sugar and other sweeteners.
Honey is a mixture of sugars and other compounds. With respect to carbohydrates, honey is mainly fructose (about 38.5%) and glucose (about
31.0%), making it similar to the synthetically produced inverted sugar syrup which is approximately 47% fructose, 47% glucose and 5% sucrose. Honey's remaining carbohydrates include maltose, sucrose, and other complex
carbohydrates.
Honey contains trace amounts of several vitamins and minerals. As with all nutritive sweeteners, honey is mostly sugars and is not a significant source of vitamins or
minerals. Honey also contains tiny amounts of several compounds thought to function as antioxidants, including chrysin, pinobanksin, vitamin C, catalase, and
pinocembrin. The specific composition of any batch of honey will depend largely on the mix of flowers available to the bees that produced the
honey.
Maple syrup is a sweetener made from the sap of maple trees. In the U.S. and Canada it is most often eaten with pancakes, waffles, cornbread or french toast. It is sometimes used as an ingredient in baking, the making of candy (confection) or in preparing desserts.
It’s available in various grades, including Grade A Light Amber, Grade A Dark
Amber, and Grade B. Maple syrup contains trace amounts of vitamins B2, B5, and
B6. Due to its hearty flavor, Grade B is recommended for baking.
Maple sugar is the result of dehydrated, crystallized maple syrup. It’s about
twice as sweet as granulated white sugar, yet retains a characteristic maple
flavor.
Stevia is a genus of about 150 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. The species Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni, commonly known as sweetleaf, sweet leaf, sugarleaf, or simply stevia, is widely grown for its sweet leaves. As a sugar substitute, stevia's taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar, although some of its extracts may have a bitter or liquorice-like aftertaste at high concentrations.
With its extracts having up to 900 times the sweetness of sugar, stevia has garnered attention with the rise in demand for low-carbohydrate, low-sugar food alternatives. Stevia also has shown promise in medical research for treating such conditions as
obesity and high blood pressure. Stevia has a negligible effect on blood glucose, even enhancing glucose
tolerance; therefore, it is attractive as a natural sweetener to diabetics and others on carbohydrate-controlled diets.
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