sugar question

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Registered: 03-25-2003
sugar question
7
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 8:31am
Hi! I hope you don't mind an "outsider" popping in with a question. I'm not diabetic (actually, I'm the other end, hypoglycemic!) but I'm crossing my fingers that folks who pay attention to sugar-related issues might have some insights for me. We're trying to eat foods that are both better for us and for the environment... I'm now stuck at the sugar dilemma. We don't eat much of it anyway, when I must sweeten I try to use honey or fruit juice concentrate, but... I'm wondering if organic "evaporated cane juice" is any different in the body from refined sugar.

Of course organically grown sugar is a big deal environmentally, since the fertilizer run off from cane fields tends to be VERY damaging to the surrounding ecosystems (because of where sugar is often grown).... but evaporated vs plain old refined? Is there really any difference, either in the process' effect on the environment or the products effect on the body? Did that make sense?

Thanks!

Avatar for coldfingers
Community Leader
Registered: 04-30-2000
In reply to: triptakers
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 11:54am

Welcome to the board!

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Avatar for triptakers
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
In reply to: triptakers
Thu, 07-01-2004 - 12:21pm
Cheryl, all your little "guys" in your post cracked me up!

Yes, I did a google search (boy do I love google - it's AMAZING what you can find!). But I think it may be too specific a question - I think in most cases (or at least the cases I've found), "sugar" is "sugar", kwim?

I'll keep looking, and thanks for the welcome!

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-29-2004
In reply to: triptakers
Fri, 07-02-2004 - 5:01pm
Very interesting and complexd questions. I can pretty much find anything anyone is looking for on any topic. I hope this answers or sheds some light on your concerns. This

is pretty lengthy but hopefully your questions are answered.

It use to be that one way to distinguish a natural food store from an ordinary grocery was the absence of white sugar. No more. Along with beer, wine and chocolate, the richer and sweeter things in life are finding a home in health food stores.

That's not to say that health food stores have abandoned their standards altogether. Rather there's been an inclusiveness of values (to borrow from political terminology) and stores are broadening their product selection accordingly. What's more, there are more organic and natural sweeteners available to choose from than ever before. All this is causing store owners to reassess their sugar policies.

While there is heated disagreement over which natural sweeteners are best, one thing most in the Industry agree on is this: sugar is bad for you and we all should be eating a lot less of it.

Americans consume 152 pounds of sweeteners per year, a figure that has been increasing along with our collective waistline since the early 1800s. "During the last decade, Americans have reduced their fat intake at least two percent but we have also become 30% more overweight in almost the same time," writes Ann Louise Gittleman, MS, CNS, in her book Get the Sugar Out.

"We have become so conscious of removing fat from our diet that we have been on a fat-free phobic binge," contended Gittleman in a lecture at the NNFA trade show last July. "Now there is a 180 degree turn because we see that although we've cut fat out of our diet for the past 15 years, what's happened? We've become fatter."

Among the many illnesses linked to too much sugar consumption are heart disease, high blood pressure, cancer, weakened immunity, diabetes, and more. In fact Gittleman lists 63 sugar-related ailments in her book.

Terry Willard, PhD, director of the Wild Rose College of Natural Healing in Calgary, Canada, and a leading clinical herbalist, goes even further in condemning sugar, calling it a "white powdered drug" and saying "sugar abuse should be considered similar to alcohol....This social food has become an outright addiction with its obvious health outcomes." ("Sugar the Unrecognized Street Drug," Healthy & Natural Journal, Aug. 1997).

What's Acceptable

While most of us would agree that too much sugar is bad, the fact remains that we need sugar (in the form of carbohydrates) in our diets. The challenge is finding the best sweeteners in terms of taste, palatability, nutritional value and placement on the Glycemic Index. (The Glycemic Index ranks foods in terms of how quickly they raise blood sugar. A low-glycemic food is preferable to a high one.)

When it comes to sweeteners the list of the forbidden is short. Namely white refined sugar and artificial sweeteners. Nearly every retailer agrees that these two have no place in a health food store for numerous reasons. The list of acceptable natural sweeteners is much longer and includes: barley malt syrup and other grain sweeteners, rice and brown rice syrup, fruit juice syrup and concentrate, honey, maple syrup, molasses, date sugar, fructose, stevia, and evaporated cane juice.

However, the most natural and wholesome sweeteners also have their limitations when it comes to food processing. Honey, maple syrup and molasses all have a strong flavor and therefore can affect the taste of whatever food they are used in. Differences in solubility, leavening effects, molecular size and water binding ability pose challenges for food manufacturers.

Other drawbacks are that the brown color and high cost of natural sweeteners makes them less attractive to food processors, although for home consumption they are still popular.

That leaves fruit juice concentrates and evaporated cane juice as the most popular sweeteners found in prepared foods in health food stores. And while fruit juice concentrates and fructose are still found in cookies, cereals, sodas and other foods, they are losing ground to evaporated cane juice, particularly Florida Crystal's brand.

Fruit juice concentrates which was the sweet darling of the Industry prior to the "discovery" of cane, was considered by many to be more natural because it came from fruit. Untrue, says Jim Morano, technical director of Suzanne's Specialties, Somerset, NJ. "What processors didn't tell the Industry was that (these products) were not truly apple, pear, grape juice concentrate. Before the juice was concentrated it was passed through ion exchange resin which removed most of the acids and nutrients."

"Actually I'd choose the refined sugars sold today over the fruit juice concentrates, because at least the white sugar has not passed through ion exchange," added Morano.

Other sweeteners that go through an ion-exchange process are corn sweeteners, particularly high fructose corn syrup. However, there are some fruit juice sweeteners that retain some of the vitamins and minerals and are sweeter tasting than other sugars.

Evaporated cane juice is defined by The Sugar Association as a single crystallization food grade sugar that retains some of the natural qualities of the sugar cane juice. Refined table sugar undergoes multiple crystallization and refining processes that strips away more of the essential nutrients.

However, according to Charles D. Shamel, president of The Sugar Association, "Sugar and maple syrup are the least refined sweetening products available to consumers and food processors. Each requires only physical separation from its natural plant materials and filtration to remove other impurities and bring it to food grade level."

Sweeteners such as juice concentrates and corn syrup require significant additional processing including chemical reactions, ion exchange and enzyme modification before they are ready for consumption.

The Production Process

There are three notable brands of "natural" cane sugar on the market: Florida Crystals, Evaporated Cane Juice from Wholesome Foods (makers of Sucanat®, and Rapadura, produced by Rapunzel, a German organic foods company. All three offer organic versions. (Rapunzel only sells organic). The differences among the three lie in the techniques used to process the cane plant.

Florida Crystals sugar products are grown, milled and packaged on the company's farm in Palm Beach County, Florida. "We squeeze the juice out of the cane using activated charcoal carbons (not bone char as is used by the major sugar processors) and put it in a giant tank," explained John Norris, director of natural foods.

"We filter out the impurities and put it in a giant tank where it is heated and lime is added to burn out the impurities. The top of the tank is pure syrup. This gets filtered again and then goes into a giant vacuum pan seeded with crystals. This is boiled until the syrup becomes a slurry of molasses and crystals. We dump out the slurry into a giant centrifugal basket and spin out the excess molasses. We cure it for 24 hours and package it."

The amount of molasses remaining in the sugar determines whether it is milled cane (the whitest), Demerara, Muscovado or one of the other specialty sugars.

Wholesome Foods uses a similar process for its evaporated cane juice. Its Sucanat is made by blending together sugar and molasses.

Rapunzel's Rapadura pure organic sugar is darker than the other brands. "Ours is dark, " says Robert Roman, national sales manager. "So it has all the minerals and vitamins in sugar cane minus the heat. This make ours the only whole organic sugar on the market."

Roman said that while Rapadura has been available in the United States for about five years it wasn't heavily marketed so people were not aware of it. "In Europe we are the leading organic manufacturer with a full line of organic oils, nuts, mueslis and other products. Now we're finding that as we tell people what it is they are very interested. In the last four months sales have risen tremendously."

Jim Marano, who has over 25 years of experience in the food industry, put some perspective on the sweetener situation.

He explained that the evaporated cane sweeteners so popular today are actually just partially refined sugars that have been available in the United States for decades. "If it is fully refined it is called table white sugar; if partially refined it's referred to as Direct Consumption sugar. This has been around a long time. Direct consumption, partially refined, evaporated cane juice -- all are the same thing.

"Partially refined sugar used to be sold to the community around the sugar mill and was less expensive than refined sugar. It wasn't used by major food manufacturers. "Today processors call it evaporated cane juice and it looks natural. Refined sugar has no nutritional value and minimally processed sugar is only slightly better. When you get right down to it, however, sugar doesn't have much nutritional value regardless of whether its refined or partially refine," Morano continued.

So, what is the difference? Why then not use white refined sugar?

"A lot of what we do in the health food industry is for the purpose of differentiation. We use partially refined sugar to differentiate us from the mass market," says Morano. "Personally, I don't see a problem with it. People get a little bit upset when they see the name evaporated cane juice instead of minimally refined sugar. It suggests it contains all the constituents of cane juice, whereas a lot of nutrients comes from the molasses which is separated out. Some in our Industry think it misrepresents the product.

"But processors and customers need to have illusions. It's a kind of a little white lie," said Marano.

While most manufacturers are happy to be able to use a relatively inexpensive, versatile and acceptable sweetener in their products, the growth in the proliferation of white sugar has left many retailers wondering "has the natural foods industry sold out?" Many of the new food products being introduced into our industry contain some form of cane sugar and the old standbys are switching over.

Wild Oats and Whole Foods were among the leaders in embracing the "new" sweetener. In fact, John Norris credited Margaret Wittenberg, Quality Assurance Director of Whole Foods Market, with creating the term "evaporate cane juice" in her book The Whole Food Bible (check).

However, on their retail label the same product is referred to as "natural Milled Cane Sugar." Norris explained, "Consumers are not familiar with the term evaporated cane juice and our market researchers said it might turn them off." However, the sugar is labeled "evaporated cane juice" on the back of the retail products and Florida Crystals is trying to educate the public as to what cane juice is.

Hope this helps

Dennis

Avatar for triptakers
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Registered: 03-25-2003
In reply to: triptakers
Sat, 07-03-2004 - 4:21pm
Wow, Dennis, thank you so much for all this info!Thanks to your response, I was able to formulate my question better in my mind, and look for the answers to that! My question evolved after reading your reply into "which sweetener will raise blood sugar the least/slowest, thus having a 'better' glycemic value?"

So I did a quick search, and in case anyone's interested, here's what I found:

Glycemically Acceptable Natural Sugars and Sweeteners

Fructose (Crystalline):

Composition: A natural fruit sugar

Glycemic response: Very low, no dramatic rise in blood sugar or insulin level.

Sweetness: 1.5 to 2 times sweeter than table sugar (sucrose) so it is only necessary to use half the amount you would normally use.

Caloric content: 4 calories per gram (same as table sugar).

Comments: Less fructose is used because it is sweeter than sucrose, so fewer calories are consumed. It can be used in baking and cooking. Fructose causes the baked product to brown more quickly and reduced oven temperature and length of baking is usually necessary.

Trutina Dulcem™, also known as Sweet Balance™, Ki-Sweet™, or OptiSweet™:

Composition: A natural fruit sugar (organic kiwi fruit)

Glycemic response: Very low, no dramatic rise in blood sugar or insulin level.

Sweetness: 15 times sweeter than table sugar (sucrose).

Caloric content: 0 calories per serving.

Comments: Measure conversion for every 1-tsp. of table sugar you use 1/5th tsp. of Trutina Dulcem™. It is heat and cold stable and may be used for cooking and baking.

Glycemically Unacceptable Sugars and Sweeteners

Sucrose (table sugar)

Composition: A carbohydrate composed of the simple sugars glucose and fructose.

Glycemic response: Moderate to high with a dramatic rise in blood sugar and insulin levels.

Sweetness: The standard by which other sweeteners are gauged.

Caloric content: 4 calories per gram.

Comments: Sucrose ingestion results in a rapid elevation of the blood sugar and a correspondingly high release of insulin from the pancreas. As the insulin quickly moves the sugar into the body cells, the blood sugar plummets resulting in symptomatic low blood sugar (reactive hypoglycemia). This causes a condition known as reactive hypoglycemia.

High Glycemic Nutritive Sugars—the following are calorie-containing sugars which result in a rapid spike in the blood sugar and a corresponding high rise in insulin secretion by the pancreas.

Barley malt

Brown sugar (contains molasses)

Carmelized sugar

Corn syrup, light and dark

Date Sugar

Dextrose

Glucose

High fructose corn syrup (varies in percentage of both fructose and glucose)

Honey

Invert sugar (product of hydrolysis of sucrose contains levulose and glucose)

Maltose

Maple syrup/maple sugar (refined carbohydrate with little nutrient content)

Molasses

Raw sugar (96% sucrose, 4% molasses)

Turbinado sugar (95% sucrose, 5% molasses)

Maltodextrins – Although not technically considered a sugar, they act like a sugar in the body. Maltodextrins have a very high glycemic index and are frequently added to sweetener products, such as Equal. When maltodextrins are added to a product, the overall glycemic impact increases.

Glycemic Impact of Artificial, Non-Nutritive and Other Sweeteners (see next post)


Edited 7/3/2004 4:32 pm ET ET by triptakers

Avatar for cl_maryfrances40
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Registered: 03-25-2003
In reply to: triptakers
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 10:21am

Hi and welcome to the board.


You pose an interesting question and as I just got back from a trip to the otherside of the world I am not ready to be able to read everything that has been posted. But I do want to make a comment from the body side of this question. To your body sugar is sugar regardless of where it comes from. While fructose is much sweeter than sugar, so you need to use less of it to get the same sweetness, it will still raise your blood sugar if you use too much of it. As a child I ate a corn and cane syrup that was made in the open kettle method which evaporates the water out of the syrup. (This is why I don't like the taste of maple syrup, although it too can be made with the evaporative method.) Of course now I can't have syrup because it raises my blood sugar immediately and drastically.


I agree with your environmental concerns. In many places in the world the rain forrest is being cut down to plant crops that the developed world wants. For this reason I try to eat what is in season in my area of the planet. For examply I don't want apples now, I want peaches and apricots which are in season here. I heavily compost my garden and I also madly re-cycle what I can and try to re-use as much as possible. I also drive a hybrid car.


I am active in the California Native Plant Society and I was just in Scandanavia (Sp!)

Avatar for triptakers
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-25-2003
In reply to: triptakers
Tue, 07-06-2004 - 11:55am
Thanks for the reply & info! I've been using stevia lately with better success, too. I had used it before and was put off by the aftertaste, but then I followed some advice to use less, and the ice cream and the cake I made turned out just as sweet without the aftertaste. So I think I'll experiment a little more with substituting it for sugar (environmentally it's a good choice too. Looking forward to learning all I can about this!

OK, now the important question, lol... hijacking, sorry, I've got this addiction that needs to be fed.... tell about your trip! Where specifically did you go? Details, please!!! (I don't have any trips on my horizon, and I'm DYING over here!LOL)





Avatar for cl_maryfrances40
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Registered: 03-25-2003
In reply to: triptakers
Wed, 07-07-2004 - 2:20am
I went on a cruise to St. Petersburg Russia. My husband has been wanting to go to Russia for several years. I was started on insulin in March and I was really afraid of how I was going to manage. So I agreed to go with him if he could find a cruise and of course he did!

We started in Copenhagen. Unfortunately my plane was late into Frankfort Germany and so I missed my connecting flight. They put me on a later flight which meant that I missed the time in Copenhagen that I was going to use to look around this pretty city. From there I went to Tallin, Estonia. This is a medieval city and it was cold and pouring down rain. I tried to see as much as I could but it was pretty miserable. From there I went to St. Petersburg and spent two days there. I saw the Hermitage and Catherine's Palace. You can tell that Russia doesn't have much money these days as things are not in very good repair but the countryside is quite pretty. There is a lot of unemployment and so you see people trying to sell you everything. It is a harrowing journey out of buildings, etc. On top of that to take pictures inside the buildings you must pay a fee. You can't use a flash either and since I have a digital camera and I can't turn off the flash I chose not to pay.

From there I went to Helsinki, Finland. Once again I had rain but it wasn't as bad as the first day. Had a really funny guide so it was a pleasant day. Next I went to Stockholm Sweden and I really enjoy this city. I went wandering around without the group which was nice. I tried to purchase a decaf latte and they don't have decaf coffee. Plus that they wouldn't take my Euros and if I paid with US money they wanted $3.00 for a diet coke. Needless to say I didn't purchase anything.

Then I went Visby Sweden which on the island of Gottland. It is quite pretty and I could go back here to send a weekend. It got up to about 60 degrees and the young people were out sun bathing in their skimpy bikinis! Visby is a medieval town with a good portion of its wall and towers remaining.

What I didn't realize until I got there is the latitude of these places is the same a southern Alaska. So there is only about 3 hours of darkness per night at this time of the year. They all were celebrating the "white night festival" and so much of the shops were closed because everyone was taking a holiday. In Finland folks get married on Thursday or Friday because the government gives you three days off to celebrate your marriage. So if you get married towards the end of the week you get almost a whole week off with pay.

Everything is very expensive in northern Europe with Tallin being the least expensive place.

I also went to Germany, formerly East Germany and to Berlin and Potsdam. I was disappointed because the guides didn't really explain the historical significance of Potsdam. I was so busy before I left that I didn't have time to do much research on my own.

I ended my trip by spending an extra day in London. I have been to London and England a number of times so I just wandered around catching up on the changes. Of course it pour down rain and so we were limited in what we could do.

So that is capsule viewing of my trip! I had a hard time with my blood sugar throughout. I finally started carrying cheese and crackers with me to eat as it wasn't fun having a 54 blood sugar on a bus! I did exercise everyday on either the treadmill or the bike. That of course helped with the blood sugar readings. The CDE had me decrease the amount of insulin and understand that my blood sugars would be a little higher. This was true but I still had a number of signifcant lows.

My husband really likes to travel and he is already thinking about our next trip! Me, I would just like to have my book and a quiet place! My cat is making me pay for being gone too! She is getting us up at 5:30 AM to feed her.

take care and I hope you get a trip planned soon!

Mary Frances


cl-maryfrances40

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