Good sweetners

America has a giant sweet tooth. We reward successes, celebrate birthdays, and mend broken hearts with a slice of chocolate cake.

The holiday season also moves people into the kitchen to bake cookies and sweets for friends, family, and colleagues. This isn't fair for our waistlines.

This year think about cutting back on some of those sweets. If you're doing all the baking, replace refined sugar with natural sources. Eliminating processed sugar from your diet will improve your health. Stay away from those pink, blue and yellow packets that reside by the coffee machine. Raw sugar (brown packets) are the better choice, but the sugar is still refined. Drink more water and tea than sugary sodas. These foods are full of icky ingredients like saccharin, high fructose corn syrup and other artificial ingredients.

The best alternatives are fruit, honey, date sugar, molasses, agave nectar, sorghum syrup, brown rice syrup, brown malt syrup, fruit juice concentrate, stevia, xylitol.

A few healthful tips:
Buy plain organic yogurt and sweeten with honey and fruit.
Protein or a 15 minute walk is a better pick-me-up than sugar-laden sodas.
Skip the sugar in your coffee or tea and sweeten with honey or almond milk.
Skip the ice cream and make a fruit smoothie.
Enjoy a bowl of fruit sprinkled with cinnamon and shredded coconut.
Nut butters mixed with raisins and molasses spread onto apple slices are a better, low sugar snack.

Sugar is extremely addictive which is why we crave it. But try to to reduce your sugar intake a little each week and note how you feel. Make goals and try to stick to them. And instead of making cupcakes from the Duncan Hines box, whip up some of these instead.

What sweetners do you prefer?


(Bauman College, NE104 Lecture notes)