Conscious Choice: Shopping for Sugar

February 1999

Shopping for Sugar

by Becky Ephraim

Primitive Desires
Picture yourself 20,000 years ago, wrapped in little more than a fig leaf and bouncing through the bushes foraging for grubs, nuts and berries. Aha! You stumble across a plentiful supply of sweet-tasting honey in an abandoned wild bees’ nest. You sink your finger into the golden glob, wipe it across your tongue and grunt something that means, "Dessert.... hmmm good."

Return to the present. You’re wrapped in your bulky down jacket and navigating the aisles in the grocery store, looking for something sweet.. There’s a sample! "Dessert!" you say. "Hmmm, good."

The link between these two snapshots, according to nutritional biochemist Bob Reynolds at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is that we actually needed simple sugars in the neolithic stone age and, as a result, we’re genetically programmed to crave it today.

"Food was presumably in short and sporadic supply," says Reynolds. "Energy requirements were also presumably high, and the quickest source of energy is carbohydrate."

So the cave dweller eats the sweets; they taste good and, more importantly, provide energy, which comes in handy when a wild animal pounces out of the bush and initiates a game of chase. Voilà, Reynolds says, it’s survival of the fittest, and the one with the sweet tooth lives. His or her sugar-loving genes get passed on, through the eons.

"Hypothetical, of course," says Reynolds, "but a plausible scenario." And a possible explanation of why our preference for sweet flavors seems innate. That preference has hit new highs; the average American is now eating 152 pounds of added sugars per year or about 40 teaspoons a day (48 teaspoons equal a cup), a far cry from an occasional honey raid — and 24 pounds more than the average annual intake in the mid-1960s.

What? Me
But, you’re different, you say. You do eat a lot of prepared and packaged foods but you are a careful label reader of ingredients and nutrients and avoid white sugar altogether opting for alternative sweeteners. The question then is, are you doing yourself a healthful favor by substituting alternative sweeteners such as maple syrup, molasses, honey, rice syrup, etc.?

The answer is not exactly a resounding yes. It all depends on how much you eat. Keep in mind that IF you’re still taking in an excessive amount of sweets there’s little difference between sugary junk food and sugary health food junk food.

In an informal survey of packaged products on the shelves of natural food stores, the alternative sweeteners that are most used are those that pack no more nutritional punch than white sugar. Any substantial amount of vitamins, minerals or fiber present in these sweeteners in their natural state is long gone after processing.

I Thought I Saw a Nutrient
The "take home" message here is if your diet includes disproportionate amounts of simple sugars, the sugars sate you and squeeze out more nutritious foods. The result is that you take in lots of empty calories and get stiffed on nutrients that protect against cancer, heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, and osteoporosis. Michael Jacobson of the Center for Science in the Public Interest sums it up: "When you consume 20 percent of your calories from sugar, that means you have to get all your nutrients from 80 percent of your food. It’s unlikely that you’re going to get them."

What’s more, although good science research is hard to pin down on this, many people correspond their sugar eating habits to symptoms of fatigue, depression, headache, cravings, and for more than a few women, premenstrual syndrome. The great debate is whether the sugar is causing the symptoms or whether they could be caused by the lack of nutrients being displaced by the sugar.

I’m Feeling a Little Dizzy
With that in mind, here’s a look at the array of sweeteners commonly found in packaged, processed foods:

High Fructose Corn Sweetener (HFCS): This sweetener is used nearly as much as white sugar in packaged and processed foods. Overall, 40 percent of the sweeteners consumed in this country are in the form of corn syrup which is cheaper to use than white sugar. Ounce for ounce, pure fructose is about 60 percent sweeter than white sugar. High fructose corn syrup is in innumerable processed foods and beverages, many of which can be found on the shelves of some natural food stores. Despite its name, this fructose is not made from fruit but comes from corn syrup treated with enzymes.

Dr. William Whelan, a biochemistry professor at the University of Miami School of Medicine and an outspoken critic of fructose, says we have to limit our intake of this substance, as it’s metabolized differently than other sweeteners. "We have no built-in biochemical mechanism to regulate the rate at which we assimilate it. One of the effects of eating pure fructose is to become hypoglycemic." Hypoglycemia is a condition of low blood sugar that can cause, among other symptoms, dizziness, fatigue, weakness, and headaches. Since HFCS sneaks into our diets via processed foods and drinks, the only good way to monitor your intake is by reading labels.

Fruit Juice Concentrates: These are fruit juices with the water removed. You’ll see fruit juice concentrates frequently used as sweeteners in breakfast cereals, cookies, and syrups: these are about two-thirds as sweet as white sugar. The more commonly used concentrates are pineapple, pear, peach and apple. Fruit concentrates are usually deodorized, decolorized and neutralized to a syrup that’s a highly refined sugar. Remember, too, that non-organic fruit-juice concentrates include concentrated pesticides.

Honey: Even Sioux Bee Honey, a commercial cooperative of 400 beekeepers from all over the U.S. admits that honey is relatively low in nutrients. Yet its trace amounts of vitamins and minerals are still more than white sugar, while being 20 to60 percent sweeter, which means that you get more satisfaction in a smaller package. Like other sweeteners, honey can cause blood sugar to shoot skyward. Yet it’s also touted as a partial remedy for certain conditions, including laryngitis, stomach ulcers, and topical infections.

Maple Syrup: When it’s all said and done, 35 to 50 gallons of sap are boiled down to get 1 gallon of maple syrup, which is mainly sucrose: the same simple sugar as white sugar. Maple syrup contains a few trace minerals, and Grade B syrup has more than Grade A. Unfortunately, trace amounts mean that these nutrients are present in such tiny amounts that they have little significance to human nutrition.

Brown sugar, Turbinado, and Evaporated Cane Juice: These are all take-offs on white sugar, and essentially, they’re no more nourishing. Brown sugar is basically white sugar colored with a little molasses. Turbinado sugar and evaporated cane juice are partially refined sugars. Turbinado retains some molasses. Evaporated cane juice is slightly less refined than turbinado. Generally, they offer no benefit over refined white sugar.

Navigating the Fakes: Artificial Sweeteners
If you’re a health food devotee, you’ll surely be cringing at this category. But these artificial sweeteners are omnipresent at every turn in the conventional food world:

Aspartame: This is the most widely used of artificial sweeteners and 180 times sweeter than sugar. It’s found in a vast variety of commercial products from soda to bakery items although, generally, natural food stores keep it off their shelves. There is much anecdotal evidence linking aspartame (also known as Nutrasweet) to a variety of symptoms, from headaches to loss of motor control. Neurosurgeon Dr. Russell Blaylock has done extensive research on this subject and has documented it in his book, Excitotoxins, The Taste that Kills. He states "...aspartame can cause neurons to become extremely excited and, if given in large enough doses, they can cause these cells to degenerate and die."

Saccharin: The familiar Sweet’N Low pink packets seen on most restaurant tables are saccharin, a petroleum derivative 300 times sweeter than white sugar. Aside from Sweet‘n Low, saccharin is used in very few commercially prepared products, such as Tab soda and Carefree gum. Hence, saccharin seldom appears in our food unless we knowingly added it ourselves.

The Food and Drug Administration requires a warning label that saccharin causes cancer in lab animals. Hence, food manufacturers have shied away from using it in their packaged foodstuffs. But recently, a prestigious scientific agency of the World Health Organization voted unanimously to take saccharin off its list of suspected human carcinogens. Though they concede that lab rats get bladder cancer from saccharin, researchers have deemed it not biologically relevant to humans. (Makes you wonder why they bothered feeding it to rats.) The FDA is said to be considering this weighty development as a big reason to nix the need for a warning statement on saccharin. If and when this occurs we’re bound to see a resurgence of it in packaged food products.

Any Better than Others?
Surely, you say, there are sweeteners out there that are eagles among turkeys, nutritional high flyers.

Generally (with honey being an exception), the reason why a sweetener is a sweetener is the result of a refining process. That means that, by their very nature, the sources of sweeteners are condensed to reap the sweetening power. And, in the course of being condensed, any part that stands in the way of the sweetening power is removed — including nutrients.

There are a handful of sweeteners found in commercially packaged foods that retain some measurable nutrient value. To have this distinction, they must contain two percent or more of a day’s calories (2100 for women, 2850 for men). But the low levels of the few vitamins or minerals present are hardly worth bragging about.

Barley Malt/Brown Rice Syrup: These grain sweeteners are staples for sweetening commercially packaged products in the natural foods industry. Both offer the benefit of containing about 50 percent complex carbohydrates, which do not break down during digestion as quickly as the more refined sugars. Because they’ve retained their nutritional "bulk," the sweeteners are only about 40 percent as sweet as white sugar. But that’s the idea.

However, technology has found various ways to refine and combine both products with other sweeteners like corn syrup to dilute potential health benefits. Unfortunately, the ingredient list on a packaged product will not note the differences.

Blackstrap Molasses: Molasses is the liquid that remains after the crystals of sucrose (used for white sugar) are removed from sugar cane or beet juice. It has about half the sweetening power of white sugar. Unlike other sweeteners, blackstrap molasses contains a variety of sugars and has measurable amounts of minerals, particularly calcium, iron and potassium.

Date Sugar: Date sugar is made from powdered, dehydrated dates and therefore, has about the same nutrient values as dried dates. This means it has significant levels of magnesium, potassium, iron, calcium, phosphorous, and another component seldom seen in sweeteners: fiber. In addition, it’s almost as sweet as white sugar.

Stevia: Waiting in the Wings
Although not a player today, this sweetener could be an up-and-comer in commercially packaged foods.

This herb is 10-15 times sweeter than sugar and is used regularly as a sweetener in numerous countries, including Japan. But you won’t find stevia in the ingredient list of U.S. commercially produced food products. The FDA has approved stevia only as a dietary supplement, not as a food, although there’s a movement to change that. Supporters claim stevia is all-natural, non-toxic, non-caloric and safe for diabetics.

The FDA has refused to okay its use as a sweetener because crystallized stevia (the form that would be used as a sweetener) has yet to be subject in this country to a battery of toxicological tests required for passage as a food additive. Several food processors are currently working on it. If this happens, stevia could be the new wonder sweetener of the 21st century.

Until Then...
It appears we could use a "miracle" sweetener as America’s collective sugar intake (and waist size) reaches new highs. Until then, today’s version of foraging for grubs, nuts and berries includes reading ingredient lists and nutrition labels. And make the stop at the wild bees’ nest an occasional one. Your genes will thank you.

Becky Ephraim is a nutrition reporter and registered dietitian in Chicago.

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