How To Substitute Or Completely Avoid Sugar
The majority of people have a great attraction for a sweet taste. This sweet taste awakens feelings of confidence, security, pleasure and completeness. Subconsciously it’s associated with the taste of mother’s milk. The taste of sweet sends a message to our brain and there it is translated, the translation says that everything is perfect.
The main sweetener of modern times is sugar which has certainly lost its glamour in recent times, even though it’s everywhere in both foods and beverages. It doesn’t really matter about the severity of the health issue, the doctor would generally recommend avoiding sugar consumption. The over consumption of sugar can lead to fatigue and mood changes and long term over consumption can lead to diseases such as hypoglycaemia, diabetes, obesity and various heart diseases. With the intake of sugar, the effect (on the body is that blood glucose levels rise sharply and the pancreas’s ability to secrete insulin a hormone that lowers glucose) decreases.
Sweeteners
Nowadays, our attention has turned to alternative sweeteners. We have natural sweeteners available to us that were consumed by our ancestor’s thousands of years ago, and these ancient civilizations consumed them in moderation without health issues. If we avoid the unhealthy and possibly dangerous refined sugars, we can turn the course of the healthier substitutes. We are not short on healthier options, sweeteners are available in various forms such as natural or artificial. Now, you still have to be careful with your choice. It is always safer to go with the natural sweeteners as some of the artificial sweeteners that are widely used by modern food manufacturers are highly toxic.
Saccharin, which was the first artificial sweetener, contained a toxic substance which comes together with saccharin called toluene and actually can cause cancer. Currently the most widely used artificial sweetener is aspartame, which is a combination of two amino acids: phenylalanine and aspartic acid. In recent years, this sweetener has been the subject of intense controversy about the safety of the consumer’s health.
In order to choose which is the best natural sweetener for you, you will have to determine whether you want a totally calorie free sweetener or if are you ok with the sweetener containing an energy value. Natural sweeteners such as honey, agave syrup, fructose, maple syrup etc, contain a certain amount of calories. In this case, these sweeteners should be consumed more carefully. On the other hand, natural sweeteners extracted from plants which do not add any calories are those based on stevia and xylitol. With these sweeteners you also have to be careful because they are known to have laxative properties if they are over consumed.
Train Your Taste Buds
In an ideal world, you would want to totally avoid adding sweeteners to your daily meals and drinks. Our body is actually capable of benefiting from natural sugars that are already present in the food that you eat. The trick is to train your taste buds to start detecting the naturally present sugars. You can start by reducing the level of sweeteners in everything you consume. Try to add one teaspoon less of whatever you usually use for a sweetener. In any case, do not use white refined table sugar because it has an addictive influence on our taste buds. By gradually reducing added sweetness you will very soon find that a cup of tea or coffee with a little milk tastes sweet. You will have to practice this technique over a period of two weeks. You will be surprised how other food which can be consumed fresh will suddenly start to taste sweet. For example, after you stop using sugar or sweeteners for about three weeks the tomatoes will taste sweeter than ever. You will be surprised how a simple piece of whole grain bread will taste almost like a cake.
Whatever you decide to do, the first step of positive change is to raise your awareness of the effects of your decision making. If you’ve got this far into this article, then you’ve already taken that step.
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