Best Sweeteners to Minimize Blood Sugar Spikes

We are genetically wired to love sweet things. For centuries, humans have figured out how to make things taste better by adding sugar or other sweeteners to food products. What was once used minimally is now in mass production and is a contributor to many, if not most, chronic disease processes due to its impact on blood glucose levels. However, there are alternatives to sugar that don’t impact your health as drastically.

The Overconsumption of Sugar

Sugar is the common name we know it for, but did you know there are over 60 names for sugar? A few of the more common ones are high fructose corn syrup, sucrose, fructose, dextrose, rice syrup, maltose, galactose or lactose. So many of these names are on food labels but hidden in plain sight because we aren’t familiar with all of them.

Sugar Cane was first discovered and used back in 1800 in New Guinea. The popularity soon spread to other countries. In the early 1900s, North Americans consumed about 60 lbs of sugar a year. That number is staggering but it’s dwarfed by the average of about 100 lbs of sugar a year we now consume.

Is sugar all that bad?

Honestly, no. Sugar - glucose - is the preferred energy source for our liver, thyroid, brain, and muscles. It is fast energy for our body to use and is actually REQUIRED by our body on a daily basis. It’s so important that if you don’t consume glucose each day, your body will break down proteins, fats, or its own body tissues in order to create it through a process called gluconeogenesis.

The challenge is that we tend to eat too much sugar and the sugar forms we consume aren’t ideal for us.

How is it that we eat so much sugar?

Beginning in the 1950s, the production of processed foods significantly rose. There are now approximately 600,000 different items in the food supply chain, of which 74% have added sugar.

Sugar is used to mask other tastes and it causes you to consume more than you would otherwise. It’s found in so many products, it would be very difficult to avoid it completely. Sugar is an ingredient in salsa, ketchup, yogurt, bread, salad dressing, marinades, and other common processed foods. Product labels do list total sugar content, however manufacturers do not need to delineate between natural sugars (like in fruit or milk) and added sugars so it’s difficult to see exactly how much added sugar we are consuming.

High fructose corn syrup is one of the worst offenders. It is produced through the conversion of glucose in cornstarch to fructose. It’s a cheaper alternative to sugar. Soda companies switched from sugar to HFCS in 1984 and the average North American now consumes about 40 lbs of HFCS per year.

Our carbohydrate intake - sugar is a carbohydrate - has increased significantly due to soft drinks, fruit drinks, and energy drinks. We are consuming 41% more of our carbohydrates from soft drinks and 35% more from fruit drinks, compared to the 1970s. If you look at the increasing popularity of energy drinks (touted by marketing companies and athletes, and thought to be healthy), there is an average of 56 grams of sugar in a single can.

How much sugar should we consume?

Your body does need glucose to function (although it does have the ability to make its own glucose if you don’t consume enough, a process called gluconeogenesis). Ideally though, there is a limit to how much added sugars we should be consuming.

Men - 9 g added sugar/day

Women - 6 g added sugar/day

Children 3-6 g added sugar/day

Glucose is a Carbohydrate

Glucose is an important energy source for our body but remember that glucose is a carbohydrate. ALL CARBOHYDRATES BREAK DOWN INTO GLUCOSE. We do not need to consume sugar to get glucose in our body. We can get glucose from vegetables, fruits, dairy, nuts, seeds, and grains. While some of these are more optimal than others…added sugar is not necessary.

The Impact of Sugar on Blood Glucose Levels

When sugar (glucose) is consumed, it is absorbed by your blood stream. There is a signal to your pancreas to make insulin. Insulin helps bring the glucose to the different cells of your body.

Glucose is then absorbed by your cells in the form of ATP, to be used as fast energy. Secondly, it is absorbed by your muscles and liver and converted to glycogen for energy and blood glucose stabilization. Thirdly, glucose is converted to triglycerides and stored in your fat cells.

As mentioned earlier, your body needs glucose to survive. If you aren’t getting enough through your diet, your body will make its own through gluconeogenesis. However, rarely are North Americans not getting enough due to our addiction to sugar, processed food, and grains. When we are constantly consuming these foods, we are constantly bombarding our body with glucose.

If your body only needs so much glucose to function on a daily basis, it has to store it otherwise. As a result, we see an increase in the accumulation of triglycerides in fat cells. Your insulin receptors are working overtime and eventually become numb to the onslaught of glucose. This leads to insulin resistance, which puts us into a pre-diabetic state. About 40% of North Americans are pre-diabetic and many are on route to getting there.

High (and unbalanced) blood glucose levels are linked to not just Diabetes but also heart disease, dementia, depression, stroke, Alzheimer’s, cancer, and more. There is a direct connection to the consumption of processed carbohydrates/added sugars and most chronic disease processes.

How do Minimize Your Consumption of Added Sugars

There are a number of ways to decrease your consumption of sugar. It won’t be easy…your taste buds have been conditioned to LOVE sweetness. They’ve been numbed to the flavours of real food over years of sugar conditioning. Also, as mentioned, with about 3/4 of food products on the market having added sugars, you need to do the work.

Reduce your dependency on processed foods.

Processed foods are a convenience but they are not healthy. I understand that sometimes, in a pinch, we need to use them but ideally that would be far and few between. Processed foods are easy to spot - an overwhelming majority of them come in a box or packaging with a barcode on them. One of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is to take back your health through REAL, WHOLE foods. Learn how to cook from scratch and use real ingredients.

Reduce your dependency on grains.

Grains are cheap to produce and cheap to purchase, but when we consume grains on a daily basis - multiple times a day - we are breaking them down and consuming glucose. The old food pyramid and even the new “my plate” marketing tactics from the FDA and Health Canada still have a high dependency on grains. Instead, get your carbohydrate intake from vegetables. Starchy, nutrient dense vegetables should make up half of your plate at each meal…you will still be getting carbohydrates however these are much slower to be absorbed and they won’t spike your blood glucose levels.

Choose water, tea, or coffee over sugary drinks.

Our consumption of sugary drinks is astronomical. Soda pop, fruit juice, energy drinks, specialty coffee drinks, etc all contain added sugars. Here are just a few examples:

Starbucks Cafe Latte 19 g sugar

Starbucks Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino 60 g sugar

Tim Hortons Iced Capp 37 g sugar

Dunkin Donuts Frozen Coffee 142 g sugar

Monster Energy Drink 27 g sugar

Gatorade Thirst Quencher 34 g sugar

However, if you opt for water (you can flavour it with essential oils, fruit, mints, cucumber, etc), tea or coffee you are much better off.

BEST sources of Glucose?

Don’t FEAR glucose. Glucose is actually good for you in ideal form. Remember, your body requires glucose and so if you avoid it completely, your body starts to lag. Your liver actually requires glucose to detox your body so make sure you’re getting ideal forms of glucose every day.

The best sources of sugar come from fruits, root vegetables (potatoes, beets, rutabaga, carrots, etc), fruit vegetables (the veggies we think are veggies but are really fruits…they have seeds in them - tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, etc.), honey, maple syrup, etc.

That being said, if you like adding sweetness to your drinks throughout your day, I wanted to share some options for you.

Best Sweeteners to Minimize Effects on Blood Glucose Levels

We do have a predilection to liking sweet things. Many alternative sweeteners on the market come with significant drawbacks. Artificial sweeteners like Splenda or Sweet n Low come with serious side effects for our digestive, emotional, and neurological systems. Avoid these completely.

There are sweeteners on the market that do not have as much of an impact on your blood glucose levels as high fructose corn syrup or other variations of sugar.

Whole Fruit

Fruit is high in sugar. It’s also high in vitamins and nutrients and are an excellent addition to your diet. By adding whole fruits to other foods or by consuming fruit on it's own, you have a much healthier alternative to pure sugar. There are certain fruits that will be higher in sugars than others. Pineapple, watermelon, mangoes, grapes and bananas are all examples of higher sugar content. Fruits that are lower in sugar would include berries, papaya, and cantaloupe.

Monkfruit

Monkfruit is a fruit that comes from the gourd family, grown naturally in China. It is 300-400 x more sweet than cane sugar, so very little is needed. It has high antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. It is very low in sugars once dried. It’s sweetness does not come from sugars but instead from antioxidants called mogrosides, which are metabolized differently by the body than natural sugars. Drawbacks? Due its high level of sweetness, it signals the body to release insulin. When there is no sugar to uptake, it puts us into a low blood glucose state which IS a stressor on our system. Cortisol and adrenaline will rise as a result (not good).

Stevia

Stevia is an herbal plant from Paraguay. It is about 200x more sweet than cane sugar. It has anti-glycemic properties and it’s sweetness comes from glycosides. Stevia actually supports metabolic health. The drawback is that some people experience a bitter aftertaste when consuming it. In some people, they did experience digestive issues like bloating, gas, and constipation after ingesting it. Also, if you have a history of ragweed allergy, since it is in this family, you could experience an allergic response. Drawbacks? Similar to monkfruit, it is very sweet and thus dumps insulin into a body that doesn’t have any sugar for insulin to do its job. There is also research out there to show that stevia can impact fertility but the research is preliminary and if used in small doses, I don’t believe it’s an issue.

The Bottom Line

Humans desire sweetness. We crave it and so it’s not something that we will likely eliminate completely. However, significantly reducing our consumption is critical when it comes to our health. Using the alternatives of fruit, monk fruit, allulose, and stevia are safe and do offer that sweet factor if we crave it daily. An occasional treat to enjoy - like dessert - is not something to completely avoid or feel guilty about, as long as it’s purpose is in moderation and not on a regular basis.