When I started designing my diet to become more diabetic-friendly, one of the first steps I did was to avoid white sugar. White sugar or refined sugar is readily available in the market and is what is commonly used in almost every household. I chose to buy artificial sweeteners instead and used it for almost a decade. Since artificial sweeteners available in the supermarket are all manufactured overseas, I was constrained to buy only what I will be consuming. The rest of my household used refined white sugar which is less expensive albeit less nutritionally beneficial.
Refined sugar is stripped off its important vitamins and minerals and is more acidic. High acidity levels in our bodies make us more susceptible to diseases. Aspartame, on the other hand, is believed to increase the incidence of cancer cells in the body. Aspartame is the chief ingredient of artificial sweeteners.
I started using muscovado sugar just this year. In the past years, our local supermarkets do not carry muscovado sugar. Muscovado sugar is often only found in specialty shops or baking supplies stores. Now that there are more manufacturers of this healthy sugar, more brands became available and the prices went down, too. One kilo, as of the last time I did my grocery, was at 70 pesos. It is actually double the price of refined sugar but cheaper than my artificial sweetener brand. Because of this, my entire household now uses muscovado sugar.
Muscovado is derived from the Spanish word "mascabado" meaning unrefined. It is natural cane sugar and is comparable to pure honey in terms of health benefits. It being unadultered and unrefined makes it retain its natural nutrients like potassium, calcium, and iron. Unlike refined sugar that has empty calories, it doesn't make our body have sweet cravings. The empty calories in white sugar make our body want for more sweets because our system instinctively looks for the calories that our body needs for energy. It is also an alternative to using the best diet pills for weight loss since sugar craving is stopped.
While research show that muscovado sugar has a higher glycemic index than artificial sweeteners, I still chose to use it to avoid the danger of having cancer that artificial sweeteners bring. And besides, even with muscovado sugar, my blood glucose levels just stays within the 80mg/dL to 120mg/dL range. It must be because it's sweet enough to make me use just a teaspoon of it compared to the two packs of artificial sweetener I use with my morning tea.
With this information, I hope that you also give muscovado sugar a try even though you are not a diabetic. Use it as sweetener for almost everything and enjoy its healthful benefits.
Wednesday, July 1
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3 sweet comments:
Good thing you share some useful information,thanks for that. You did have some good article on this stuff but im not really much related in this cause i don't usually intake more sweet stuff just little amount of cake,chocolate etc. can turn into sore throat in a minute. lol..
you should use coconut sugar. its glycemic index is half that of muscovado and THE replacement for your artificial sweetener.
Hi! Thanks for your comment. I already started using coconut sugar early this year. Read about it here: http://www.maureenflores.com/2010/06/coco-sugar-in-convenient-packets.html
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