What is the best substitute for sugar?
As every type 2 diabetic knows, our basic problem is having too much glucose (sugar) floating in our bloodstream instead of entering our muscle cells because the receptors in those cells are blocked with fat. This excess sugar will eventually damage our body’s vital organs … heart, kidneys, brain, feet, and eyes … unless you can get rid of it.
Addictive nature of sugar
There is no question that sugar is addictive.
Doctors inject naloxone when a person has overdosed on heroin. This drug prevents heroin from attaching to receptors in the brain, and the patient usually recovers quickly.
In controlled studies, researchers have offered volunteers sugary foods and recorded how much they ate. Subsequently, under the same conditions, they gave the same volunteers naloxone intravenously and then offered them the same sugary foods.
The researchers observed that naloxone causes a significant drop in craving for sweet foods. This strongly suggests that sugar affects the brain in essentially the same way as heroin and other opiates, although obviously not to the same degree.
It appears that sugar stimulates the release of opiates within the brain and these opiates, in turn, trigger the release of dopamine that generates feelings of pleasure … in the same way as recreational drugs such as alcohol, cocaine and tobacco .
So what is the solution?
The preferred solution is to follow an ultra-low-fat diet for 4-6 weeks until the fat is removed from the receptors on the muscle cells, allowing glucose to enter and deliver its energy. At the same time, you need to stop having a sweet tooth and stop eating sweet things.
But if the latter is too difficult (because, say, you lack the necessary willpower), you could try to find a substitute for that sugar you eat … something that will ease your sugar craving.
There are two main groups of sugar substitutes … sugar alcohols and high intensity sweeteners.
Sugar alcohols
Sugar alcohols are carbohydrates with a chemical structure that resembles sugar, but they also have components that make them alcohol. They are 25-100% sweeter than sugar and taste similar.
Sugar alcohols include sorbitol, xylitol, lactitol, mannitol, erythritol, and maltitol, and they are often found in toothpaste, gum, and some “sugar-free” foods. Unfortunately, they are not calorie-free.
Most sugar alcohols have between 1.5 and 2 calories per gram, about half the calorie count of sucrose (sugar), which has 4 calories per gram. Therefore, they will increase your blood glucose count, especially if you eat too much.
However, the sugar spike won’t be as bad as you might expect. Sucrose has a glycemic index of 65, while sugar alcohols, such as xylitol, have a glycemic index of around 7. This means that sugar alcohols take much longer to digest and cause a slower and lower rise of blood glucose after meals.
Tea glycemic index it is a reference to how quickly food breaks down and is absorbed in the stomach. The higher the number, the faster food breaks down and the faster glucose is released into the bloodstream.
But on the other hand, because sugar alcohols are more difficult for the body to break down, some of them remain in the intestine, and if you consume too much, you may experience digestive discomfort such as gas, cramps, or diarrhea.
Another problem with sugar alcohols is that they are often packaged with higher amounts of fat or salt to compensate for the reduced sugar content … it seems like you can’t win.
High intensity sweeteners
Also called artificial sweeteners, high intensity sweeteners are zero or low calorie alternatives to sugar. They are made from a variety of sources and can be 100 to 20,000 times sweeter than sugar. Some can leave a bitter or metallic taste in the mouth. Two newer artificial sweeteners, stevia and SGFE, come from plants and are sometimes called natural sugar substitutes.
Using high intensity sweeteners can obviously reduce your carbohydrate and calorie intake. But if you replace the missing calories with calories from other food sources, you will lose the benefits you need.
In fact, researchers have seen this in some studies on high intensity sweeteners. Some of the trials show no difference or even possible weight gain when using these sweeteners. But in other studies, where food intake was better regulated and patients did not replace these free calories with other high-calorie foods, weight loss was maintained.
Food to go
The big downside to sugar substitutes is that they don’t break the candy habit … so when substitutes are not available, you will go back to using sugar … that’s why I recommend that you don’t use substitutes. It is much better that you pull your tooth in the sweet.
Here’s what I did, and I didn’t find the process of leaving the sugar in my tea and coffee especially difficult. Just remember one great truth … except our love of breast milk, all of our tastes, our acquired tastes … what you have acquired with practice, you can undo with more practice.
