Join me as I head to the grocery store and navigate the sugar aisle! I’ll share some insights on healthy sugar alternatives and which ones to avoid, so you can make informed dietary choices. Understanding labels and ingredients is key to quitting sugar and making healthy decisions for you and your family.
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Full Transcript
Introduction to Sugar Alternatives 0:00
Hey everybody. So today we're going to go grocery shopping together and especially in the sugar aisle. Now there are so many sugar options, sweetener options and alternative sweeteners out there. I want you to have abundant clarity on which ones are good for you and which one's are not good. For you. Let's start with sucralose.
Sucralose and Saccharin Concerns 0:24
Also known as Splenda is an artificial sweetener. It came about in about the 1970s and it is processed from sugar, add chlorine, and that makes the artificial sweetener. It's about 600 times sweeter than sugar and lower calorie because of that chlorination process. Now, some of the things that we know for sure about sucralose is that it can change the gut microbiome and it affect blood sugar regulation. So we're seeing that people who use Splenda or sucrolose quite often are having more blood-sugar dysregularity.
And then some the long-term effects are a bit more concerning. There's some effects that show it can lead to cancer. Some of those are saying, oh no, we don't know that for sure. However, the long-term studies are showing mixed reviews. So in my opinion, sucralose is out. The next one is sweetened though, also known as saccharin. Now saccharin is also sweeter than sugar, but it's made from a chemical process by adding constituents of tar into the chemical processing. This one has been shown to have some long-term health effects as well, similar to the sucralose where it alters the microbiome, it affects insulin and blood sugar, and can lead to weight gain even though it's low calorie.
It's because of the way that it changes the micro biome and changes your metabolism. And this one does have more long term effects of increased risk of cancer.
Aspartame and Stevia Overview 2:06
We're also seeing with this one, the saccharin specifically, that it can increase neurological symptoms like headaches and migraines. There's a reason why all of these sweeteners are in these very light, very innocent baby colors is because the marketing wants you to think that they're very Last doom and gloom one is aspartame. Aspartium under our brand name is called Equal, but as partium is in a lot of things. It's in sodas, it's sometimes in bubblegums, candies, even light yogurts, sometimes toothpaste.
So definitely watch out for this one because it is so common and it known to cause migraines and anxiety. Let's talk about stevia. Stevia seems to be okay. It's made from a plant called candy leaf and it's about two to 400 times sweeter than sugar. The only beef I have with stebia is that it is relatively new in the food marketplace. it entered the marketplace about 2008 and we don't have a ton of long term data on it. The one thing that we are seeing as a consistent pattern, though, is that it can lower blood pressure.
So that's something to be mindful of if you're consuming Sevia pretty often. We'll do a part two with all of the other natural sweeteners, but the last two today are monk fruits, which is honestly great.
Monk Fruit and Erythritol 3:39
No problem at all. and erythritol. Now, erithrital is sneaky because oftentimes monkfruit and arethrital are together. Monkfruit's totally okay. Erythrytal, not so much. Erythritol is known as a sugar alcohol and you can tell that because it's got the O-all at the end. There are other sugar-alcohols too like xylitol and they'll all end in the o- all. Eerythrital is very low calorie and one of the reasons it is low-calorie is because humans can't digest it. So what's a side effect of things that humans gas, diarrhea, not ideal.
So watch out for things that have erythritol in it, because it could cause bloating and gas and loose stool, but especially watch for out things say sweetened with monk fruit. And if it's just sweet with the monkfruit, that's great. But if its sweet and with Monkfruit and erithritrol, it might have those side effects. I hope this is helpful. Let me know in the comments what other sugars you want to hear about and I'll be sure to add them into part two.
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