How to live a sweet life - without sugar

By: Bettina Berlin
Submitted: 2009-03-12 13:48:17
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Are you one of those people who have an incurable sweet tooth? And now, for whatever reason, you need to cut down on sugar, be it because you developed diabetes or you are a bit overweight? Don’t worry, there are ways. Plenty of them. You won’t need to suffer, missing the sweet times with cakes and puddings.

Do we actually need sugar?

First, I would like you to understand that from a health perspective, you don’t need sugar at all. It doesn’t contain any nutrients and your body won’t miss it. You are even going to be healthier if you eat less sugar.

Why does too much sugar make us pick up weight?

The problem is that our body first burns the sugar we eat for gaining energy, and only afterwards it uses the fat. If we eat too much sugar, our body doesn’t need to burn fat and stores it instead. So we pick up weight. Eating only little sugar, on the other hand, will force the body to burn fat, a big step on your way to solve your weight problem. But even if you are not overweight, it’s always better to eat as healthy as possible. If you do that most of the time, then the few exceptions of eating something really sweet won’t harm you at all.

Alternative 1: Natural sweeteners

A good alternative to using sugar are natural sweeteners. They are not necessarily very nutritious but most of them definitely contain more vitamins and minerals than white sugar. Here are three that you should find quite easily. Any big supermarket should have them in stock:

• Fructose: A product derived from fruit sugar with still little nutritional value, but causing less blood sugar level disturbance as simple sugar. It’s more concentrated, you need only about half the amount.
• Honey: Honey is much sweeter than white sugar, so half or a third of the amount of sugar will be enough.        Buy unpasteurized honey without added sugar.
• Maple Syrup: It contains twice as much calcium as milk. Not all maple syrup is pure so best buy organic products.

Alternative 2: Fruit

An even better option is adding fruit to your food. Many fruits like apples, bananas and pears, are naturally sweet so you won’t need to add any more sugar. Besides fructose, fruits are packed with vitamins, fiber and other nutrients. So, if you use an apple and a banana to sweeten your oatmeal in the morning, you have transformed it into a healthy, highly nutritious breakfast – and it’s still sweet, without any sugar. If you use dried fruit instead, just consider the fact that their fructose is much more concentrated than in fresh fruit, meaning you will need much less raisins than grapes to get the same effect of sweetness.

I hope that by now you got some ideas how to drastically cut down on sugar in your diet or even eliminate it at all. You see, often all you need to do is making some simple adjustments like reducing sugar or replacing with something healthier. Fruit would definitely be the best option, so try to use that as often as possible. If you can’t then choose a natural sweetener that will do the job.

Article source: Expert Articles