My 5 Best Sugar Substitutes plus a bit of extra knowledge! Learn more at http://www.ThomasDeLauer.com
Hey, it's Thomas DeLauer. Today I want to talk about my five favorite sugar substitutes. Five different ingredients that I use to replace traditional refined sugar that is a total load of garbage because it's full of chemicals or it's just so refined it has no nutrients left in it. I'm going to dive right in. The first one that I want to talk about is simply raw honey. I'm talking about pure unadulterated raw honey. The cool thing about honey is that it's not even technically a sugar, but more of a whole food. Contains a lot of different properties like seriously powerful antioxidants, so they help get rid of what's called that reactive oxygen species in our blood, that basically is whenever our cells have waste, whenever our cells are going through metabolism they have this reactive oxygen species of waste. Well, honey can actually help eradicate that.
Additionally, if you simply replace your sugar that you would normally be consuming with raw honey you can dramatically reduce the impact on your blood sugar levels. This is because typically speaking raw honey is lower glycemic, which means it's going to have a lower impact on your blood sugar in general, and it means it's going to give you more of a gentle bell curve with your blood sugar levels and your insulin spike versus a big giant sharp spike and drop off. Now, there are some other benefits to raw honey other than the fact that it's sweet, it tastes good and it's a food. It's the fact that it contains bee pollen which has a lot of powerful properties. What this bee pollen can do inside your body is actually act as something that's going to prevent allergies for given local areas, so if you are consuming local honey you can help your allergies out by simply just consuming that honey. It sort of builds up an antibody or sort of a histamine blocker, if you will, basically towards that ultimate allergen.
This is one of my favorite ones, because you've seen my videos on this, when you consume honey you restore your liver glycogen at a different rate than you would if it was just a simple refined sugar. This means you get all the benefits of restoring liver glycogen without the negative side effects. Benefits being, you're simply going to help your serotonin levels out. What happens is, when you consume carbs and your liver glycogen fills up it triggers the release of tryptophan. This tryptophan cascades and helps the production of serotonin which helps you chill out and helps you go to sleep.
The next one I want to talk about is something called dolceti, and it's really not that popular. Honestly, I don't know why. You can find it at Whole Foods, or you can find it at most high end grocery stores. What it is, is an apple nectar and it averages between seven and nine on the glycemic index scale. That's ridiculously low. That's like such a low impact that's like a lettuce.
The next one that I want to talk about are dates. You should go on lots of dates. I mean, you should eat lots of dates. The reason that dates are so good is simply because they're super, super high in fiber which means that in addition to getting the carbohydrate sweet benefit, it negates a lot of the negative impact by having a high amount of fiber, meaning your overall amount of net carbs much less than if you were to just have pure sugar.
One of the ones that a lot of people don't want to simply talk about is that very similar to the prune family they're going to help you out with that irregularity. Let's face it, something we never really want to talk about but we all face it from time to time.
Alright, so the next one I want to talk about is coconut sugar. Coconut sugar has a huge component to it that I am a big, big fan of. That is the fact that coconut sugar contains something called inulin. Inulin is what is called a prebiotic fiber. If you've seen my videos talking about prebiotics and probiotics you know that prebiotics are essentially the fertilizer for gut bacteria. We need that fertilizer for our gut bacteria to grow, to flourish, to proliferate, so that we can actually have a healthy gut biome.
Coconut sugar containing that inulin gives us one of the most powerful and one of the only natural sources of fiber that we can get to help that process. Rather than eating stalks and stalks and stalks of asparagus, maybe just make a pie with some coconut sugar.
Lastly, this is one that you've probably heard of before, and it's simple Agave nectar, coming from that cactus. I'm not talking about making tequila. If you want to go that far you can, but I'm talking about pure Agave syrup. One of the biggest reasons that I'm a fan of Agave Syrup is simply the fact that it's right in the sweet spot when it comes to the glycemic index.