Agave sugar - it’s not all good
Having gained 35 pounds during my pregnancy, I am now waking up to the fact that at some stage fairly soon I would like to start losing some weight. What a drag that’s going to be. On the sugar front, I thought I was rather clever for having found Agave syrup, a “natural” sweetener produced in Mexico that comes from the same plant as wonderful Mezcal tequila. The plant produces a syrup that is sweeter than honey but it’s truly outstanding property is its glycemic index of only 27. This might have you running off to the health food store to stock up but I just found out that it’s very high level of fructose has it’s own series of complications. In short ladies… whole fruit and whole foods (Agave is a processed sugar) are still queens of the crop.
The glycemic index measures how high your blood sugar rises when you eat certain foods i.e. foods with a high glycemic index are absorbed quickly by the body giving you unnecessary spikes in your moods and also impacting your energy. Corn flakes, for example, have a glycemic index of 119; white bread=112,rice=83, honey=83, apple=54 and peas=32. Since Agave is much sweeter than regular sugar, you only need use 1/3 cup for every 1 cup of sugar which means you can obtain the same sweetness level with fewer calories.
But in an article I just read by John Kohler, founder of the largest living and raw food website on the internet, www.living-foods.com, and www.rawfoodsupport.com, Agave is not all good. He claims, Agave syrup is not a “whole” food since it is fractionated and processed — manufacturers take the liquid portion of the agave plant and “boil” it down, to concentrate the sugar and make it sweet. He also claims while Agave syrup is “low glycemic” this is due to the unusually high concentration of fructose (90%) compared to the small amount of glucose (10%) and that there are numerous problems associated with the consumption of fructose in such high concentrations:
A. Fructose appears to interfere with copper metabolism. This causes collagen and elastin being unable to form. Collagen and elastin are connective tissue which essentially hold the body together. A deficiency in copper can also lead to bone fragility, anemia, defects of the arteries and bone, infertility, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks and ironically enough an inability to control blood sugar levels.
B. Research suggests that fructose actually promotes disease more readily than glucose. This is because glucose is metabolized by every cell in the body, and fructose must be metabolized by the liver. Tests on animals show that the livers of animals fed large amounts of fructose develop fatty deposits and cirrohosis of the liver. This is similar to the livers of alcoholics.
C. “Pure” isolated fructose contains no enzymes, vitamins or minerals and may rob the body of these nutrients in order to assimilate itself for physiological use.
D. Fructose may contribute to diabetic conditions. It reduces the sensitivity of insulin receptors. Insulin receptors are the way glucose enters a cell to be metabolized. As a result, the body needs to make more insulin to handle the same amount of glucose.
E. Consumption of fructose has been shown to cause a significant increase in uric acid. An increase in uric acid can be an indicator of heart diease.
F. Fructose consumption has been shown to increase blood lactic acid, especially for people with conditions such as diabetes. Extreme elevations may cause metabolic acidosis.
G. Consumption of fructose leads to mineral losses, especially excretions of iron, magnesium, calcium and zinc compared to subjects fed sucrose.
H. Fructose may cause accelerated aging through oxidative damage. Scientists found that rats given fructose had more cross-linking changes in the collagen of their skin than other groups fed glucose. These changes are thought to be markers for aging.
I. Fructose can make you fat! It is metabolized by the liver and converts to fat more easily than any other sugar. Fructose also raises serum triglycerides (blood fats) significantly.
The solution ladies??? Eat more whole fruits. He also recommend Stevia (but I am not a fan of its taste), it is a little bitter for my liking (a paradox considering it is a sweetener). You can also try taking dried (unsulfured) fruit and soaking it in water. After a few hours the water will become a sweetened juice and if you blend it up you have a nice natural sweetener to add to most food. Dates, figs and prunes are some of the best naturally sweet dried fruit. Raw honey is also still our friend since it is natural and a whole food.
Finally, if you are craving some sugar…. then use a little sugar, but like everything in life… try to keep things balanced. Sigh….
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March 7th, 2007 | Permalink
I find *so* much of the information coming from raw food proponent sites to be reactionary and filled with partial truths. The intent behind much of the writings coming out of the raw food movement has the same feeling that one feels in a overly righteous church: raw and whole are the only ways, and everything else else is bad for you. Which is odd, given that at no time in recorded history has a cultured used and thrived on a mostly-raw food diet. In other words, the very diet they’re promoting is a giant emperical experiment. I think it’s grand and even important experiment, one that is showing some good health benefits. But this list of why agave is now bad for us is a classic example. How much daily agave would need to be consumed in order to experience ANY of the alarmist symptoms listed? A cup? Two cups? A quart? Organic Blue Agave is a concentrated plant sweetener, meant to be used in a cup of tea or over ones morning groats, perhaps a tablespoon or two at a time. These scary lists are like pointing out that sea salt can kill you if you eat too much. Well, so can oxygen (ask a diver), and carbon dioxide, yet both are critical to the cycle of life.
The raw food movement is giving us an important piece to the puzzle of what it takes to make and keep a healthy human. But cripes, I do hope they learn to lighten up, stop the ungrounded paranoid scare tactics in their writings, learn to read from a wider swatch of knowledge beyond “enzymes are God” and removes the fear that I see reflected in the eyes of most of its followers.
Agave, like sea salt, spices, herbs, teas and seeds is a health-producing condiment. Try adding some to your tea tomorrow morning, and feel the smile spread through your cells.
I found your site on technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!