I have a major sweet tooth. I would definitely choose sweet over salty anyday! But despite my love for sugar, I know how bad (refined) sugar is for me. In the book The Kind Diet by Alicia Silverstone, she talks about how sugar is basically like a drug. We get a high or sugar rush from it, only to crash later on and feel hungry again, craving more sweets! I'm proud to say my son's little body hasn't encountered any refined sugar so far, and I plan to keep it this way for as long as possible! (And just as a side note, most of the "-ose" ingredients you see on your food labels are simple sugars too! Dextrose, glucose, sucrose, maltose and the particularly nasty high fructose corn syrup!)
The Kind Diet talks about just how nasty white sugar is for our bodies and one of the more interesting examplesis that white sugar suppresses our immune system. I have a tough enough time keeping my baby healthy with all the snotty, straight-into-the-mouth toys at playgroup without adding anything else to the mix! Basically when you eat refined sugar, your body releases insulin in order to bring your blood sugar back down and then once the sugar has been metabolized, all this excess insulin remains, causing an imbalance in the hormones particularly related to your immune system.
Sometimes you just want something sweet though (and I want my son to be able to enjoy the sweet things in life too!) so lately I've been thinking alot about alternatives to refined white sugar and brown sugar.
Here are some of the options I have discovered/tried so far:
Maple syrup: 100% natural and deee-licious! It's very concentrated so you don't need much and it's great for baking (also awesome over oatmeal!). I have a wonderful recipe for amazing "healthy" cookies using maple syrup which I will post.
Agave nectar: another natural, very sweet syrup made from the agave plant - also great for desserts. I made some chocolate macaroons using this and they turned out great!
Brown rice syrup: this is made from brown rice cooked until it boils down into a liquid. It's thick and looks almost like honey (another natural sweetener!). Apparently this is wonderful in muffins, caked etc.
Stevia: way, way sweeter than sugar so you use very little of it. It's a little tricky when substituting this in recipes to know how much to use, sort of a trial and error thing. It rates a 0 on the glycemic index (GI) - the lower the rating, the healthier a food is considered to be.
Molasses: has lots of vitamins and minerals (iron, calcium etc) and I love the taste in baking, especially around the holidays.
I'm looking forward to playing around with these a bit more and trying to further limit our sugar intake.
Here is the recipe for "healthy" cookies using maple syprup...
Spelt Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup olive oil (I find the flavour a bit strong and use less)
1 cup pure maple syrup
1 tsp vanilla
1/4 cup boiling water
1 cup spelt whole flour
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 cups oatmeal
1/4 cup flaxseeds and/or 1/2 cup unsweetened flaked coconut
1 cup dark chocolate chips
Beat oil, maple syrup and vanilla with beater for 2 min until foamy.
Add boiling water and stir.
Add flour, salt, baking soda and oatmeal and stir.
Mix in flaxseeds or coconut and chocolate chips.
On slightly greased cookie sheet, flatten out small balls of dough with fork (the dough will seem softer and runnier than traditional cookie dough).
Bake @ 325 for 18 to 25 min.
Makes three dozen.
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