Brown Rice Syrup instead of White Sugar

And all the rest of the 'so called' healthy sweeteners

One of the topics I get asked about all the time is what is a healthy sugar substitute. I use Brown Rice Syrup for all my desserts and sweetener needs. It is the healthiest sweetener. In this blog, I go over sugar substitutes and what choices I make when it comes to which ones I prefer and which ones I never eat.

Lemon Cake with Blueberry Icing

This is an excerpt from the introduction of my cookbook: Simply Healthy Scrumptious Desserts.

The BEST Natural Sweetener

      The healthiest sugar substitute is brown rice syrup.                                  

Made from whole brown rice, it breaks down to maltose, the least reactive sweetener there is on the body. Maltose will never spike your blood sugar. Brown rice syrup contains the minerals zinc, magnesium and manganese. It is made by cooking whole brown rice, adding enzymes to help break down the starches, draining it and then boiled. 

     The whole grain sweetener, barley malt, is similar to brown rice syrup breaking down to maltose. Made from the whole grain barley, it has a slight bitter taste, similar to molasses. Because many people are on a gluten free diet, barley contains gluten, brown rice syrup can be used in place of any recipe that calls for barley malt. 

I use and have used Suzanne’s Specialties Brown Rice Syrup (Rice Nector) for over 25 years. I order from the company the ‘Genmai’ Organic Rice Nector. The ‘Genmai’ is the most whole and pure of the syrups.

Website:

https://suzannes-specialties.com/

Maple Syrup

     My second favorite and second healthiest is maple syrup. Made from the sap of the maple tree, it has been used as a sweetener by the natives of the land for as long as recorded history. It is very simply the sap cooked down to make a sweet syrup. No extraction process, refining or manipulation is used to create maple syrup. It contains these minerals; calcium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, manganese and has antioxidant properties. Maple syrup is sucrose and will spike your blood sugar, however with the minerals in the syrup it does not wreak havoc on your organs the way white sugar does.

Pumpkin Fudge

Occasional Sweeteners

     Sucanat, is an unrefined, natural cane sugar, made from minimally refined sugar cane. It is a brown granular form and I use it occasionally for frosting. Or if I am serving the general public that wants a sweeter dessert. 

     Molasses is a thick dark syrup made during the sugar making process. Look for organic and unsulfured, they put sulfur dioxide in the molasses as a preservative. Blackstrap is darker in color and has more nutritional value. I use molasses for special holiday desserts when I want a rich, robust flavor. 

     Evaporated Cane Juice (Cane Sugar) is less processed than white sugar and has some nutrients. I do not cook with this, but it is in the vegan chocolate chips I use in some recipes. 

     Date sugar or dried dates, contains vitamins, minerals and fiber in the whole dates. Mostly sucrose with fructose, very sweet. 

     Fruit sugar, or fruit juice sweetened, metabolizes almost as quickly as white sugar, a natural source of fructose. 

      Honey (I do not use) (vegans do not use), mainly fructose and sucrose, very sweet. Claims of health benefits, it is made by bees. A better choice than white sugar. 

     If a natural sweetener has vitamins and minerals, it is a better choice than white sugar. The vitamins and minerals in the sweetener help to minimize the effects of the sugars.

      Absolutely Not! 

      All the sweeteners in this category are intensely sweet. They are sweeter than white sugar. These intensely sweet items when eaten change the taste buds. The taste buds are overly stimulated from the consumption of these sweeteners and eventually you cannot properly taste food. This may affect your taste buds to the point you can only eat intensely sweet things and you keep racing for these intensely sweet foods 

      Agave: 70 to 90 % fructose (higher than high fructose corn syrup, 55 % fructose) The human body does not know what to do with such high fructose levels. It passes the digestive system and gets digested in the liver. It is highly chemically processed using genetically modified enzymes and is filtered using chemicals. 

        Aspartame and other Chemical Sweeteners: (Nutrasweet, Equal). 200 times sweeter than white sugar. The human body was not designed to ingest chemicals. They have been shown to cause cancer in lab animals. Plus been shown to cause brain damage and multiple sclerosis. 

    Beet Sugar is highly refined sugar made from beets. It is the same as white sugar. It is estimated that 95% of beets are genetically modified, another reason to stay away from beet sugar. 

    Coconut Sugar is 70% to 80% sucrose and half of that is fructose. It has almost the same amount of fructose as table sugar, gram for gram. Coconut is a tropical plant and you should eat local foods.  

Chocolate Pumpkin Cake with Peacan Topping

Other Chemical Sweeteners: 

     Saccharin, Sweet’ N Low, 500 times sweeter than sugar. Sucralose, Splenda, 600 times sweeter than white sugar. 

     Sorbitol, mannitol, erythritol, lacitol, malitol, xylitol and isomalt, all chemical sweeteners. Anything that ends in ‘tol’ is made in a factory.

     Corn Sweeteners: 

     Corn syrup, glucose syrup, high fructose corn syrup, maltodextrin, dextrin, maltodextrin, all made by the chemical process of hydrolysis. 

     Stevia: 200 to 300 times sweeter than white sugar. Can not be digested in the human digestive system (similar to agave) it gets digested in the liver. 

     Monk Fruit: 200 to 300 times sweeter than white sugar. Same as stevia and agave, it gets digested in the liver, not the digestive tract. 

There is a difference between Monk Fruit Extract and Monk Fruit Sweetener: 

Monk fruit extract is a mixture of sweet compounds that naturally occur in the fruit. It’s created by removing the fruit’s seeds, then peeling and crushing them to collect the juice. 

The fruit is then processed to concentrate the sweetness; this results in a highly potent and intensely sweet liquid known as monk fruit extract. Monk fruit extract is very sweet from the fruit’s mogrosides, with a sweetness level up to 200-300 times greater than sugar (sucrose). 

The fruit extract is commonly made from wild-harvested organic fruit and doesn’t contain artificial sweeteners, colors, or flavors. The extract also contains zero calories, zero carbohydrates, zero sodium, and zero fat. 

It's typically a dark brown color and has a relatively thin viscosity. Just a tiny amount is required in a dish to match the sweetness offered by sugar. 

Monk fruit sweetener is derived from the monk fruit itself and is made by combining its extract with a small amount of non-GMO erythritol or other natural sweeteners. Some of these additives may be allulose, stevia, glucose, maltodextrin, tagatose, inulin, or some combination therein.

These ingredients are significant in altering the appearance and tempering the sweetness of the sweetener. So the end product is a sugar granule or powder-like texture and color, making monk fruit sweetener easier to use in a variety of culinary and baking applications.

Monk fruit sweetener is tamer than the sweetness of monk fruit extract. Unlike other chemically based commercial sweeteners, monk fruit sweetener is considered natural and one of just three sweeteners that are generally recognized as safe by the US FDA.

This sugar alternative is frequently referred to as a high-intensity sweetener or non-nutritive sweetener. They're typically not as pure as high-grade maple syrup but less refined than stevia. However, the additional substances it's often combined with could wind up adding calories to your food or drink in addition to the sweetener.

The problem with the Glycemic Index: 

For the past 60 some years the Glycemic Research Institute has been doing research to attempt to figure out how the sugars in our food get digested and how it affects our blood sugar levels. They have been trying to come up with a way to rate the food according to how an individual's insulin will rise after eating particular foods. They call their made-up rating system, the Glycemic Index. 

It is based on how much a person’s blood sugar rises after about 2 to 4 hours of eating 100 calories of any one certain food. The higher the spike in blood sugar, the higher the number in the Glycemic Index. 

There are many problems with this way of calculating how the food affects the person. 

• Many diverse foods have similar numbers in the index that just do not make sense. Example: bagels, angel food cake, graham crackers, whole wheat crackers, corn chips, couscous, french fries, mashed potatoes, Cream of Wheat Cereal, Cheerios, and Golden Grahams Cereal have similar numbers, approx. 94 to 106. This list of food is all over the place. Many of them have white sugar and white flour. Some do not. There is a huge difference between eating angel food cake and mashed potato. 

• The longer you cook rice the higher the G.I. number. Example: long grain white rice has a lower number than brown rice. But short grain white rice is higher than brown rice. This is very confusing. And let me be very clear on this one, 

BROWN RICE IS ALWAYS SUPERIOR IN NUTRITION THAN WHITE RICE!!! 

• The G.I. does not take into consideration food combining. Example: Pasta has a lower number then breads but breads together with beans had a lower reaction. Very confusing. 

I would not put much stock in the G.I. rating system. Example: all high numbers are bananas, carrots, brown rice parsnips and rice cakes. All low numbers, ice cream and potato chips (probably because of the fat content helping to digest the carbs). This would indicate that eating ice cream is healthier than eating brown rice. (People who know me know that my head is exploding right now with the concept.)

Note on this blog: 

While writing this blog I was looking things up on google search. The search has changed so much you cannot find accurate information anymore. Every time I search the Glycemic Index to find more info about the research, the search brought me to Web M.D., Harvard medical, Hopkins medicine, mayo clinic, n.i.h. Gov., all sites that I do not find reliable. Those places are all paid off by my pharmaceutical companies and I do not use them for my research. 

Then when I typed in the search bar Suzanne’s Specialties to find their website, the website did not come up. There were all these websites to purchase it, not directly from the company. All these websites that come up when you do a search have paid to have their website appear first. It is a real shame what has happened to the google search to find accurate information. 

I use my trusty book that I have accumulated over my 27 years of researching food to get the accurate knowledge that I use in my cooking classes, counseling sessions and my everyday lifestyle.

Upcoming Cooking Class:

Millet Late Summer Cooking Class
Thursday, Oct. 17 - 6:30 to 8 PM (ET)
$36.00 - Virtual through zoom. https://www.macroval.com/cookingclasses.htm

You get the recipes ahead of class to cook along in your own kitchen.
Learn all about the signature whole grain for Late Summer, Soil Energy phase, Millet. Creamy, naturally sweet, high in iron and calcium, Millet nurtures your spleen, pancreas and stomach.
Menu: Millet Chick Pea Lettuce Salad with Vinaigrette Dressing and Millet Chick Pea Squash Warm Salad with Tahini Dressing.

Join me LIVE on YouTube!

https://www.youtube.com/@chefvaleriewilson8738/videos

Thank you for reading, sharing and supporting my blog! Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to help support my work.

Get in the Kitchen and Cook Healthy!