The ultimate guide to sugars & sweeteners : discover the taste, use, nutrition, science, and lore of everything from agave nectar to xylitol

286 Pages·2014·1.64 MB·English

by  Alan Barclay PhD

THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO
SUGARS &
SWEETENERS
DISCOVER THE TASTE, USE, NUTRITION,
SCIENCE, AND LORE OF EVERYTHING FROM
AGAVE NECTAR TO XYLITOL
ALAN BARCLAY, , PHILIPPA SANDALL, CLAUDIA SHWIDE-
PHD AND
SLAVIN, MS, RD, CDE
NEW YORK
THE ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SUGARS AND SWEETENERS: Discover the Taste, Use, Nutrition, Science, and Lore
of Everything from Agave Nectar to Xylitol
Copyright © 2014 Alan Barclay, Philippa Sandall, and Claudia Shwide-Slavin
Foreword copyright © Jennie Brand-Miller
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barclay, Alan W.
The ultimate guide to sugars and sweeteners : discover the taste, use, nutrition, science, and lore of
everything from agave nectar to xylitol / Alan Barclay, PhD, Philippa Sandall, and Claudia Shwide-Slavin,
MS, RD, CDE.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61519-216-8 (pbk.) -- ISBN 978-1-61519-217-5 (ebook) 1. Sweeteners. I. Sandall, Philippa. II.
Shwide-Slavin, Claudia. III. Title.
TP421.B37 2014
664'.1--dc23
2014027435
ISBN 978-1-61519-216-8
Ebook ISBN 978-1-61519-217-5
Cover design by Christopher Brian King Cover photographs © StockFood/Richard Jung Photography Text
design by Pauline Neuwirth, Neuwirth & Associates, Inc.
Manufactured in the United States of America Distributed by Workman Publishing Company, Inc.
Distributed simultaneously in Canada by Thomas Allen & Son Ltd.
First printing November 2014
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Foreword by Jennie Brand-Miller, PhD
Introduction: Seeking sweetness
About using this book
Measuring and counting
What acronym is that?
Understanding the glycemic index (GI) and why it matters
PART 1 Sugars and Sweeteners A to Z
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
PART 2 Health matters
Added sugars equal added calories
Sugars, sweeteners, and digestion
Additional health issues
Special diets
Sweet talk on labels
PART 3 Test kitchen: Substituting sugars and sweeteners in two classic recipes
CHALLENGE 1: Vanilla Butter Cookie
CHALLENGE 2: Blueberry Bran Muffin
Notes
Appendix: Brand names of high-intensity, nonnutritive sweeteners
Acknowledgments
About the authors
FOREWORD
y guess is that many of you reading this book are trying to improve your
dietary habits. No doubt, high on your to-do list is cutting down on “sugar” (the
stuff described as pure, white, and deadly). But I will hazard another guess: you
haven’t cut all sweetness out of your life—you’ve just exchanged one source of
sweetness for another. Now you’re wondering, is the new source a good one, a
better one, or actually doing more harm than good? Well, that’s exactly why
Alan Barclay, Philippa Sandall, and Claudia Shwide-Slavin wrote The Ultimate
Guide to Sugars and Sweeteners. To my knowledge, they are the first to bring all
this information altogether in one consumer-friendly, very readable little book.
They’ve done the hard work for you. They tell you not only what each sugar or
sweetener is and where it comes from, but also its history, chemistry, calorie
content, culinary applications, and—wherever they can—its effect on blood
glucose (in other words, its glycemic index).
I expect many of you will find it surprising to hear a professor of nutrition
express the view that sugars and sweeteners have a place in modern diets.
Perhaps it comes from a university training in food science, combined with a
passionate interest in diet and human evolution. A diet with a moderate amount
of added sugars (about 5 to 10 percent of total energy, or 25 to 50 grams in a
2,000-calorie diet) is the amount considered commensurate with a nutritious diet
by the World Health Organization. I don’t believe that it’s helpful to strictly
avoid all sources of added sugars.
Why? For one, it’s highly likely that you’ll replace those calories with
something else. Not at a conscious level, of course, but in the appetite center of
your brain, hormones and other signals will ensure you’re maintaining your
usual body weight.
Research shows us that if you cut sugar calories from your diet, there’s a good
chance you’ll eat more calories from fat, particularly saturated fat (the so-called
sugar-fat seesaw). Consuming more saturated fat will definitely increase your
risk of chronic disease. If you’re careful to avoid both saturated fat and added
sugars, perhaps you’ll eat more refined fats and oils that are also “empty
calories,” just like added sugars. So you’ll have achieved nothing.
Or perhaps you’ll eat more starch, particularly the highly refined starches that
are also empty calories and contribute to a high dietary glycemic load (think
your typical French fries, white rice, white bread, and highly processed breakfast
cereals). These foods raise blood glucose more than other sources of
carbohydrates, and they also increase the risk of chronic disease. And there’s a
good chance you’ll consume more salt, too, because starchy foods are bland
without it.
Concentrated sources of sugars have a long history as part of our diet. Sugars in
fruit and honey have provided carbohydrate energy in human diets for millions
of years—ever since primates began evolving on a steady diet of fruit and
berries in the rainforests of Africa fifty million years ago. The appreciation of
the sensation of sweetness runs deep in the human psyche. Our hunter-gatherer
ancestors positively relished concentrated sugars such as dates, dried fruit, sugar
bag, honey, and even honey ants. In literature and mythology, sweetness is
linked with pleasure and goodness, and in everyday language we use terms
associated with sweetness to describe the things we love (sweetie pie,
honeymoon). Our first food, breast milk, is sweet—in fact, it’s the sweetest of all
mammalian milks.
We should, therefore, use added sugars judiciously to increase the intake of
nutritious foods that might otherwise not appeal (think a little melted brown
sugar on hot oatmeal, a swirl of date syrup on yogurt). With this thought in
mind, I recommend this A-to-Z guide as the best, most up-to-date, and accurate
source of information about all the sugars and sweeteners, new and old, in our
diet.
Jennie Brand-Miller, PhD, author of the Low GI Diet Revolution series and
Professor of Nutrition and Metabolism, School of Molecular Bioscience and
Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney, Australia
April 2014
INTRODUCTION:
SEEKING SWEETNESS
ur sweet tooth has a long history. It seems we have always been drawn to
sweet things, but supply was generally limited, unreliable, and seasonal—until
now.
Today, many anthropologists believe that honey is one of the sweet secrets to
human evolution and that for thousands of years our diet has included a variety
of natural sugars from fruits, berries, saps, gums, leaf scale, honey ants, nectar,
and honeycomb. Seeking sweetness made sense for early humans, whose
energy-hungry, expanding brains would have greatly benefited from the calories
and nourishment these sweet foods provided, especially when the hunter came
home empty-handed. The earliest evidence we have for seeking sweetness is in
rock art by our hunter-gatherer ancestors from all around the world that depicts
honeycombs, swarms of bees, and honey collecting and that date back thousands
of years. But there is also potentially older evidence in the mutually beneficial
relationship between the honeyguide bird and the hunter-gatherer in Africa.
Today, most of us buy our honey in jars from shops, but some Hadza, who live
near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, don’t. They haven’t settled down to
village or town life. They are mobile foragers who still hunt honey (their number
one preferred food item) as their ancestors did for thousands of years. And, like
their ancestors, they sometimes seek it with the assistance of the aptly named
honeyguide bird (Indicator indicator):
The honeyguide bird and the human honey hunter communicate through a
series of whistles, and the bird guides the hunter, tree by tree, to the hive.
Once the honey hunter has located the hive, he pounds wooden pegs into
the trunk of the tree, climbs to the top where the hive is located, chops into
the tree to expose the hive, and smokes it out by placing burning brush
into the opening. Smoking the hive acts to pacify the bees by dulling the
senses of the guard bees, who protect the opening of the hive. The bees
see the smoke as a habitat threat and focus on collecting enough honey to
rebuild their hive elsewhere. This allows the hunter to collect the
honeycomb without being stung by the killer bees. The honeyguide bird
patiently waits outside of the hive, and as the honey hunter obtains his
honeycomb prize, the honeyguide bird is rewarded with its delicious prize
1
—wax from the comb and bees.
In our own lives, our first taste of life is sweetness: mother’s milk, the food that
Mother Nature designed for our babies. It contains the sugar lactose, and it is the
sweetest of all mammalian milks. (The nutrients in baby formulas are matched to
it as closely as possible, but it is hard to match breast milk’s natural sweetness
without adding some kind of sweetener.) Research shows that new babies prefer
sweet tastes from birth. They will choose to suck on bottles of sweetened water
but will turn away or cry if given something bitter or sour to taste. The appealing
sweetness of the lactose in breast milk is part of a perfect nutritional package
containing all the proteins, fats, vitamins, and minerals that babies need to grow
and thrive and fight infection.
The take-home lesson is that adding a sprinkle of sugar or a drizzle of honey
can be a great way to encourage us to eat healthy foods. A touch of sweetness
helps us enjoy nutritious foods such as oatmeal (porridge) and plain yogurt. The
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics advises that “Consumers can safely enjoy a
range of nutritive sweeteners and nonnutritive [zero-calorie] sweeteners when
consumed within an eating plan that is guided by current federal nutrition
recommendations, such as the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the Dietary
2
Reference Intakes, as well as individual health goals and personal preference.”
But, naturally appealing or not, nutritive sugars and sweeteners such as honey
are not health foods, because they provide us with energy (calories/kilojoules)
but not much else in the way of nutritional benefits. So, we most certainly are
not going to encourage you to consume as much as you’d like. Moderation
matters if you want to achieve and maintain a healthy weight. What’s moderate?
Currently, the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that people
should not eat more than 10 percent of their total daily calories from added
sugars. For a typical American adult consuming 2,000 calories a day, this is
equal to around 12 teaspoons—200 calories. This is based on an observation in
epidemiological studies that the risk of developing tooth decay increases when a
population’s average consumption of added sugar (that is, sugar not occurring
naturally in foods) goes above 10 percent of their calorie intake. (We show you
what 10 percent added sugars look like in the Buzz Notes under Added Sugars
Equal Added Calories.) The WHO’s new draft guidelines as of March 2014 also
say that consuming less than 5 percent of total calories from added sugars may
3
provide additional health benefits.
When cutting back on added sugars, the food industry and many consumers
turn to nonnutritive sweeteners. However, if you are trying to cut calories, it’s
important to remember that “sugar-free” isn’t code for “low calorie.” When
regular sugar is replaced by →nonnutritive sweeteners in energy-dense (high-
calorie) starchy or fatty foods, you may not save very many calories at all.
Controversy swirls around nonnutritive sweeteners’ safety: you have likely
heard rumors that one or more of these sweeteners is toxic, carcinogenic, or
otherwise harmful. In the entries in this book, we will not address specific claims
about various sweeteners’ toxicity, because the rigorous clinical evidence that
regulatory agencies such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) take
into account when approving sweeteners and other food additives does not
support those claims—at least, not in the quantities we can reasonably expect
someone to consume. If you have concerns about specific sweeteners’ safety, we
suggest you visit the website of the regulatory body for your country, which not
only is responsible for the rigorous approval process but also continues to
closely monitor and review new evidence about these additives on an ongoing
basis. You will find, for example, that the FDA’s latest review of studies focused
on →aspartame found no evidence that it contributes to developing cancer. See
the entry on nonnutritive sweeteners for more details and website links.
There’s no question that these days, there is a lot of confusion about sugars and
sweeteners. The science can be complicated, and researchers and various other
self-appointed “experts” whose claims get media attention seem to contradict
one another about what’s okay and what’s not. It is hard for the average
consumer to sort fact from fiction. But there’s also a great deal that we do know
about sugars and sweeteners and what happens when we consume them, thanks
to evidence-based scientific research that does not always make headlines. We
wrote this book to share the evidence with you. And we have to confess, we