(I rarely watch TV, but…) I was flipping the free local channels the other day and I landed on a cooking show. The lady – a “healthy cook book” author and a TV cooking show host – was demonstrating a “healthy pie recipe”. She was using brown sugar and brown rice syrup in place of white refined table sugar. That was one of the major “upgrades” that made the pie “good-for-you”.
The recipe called for 2 cups of brown sugar/brown rice syrup. According to the USDA database that’s well over 400 grams of sugar (and I don’t mean table sugar, I mean sugar the way it’s listed under Carbohydrates on a Nutrition Facts label)!!!
“Vell, vell, vell”, as my wife would say. It is quite unfortunate. There are thousands of products, cook books and individual recipes that are labeled “healthy” only because the white crystal refined table sugar is replaced with another usually “wholesome” source of sugar.
What are these “wholesome” sources? Brown sugar, turbinado sugar, sugar in the raw, demerara sugar, coconut palm sugar, sucanat, brown rice syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar syrup (which is actually an ULTRA-high fructose syrup or UHFS, as I call it), and I think I’m leaving out a few more.
So, does replacing white sugar for brown sugar make the recipe healthy? Short answer – no! No way!
I’m sorry to be the one delivering the news, but sugar is sugar. Period. I don’t care if it is brown, dark, white, purple, coconut, rice syrup, high-fructose corn syrup. All of these “wholesome” sugars have 4 Calories per gram, just like white table sugar, and they are all a combination of fructose (not good if more than 10-15 grams a day) and glucose (a fuel, but let the body make it from other complex carbohydrate sources – no need to ingest it in its simple form).
Here are some numbers for you. We know that about 50 thousand years ago (and up to about 10K years ago) we used to ingest on average about 15 grams of fructose a day – and that wasn’t every day, by the way. White table sugar (and brown sugar, too) is roughly 50:50 glucose/fructose. What that means is if you want to watch the amount of fructose that you are genetically designed to process a day (and you absolutely should watch that!), you should NOT have more than 2 (TWO) table spoons of sugar a day, if it comes from a man-made source. One Tbsp. is about 15 grams total, 7 or 8 grams of which is fructose, the rest – glucose. Watch even more carefully if the “sweetness” comes from Agave nectar syrup or UHFS. Then you are down to 1 (ONE) Tbsp. a day, since agave is 70-90 percent pure fructose (depending on the source).
If it is a truly wholesome source of fructose – like apples for example – you are at the maximum fructose levels for the day with just one medium apple.
Back to our “healthy pie recipe”. If you made yourself a “healthy pie” with brown sugar instead of white sugar, and you ate 1/4 of it you’d end up eating 100 grams of sugar, of which 50 grams fructose. That’s an enormous amount of fructose in one day, let alone one sitting. If you don’t know why fructose is the worst things to overdose (if it is more than 10-15 grams a day), watch Dr. Lustig’s video. So, my question is how come 50 grams of fructose (or 200g – depending on whether you eat 1/4 or a whole pie) makes this pie healthy for you?
Once again, the source of sugar doesn’t matter – it’s still sugar. Brown or white – it doesn’t make any difference. It’s as simple as that.
Now you say, “Well, if brown sugar is bad for me, what should I use to sweeten my pie?”
You shouldn’t eat pie in the first place. Instead, you should eat truly wholesome foods, like whole raw apples (one a day is plenty, more is like eating a pie).
But.. I know you are not going to hear me on this, so I’ll give you a few far healthier options to replace the white or brown sugar in your cooking/baking recipes. Ready?
Erythritol. Only 0.2 Cal/g. Absorbed but not digested in the body. Almost no effect on blood sugar levels. It tends to make baked goods dry, and it may crystallize on top of whatever you are baking. Generally difficult to bake with, but not impossible, especially with a little practice (that was the main sweetener I used in my healthy bakery, and I will continue to use in my future cooking/baking applications).
Xylitol. 2.7 Cal/g or half the calories of sugar. Low impact on blood sugar levels. Acts just like sugar in baked goods – it helps with moisture retention and browning of the baked food. Warning: it’s toxic/lethal to dogs, so don’t feed your dog a pie, sweetened with xylitol (sugar will kill it too, just a lot more slowly).
Both of these sweeteners (sugar alcohols/polyols) take some time getting used to and building your tolerance, as far as digestion goes. If you are not used to them they may have bloating/laxative effect in large doses. Treat them just like legumes – take the time to get used to them.
Now, if you want to lower the use of these two sugar alcohols (there are other sugar alcohols, but I don’t recommend them for different reasons), you can use stevia extract or Rebiana (ultra-pure form of stevia, it’s what’s in truvia and purevia) or luo han guo (monk fruit extract), if you can get your hands on it. These all can partially replace the erythritol or the xylitol in your recipe. Note: I said “partially” not “fully”.
With erythritol or an erythritol/rebiana mix you will virtually add zero sugar to your pie! That’s the cool part. You shouldn’t eat pies, but if you must – that’s the way.
Repeat after me: “Sugar – white, brown or whatever – is not good for me and it doesn’t make my recipe healthy!” Good! Have an apple now.