Please Keep Trying!

The other day a friend commented I had quite a sweet tooth. I don’t know if he judged for me having one, but I felt kinda bad he mentioned it. Being addicted to sugar seems to be more frowned upon than being addicted to cigarettes and alcohol. Maybe that’s something I’m projecting in my head, but it seems people who overeat, and who are consequently overweight, are judged much more harshly than people who drink or smoke too much. I would always hear, “Yeah, it’s tough to quit smoking”, basically excusing a smoker’s life threatening habit. I’d also hear, “Why don’t you just stop eating?”, which essentially negates the addiction food can be. Like it’s ever that easy to just quit any addiction.

To that effect, I’m trying to cut down on my refined sugar and food intake by switching to alternative sweeteners like agave syrup and xylitol for my sweet fix. I’ve been doing a lot of research and have found natural sugars with a low glycemic index can potentially satisfy my insane sugar cravings and won’t shut down my immune system when I need it most. That and the energy I get from agave will be a slow release of energy and not the spiky high white sugar socks people with.

Agave is obtained from expressing the core of select agave plants. The resultant goo is a very watery liquid which looks and tastes exactly like honey, except sweeter. However the glycemic index is only 27 compared to the GI of refined honey, which is 83. Plus, agave dissolves readily in any liquid, hot or cold. This stuff is actually pretty amazing. It’s not as thick as honey, and it’ll never crystallize on the shelf like honey. Agave syrup is still sixty calories per tablespoon, just as honey and other refined sugars are, but I find I don’t need to use as much as I would with honey. So far, I’m loving the agave syrup.

Xylitol is a natural sugar found in corn husks and hardwoods, such as birch. It’s not so much a sugar as a sugar alcohol and doesn’t have the nasty aftertaste other sweeteners, such as stevia do. Stevia, sweetleaf, is a great sugar alternative, don’t get me wrong. However, it has a horrible bite, which I can’t get around. Xylitol sounded promising but I wanted to try a small amount of it before I invested $8 a pound for it online. I finally found some bulk xylitol in the St. Louis area at New Dawn Health Foods and bought a pound.

The crystals of xylitol clump ever so slightly and are airy and light. A first taste doesn’t leave me with any hideous impressions, but xylitol is certainly not sugar. It’s sweet, but not as sweet white sugar. It dissolves fairly easily in a cup of hot tea, which is the only thing I’ve used it in thus far. Xylitol might not be as sweet as sugar, but with half the calories of sugar, I’m willing to overlook its inequalities.

Xylitol is a decent sweetener and I can see myself using it as a sugar substitute in my cooking. There are two huge drawbacks to using xylitol daily, however. One is the price. The other is the way it can cause diarrhea if eaten too much of it too soon. The packaging doesn’t mention this lil’ tidbit, but the info is online. I thought two tablespoons wasn’t enough to cause discomfort. Turns out two tablespoons cleaned me out pretty good. In order to overcome this noxious side effect, xylitol must be introduced into a diet daily and at a low dosage. I suppose I can do that, but I’m slightly bitter about doing so for a sweetener.

I’ll be using both the agave syrup and the xylitol whenever I can (read as, whenever I can afford to do so). They’re both tasty and can be used just like sugar and honey. The only foreseeable problem is the price, both to my wallet and potentially my guts. But in the long run, living longer and finally breaking my addiction to refined sugar once and for all is a small price to pay.