While we don't eat a lot of sugar over all - I've been trying to figure out ways to do up some of my sweet/sour recipes with less sugar. Right now, it's made as a sour recipe. *grin* And, it maybe that it will remain this way ... since seeing the video below has wigged me out about sugar in general (once again).
What sugar does to your body:
As did this Taubes' article in New York Times "Is Sugar Toxic".
So, I really don't want to add it to our diet. But, ice cream and cookies (wheat free of course!) and random desserts ... well, are suppose to be sweet. And, once again....some of my sweet and sour recipes or Asian recipes required sugar.
I know Joe swears by Stevia but I don't know anything about chemical changes when cooking. And, to be honest - it tastes weird to me. It's *too* sweet.
So, I was surfing the web this weekend (between long naps which were required for recovery of over working). And, I think we are going to try out coconut sugar.
I know when growing up we had "jaggery", which is coconut sugar. My mum and dad use to cook with it all the time. So, I figure it is safe to heat.
It also tastes a bit sweeter than sugar but not in the same way as Stevia does to me. More along the lines of a good honey or real maple syrup. A little will go a long way - but here are the added benefits unlike sugar which is cool. Coconut sugar has a GI index of 35 (which is nice and low) and has a lot of mineral benefits such as potassium, magnesium, zinc, iron, vitamins B1, B2, B3 and B6.
Anyway - I'll let you know how the experimenting is going.
And only 39 years after Yudkin's "Pure, White, and Deadly".
ReplyDeleteStevia is not for everyone. About 17% of the western population HATES the taste of it, so you are not alone.
ReplyDeleteRon said something to me last year that has kept me thinking: re-calibrate away from sweet. I've been trying to wean myself off of sugar entirely - for the diabetes prevention as well as for the other health benefits - and going for salty and buttery, and I must say, it's been working pretty well.
Jaggery sounds like a good avenue to try.
And on cooking and chemical transformations... unlike the artificial phenylketoneurics that Searle created in a lab, nature created Stevia in the Brazillian landscape, and the Brazillians do cook their food =) ...I do not have well funded research studies to cite, but there are centuries of usage by indigenous populations in South America, and the Japanese began consuming it in the 1960s en masse, and have reported no ill effects in their population, and they Japanese do excellent medical research (in Dr Desert Flower's perspective).