Comments on: Sweetness and Light: the Low Down on Natural Sweeteners

By: Cheryl Sternman Rule

Cheryl Sternman Rule — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 18:59:06 +0000

Hi Jacqueline: I haven’t cooked or baked with brown rice syrup myself, but in her book Super Natural Cooking, Heidi Swanson writes that it’s about half as sweet as granulated white sugar and recommends pairing it with more flavorful sweeteners, like maple syrup or natural cane sugar.

Perhaps that helps explain why your cookies weren’t as sweet as you’d like…?

By: yoda

yoda — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:48:32 +0000

I recommend SweetLeaf Sweetener stevia! It has 0 calories, 0 carbs, and a 0 glycemic index and is very good for the body. Contrary to what many believe, they were the first to receive GRAS status on March 2008, about 9 months before Truvia and Purevia.

By: Lia Huber

Lia Huber — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:39:15 +0000

I also wanted to jump in here with a behind-the-scenes convo Cheryl and I had while crafting this piece. I had wanted to include the fact that unrefined sugar includes nutrients that refined sugars have had stripped away, and Cheryl was (rightly so) concerned that that would give the impression that we were saying sugar was, in and of itself, “nutritious.”

So there were a few things I wanted to say on that point:

1) With sugar, as with any food, know your body’s special needs. If you have diabetes, you’ll obviously need to look at the glycemic load of the ingredients you’re eating. If you’re managing your weight, you’ll need to be cognizant of calories.

2) That said, sugar isn’t the calorie demon we make it out to be–it has about 100 calories per ounce (about 2 tablespoons), which accounts for about 1/20th of a healthy daily allotment of 2,000 calories. This means that even a dessert recipe using 1/2 cup of sugar that serves 8 will only equate to a tablespoon of sugar per serving. So if you cook most of your own food and are aware of the amount of sugar you add, odds are your sugar calories won’t get out of control. Watch out, though, for “hidden” sugars (they’re really not so hidden, we just don’t think about them) — a medium Coke from McDonald’s, for instance, has 2 ounces–roughly a QUARTER CUP–of sugar. A tall Cafe Mocha from Starbucks, even without whipped cream, has over an ounce of sugar in it. So you can see how quickly those calories CAN add up.

3) All of THAT said, sugar is certainly not a health food. But if you want to eat a bit healthier and you’ve got to choose between a sugar that has literally no nutritional value and one that does have a decent amount of minerals, you have that choice.

Now go enjoy!

By: Lia Huber

Lia Huber — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 21:10:09 +0000

Jackie . . . I’ve never used brown rice syrup, but if it’s sweet, you may want to try subbing agave nectar. It has a lower GI and a “cleaner” sweetness (i.e., not as distinct of a flavor as honey) than honey.

By: Jacqueline Church

Jacqueline Church — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:39:53 +0000

Do you have recommendations for subbing brown rice syrup? I have read it has a lower glycemic index but recently I subbed it 1:1 for honey and found the finished cookies not as sweet (which I kind of liked but didn’t go over as well with Mr Sweettooth.)