How shall we satisfy our sweet tooth?
From our Facebook archives, this seems like an apropos topic as we approach the holiday season and become invariably inundated with sweets.
One of our recommended First Steps is to replace sugar with natural sweeteners in moderation, such as raw local honey, grade B maple syrup, pure maple sugar, molasses, dehydrated coconut nectar, coconut palm sugar, green powder stevia, rapadura and sucanat.
Eliminating all sugar isn’t usually necessary or appealing to most. According to Ayurveda, we are designed to enjoy sweet foods, along with sour, salty, bitter, pungent and astringent ones. Dr. Nancy Appleton’s extensive research on sugar published in her book, Suicide by Sugar, led her to uncover the fact that for healthy individuals, the threshold of added sugar is two teaspoons at one time, no more than two to three times a day, totaling two tablespoons altogether. This means any sugar—white table sugar, dehydrated cane sugar juice, maple syrup, honey, dextrose, brown rice syrup, maple sugar or coconut sugar. For individuals facing health challenges, no amount of sugar is recommended, at least for the short term.
Read the Weston A. Price Foundation’s brochure called Sugar Alert! Why Refined Sugars Are Bad For You, and their article on sugar cravings.
What we do recommend:
You can purchase these via our Amazon affiliation which supports our educational initiative at no additional cost to you.
Raw Organic Honey
Such as YS Organic Bee Farms, Wholesome Sweeteners and WeeBee
Organic Maple Syrup
Such as Coombs Family Farms, Now Foods and Hidden Springs. Read our article Grade B maple syrup – is it really better?
Pure Organic Maple Sugar
Such as Coombs Family Farms, Wilderness Poets and Frontier
Organic Molasses
Such as Wholesome Sweeteners and Natural Life
Organic Coconut Palm Sugar
Such as Wholesome Sweeteners, Madhava, Emerald Forest and Big Tree Farm
Stevia Green Powder
Such as Frontier, Nature Products and Organic Traditions
Organic Whole Cane Sugar Known as Succanant
Such as Wholesome Sweeteners, Rapadura, Rapunzel and Hoosier Hill Farms
We don’t recommend:
Agave Nectar or Agave Syrup
Read Agave Nectar: Worse Than We Thought and Agave: Nectar of the Gods? to learn more. Also the press release from the Weston A. Price Foundation titled Agave Worse Than Sugar offers a summary of our concerns.
Xylitol
Read more on this post Xylitol: Is It Beneficial, or Even Safe?
What natural sweeteners do you use? Please share in the comments below!
Nourishing Our Children 
17 Responses to Sweet Tooth
[…] certainly not begrudge anyone a celebratory birthday cake, but I personally would choose to use natural sweeteners such as honey and maple syrup, which we would identify as food. Read about our recommended diet, in […]
Hi, what about barley malt, rice or corn malt, rice/corn/wheat syrup. Are they good? They are very popular in my country.
Jenny McGruther of Nourished Kitchen writes, “Malts are fine, used in small amounts. They’re sprouted grains that have been roasted, and ground.” Regarding syrups: “It depends on the syrups and how they’re made, I know rice syrup is usually made from sprouted rice that is cooked down. I don’t know about wheat syrup.”
Personally, it isn’t one of the traditional sweeteners we recommend, so I don’t use any of those you listed above.
Some rice syrups use enzymes – do you know which enzymes they use? I think that’s pretty important to avoid modifying the lecithin and making a lot of toxins in the syrup (lysophosphatidylcholine). Thanks!
We prepare homemade treats on occasion, but one of our most often eaten treats is a baked almond flour recipe that my husband makes for us on the weekends to be eaten with eggs and bacon. It is delicious and is full of butter and eggs, apples, and berries. He also uses coconut palm sugar and we add a dollop of homemade yogurt after it is out of the oven.
We love honey, coconut crystals and stevia – usually blending all three in one recipe. We are making the move away from sugar.
I use coconut sugar, honey, maple syrup, rice malt syrup & sometimes golden syrup. Just depends on what I am making. I figure it is good to rotate, rather then just use one item. Keep it interesting and get the benefits from a little bit of everything.
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[…] Old-fashioned oatmeal with butter or cream and a natural sweetener […]
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[…] Refined sugars can be replaced in moderation with unrefined sweeteners including raw honey, Sucanat, coconut sugar, and real maple syrup. Read more from The Weston A. Price Foundation, Replacing refined sugars with natural sugars one step at a time and from Nourishing Our Children, Sweet tooth. […]
[…] don’t recommend that grains be introduced that early, or sugar or chocolate … really at any age, so what is a parent to […]
[…] of the first steps we recommend to nourishing ourselves and our children is to replace sugar with natural sweeteners in moderation. Some ask why xylitol isn’t on our list of natural sweeteners? Rami Nagel […]
What about erythritol?
We don’t recommend it. Our list above is the comprehensive list of natural sweeteners we recommend.
Ive been using .. and on selling … beautiful Canadian maple syrup. But its not B Grade. I think its D and it tastes incredible. (I think Canada and Australia have different grading systems so not sure how it measures up to what you have referred to as B grade). Why is B grade specifically mentioned as best? Thanks.