Yes, like the title said I do not add sugar in my recipes, especially refined sugar.
Why? Why? Why?
The simple answer is refined sugar doesn’t contain much food value or we say it has empty calories. If you are reading this page I guess you probably are someone who is concerned about your sugar intake and also wants to find an alternative way to sweeten up your dessert, drinks, or even ice cream.
To be clear, I do have refined sugar in my kitchen. I only use it when I make water kefir, a healthy probiotic drink. In this case, those little living organism-kefir grains consume the sugar and convert it to gut friendly bacteria. See, I am converting sugar to be a good guy and help us to digest food. Occasionally I use small amount of organic raw sugar, honey, agave nectar, or maple syrup for some recipes.
My husband, Brad, starts his no-added-sugar diet when he was dealing with yeast infection. Since then we check the labels on the foods not only for gluten free, but also for low sugar content. But, the question is how to make a tasty dessert without sugar? I like to use fruits or a natural sweetener called stevia (in its pure extract form) in moderation. We are very happy with this alternative.
During my childhood, my parents didn’t feed me a lot of sweet desserts, cookie type of snacks, or soda drinks. We did have candies once in a while. Since I was a small girl, they believed eating a regular meal could help me gain weight instead of having some snacks before meal time and then skipping a meal. This has definitely been true. I remember when I first arrived in the U.S, I bought a package of Little Debbie’s oatmeal cream pie. I had one piece before my dinner and that became my dinner; one piece has 12 grams of sugar. That is equal to 3 teaspoons of sugar. 3 teaspoons!!!
Since we are on this no-sugar-added diet, we still can enjoy our desserts, sweet drinks, and ice cream. Better yet, our taste buds are more sensitive and the authentic flavor of the foods comes alive. It is not easy to find recipes for both gluten free and no sugar added. That motived me to start this food blog and share all my tasty recipes with you.
Hi Joyce, I really like your blog and recipes. Regarding sugar, I’m on your side of using as little as possible. My taste buds actually dislike overly sweet stuff now, so quite happy with that (similarly with salt).
Just two thoughts:
1. Sugar is sugar, no matter if refined, raw, honey (82%), agave nectar (68%), dates (63%), raisins (53%), bananas (12%), etc… they all do the same thing to your body.
2. Stevia is just a replacement drug for your sugar cravings and comes with its own, still partially unknown side-effects. Might be good for a transition period, but I don’t think it’s as good as lots of ‘health’ magazines want us make believe.
“There’s concern that raw stevia herb may harm your kidneys, reproductive system, and cardiovascular system. It may also drop blood pressure too low or interact with medications that lower blood sugar.” – https://www.healthline.com/health/food-nutrition/stevia-side-effects#side-effects
That’s true. I totally agree. I recently start using erythritol as a sweetener. Every time before I try something new, like stevia or erythritol, I like to do a bit research (not only read other people’s blog, but also research paper published by reputable professionals, this is because of my background as a chemist) before moving on using them. Overall, I think we get pretty carbohydrate from the grains and fruits in our diet, extra sugar really is not necessary for our diet.
Thanks for your support, Axel!
I have been using erythritol and xylitol in my gf baking for about 4 years and have been very happy with both. The xylitol is, to me, a better taste and is good for your teeth, but there can be digestive problems as with any sugar alcohol. Erythritol has little to no affect on blood sugar which is a happy note for my diabetes. Although I’ve found many opinions and some research on these, I haven’t seen any in-depth studies. I would appreciate knowing about any that you have found on Erythritol. Thanks
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