We’ve already been extolling the virtues of coconut sugar: a granulated brown sugar, it’s 100% natural, and the perfect alternative to refined sugars in applications such as confectionery, desserts and savoury products such as sauces. It has a low glycemic index and unlike refined sugar, some actual nutritional value. We see coconut sugar as a great way for food manufacturers to offer “guilt free” indulgent sweets.

We were really pleased to see coconut sugar featured on the San Francisco ABC affiliate’s show the View from the Bay. In a segment called Make over your pantry with healthy foods, they look beyond counting calories and grams of fat, and instead look at the ingredients which make up the food we eat. The very first ingredient to be featured was coconut sugar, where they specifically made mention of it’s amazing characteristics, including the fact that it tastes like (refined) sugar, and can be used in place of refined sugar in most recipes. According to the show:

The average amount of refined sugar we eat on average in the US is over 150 pounds of refined sugar per person. Refined sugar pulls nutrients from our body making us deficient and actually lowers our immune system after eating it for a few hours making us more susceptible to colds. I love coconut sugar because it has a glycemic index of about half that of sugar so it won’t cause blood sugar fluctuations. It’s also high in Potassium, Magnesium, Zinc and Iron and is a natural source of the vitamins B1, B2, B3, B6 and C.

We encourage you to check out the segment in it’s entirety for other interesting ingredient ideas:

Make over your pantry with healthy foods

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We’re starting to notice a developing trend away from refined sugar and towards natural sweeteners. There is a growing awareness that refined sugar has virtually no nutritional value, while excess consumption may have serious negative consequences to our health. Fortunately, food manufacturers (and consumers!) can leverage this growing trend and incorporate natural sweeteners in their applications as an alternative to refined sugar. An array of natural sweeteners are now available such as agave and yacon syrups, coconut sugars and other palm sugars. The appropriate sweetener probably depends on the specific application.

For example, here is how search volume has been trending for palm sugar, a natural sweetener, over the past few years:

Refined sugar comes almost exlcusively from sugar cane and sugar beets. These plants contain juices from which sugar crystals, syrups and molasses are made. It’s worth noting that raw sugar cane juice is actually fairly good for you and has a relatively low glycemic index. Refinement is the process of extracting the sucrose from these plant materials while removing unwanted materials from the raw sugar, such as plant fibers and soil.

Refinement consists of a repeated process of washing, boiling, centrifuging, filtering and drying. More Than Sugar describes the process:

After harvesting the sugar cane, machines are used to wash, cut, and press the juice out of the cane stalks. This liquid is then heated to boiling and treated with chemical solvents to remove impurities. Then it is moved to huge tanks and heated again to evaporate the water content. This leaves a thick syrup that is placed in a centrifuge machine to form the syrup into crystals…These crystals are then transported to a sugar refinery where they are heated to boiling again, treated with bleach and other chemicals and then filtered through bone char, which is a powder made from cow or pig bones. After filtering, the syrup is then centrifuged again to produce refined white sugar. Brown sugar is created by adding molasses before putting it in the centrifuge.

Table sugar is sucrose in its completely refined stage. “Pure” sugar refers to chemical purity, not to a nutritionally beneficial quality. In fact, pure sugar is virtually void of all nutritional elements such as vitamins, minerals, proteins or fibers.

It is felt that the consumption of excess sugar is linked to the improper functioning of the liver. Some simply call refined sugar dangerous. According to the Refined Sugar blog:

In addition, most people consume far more sugar than their bodies can possibly use for energy. When this happens, the liver converts the extra sugar into molecules called triglycerides and stores it as fat, or else produces cholesterol from the by-products of sugar and deposits it in veins and arteries. Sugar is thus a major factor in obesity and arteriosclerosis…It also negatively effects behavior. Refined sugar consumption has been linked to violent behavior, hypertension, and learning impediments.

If you are a food or nutraceutical manfacturer and you’d like to talk about the use of natural sweeteners in your applications, please contact us. We’d be happy to discuss any specific application you have in mind. Consumers can purchase natural sweeteners such as coconut sugar, yacon syrup and agave syrup from many online retailers, and a growing number of traditional food stores.

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Photo Credit: Lauri Andler. Licensed under the GFDL.