When I was a kid, one of my favorite snacks was what we called “cinnamon-sugar bread.” It consisted of taking a piece of white bread, spreading it with margarine, then sprinkling it with sugar and cinnamon. I’m not talking about a real light sprinkling of sugar, either: sometimes it was up to a teaspoon of the white stuff that topped the bread.
It was bad enough that the bread was white, but all that sugar…I shudder now to think of it. The poor cinnamon, in spite of all it’s redeeming properties (like balancing your blood sugar levels), was no match against white bread and a teaspoon of table sugar.
Nowadays, I’m more wise about what I put in my body, as I’m sure you are. But even the most health conscious of us consumes a lot more sugar than we realize. Many items we buy are actually made with different types of sugar with names we may not recognize.
See how many of these aliases for sugar you know:
Corn syrup
Dextrose
Evaporated cane juice
Fructose
Galactose
Glucose
High Fructose Corn Syrup
Honey
Lactose
Malt
Maltodextrin
Maltose
Maple syrup
Molasses
Rice Syrup
Sucrose
Treacle
Turbinado sugar
True, some of the above are better for us than others (like honey, molasses, evaporated cane sugar, and turbinado sugar), but it’s still wise to know the different ways sugar is hidden in the foods we buy. If necessary, take a list of all the names sugar is filed under with you to the store — it will make it easier to avoid consuming excess amounts of the white stuff.
That said, let’s turn our attention to sweeteners that are easier not only on your body, but on your conscience, as well:
Turbinado Sugar
Courtesy http://gourmetsleuth.com.
While table sugar has been refined and stripped of any nutritive value whatsoever, turbinado keeps some of the natural molasses (giving it its golden color) and moisture. It also has few calories than regular sugar — 11 per teaspoon compare to 16.
Turbinado is considered healthier than table sugar because it undergoes far less processing. Try it in iced tea, hot cereals, and pretty much any recipe that calls for white sugar. It costs more than white sugar, but the health benefits (like avoiding diabetes) are worth it.
Agave Syrup
The agave plant is a large, spiky succulent native to Southern Mexico. Its spikes strangely resemble those of the aloe vera.
Also called agave nectar, agave syrup is produced in Mexico from several different species of the agave plant (most often, it’s the blue agave that is used). The syrup is made up of fructose and glucose, though it’s glycemic index and glycemic load is lower than that of table sugar.
Darker agave syrups has more of a caramel flavor and color, so it’s most often used in foods that also have a stronger flavor (the color largely depends on the amount of processing it receives, but is also due to how much iron, magnesium, potassium, and calcium that it contains). Some people even use it on pancakes in place of store-bought pancake syrup. The lighter, more filtered agave syrup can be used in more delicate recipes.
Stevia
Growing up to six feet tall, stevia is a perennial native to the northern areas of South America, where it’s been used for centuries for its 
sweetening and medicinal properties. It’s a member of the Asteraceae family, which includes sunflowers and dandelions. The flowers of the stevia plant, however, are white, not yellow like its cousins.
Recently, the powdered form of stevia has been under some scrutiny due to the processes it goes through to get its sweetness from the plant to the box. Powdered stevia is probably fine in small doses, and is, of course, preferred to sucralose (Splenda) and other artificial sweeteners.
A friend of mine recently told me of the ingenious way he sweetens his tea (I’m sure this will work for either hot or iced): He keeps a stevia plant on his counter top, and when he makes his tea, he drops in a leaf. The tea is sweetened naturally by the leaf, which is about 15 times sweeter than table sugar (stevia extract is up to 300 times sweeter than sugar). I can’t wait to grow some stevia of my own this spring and summer and try it in my iced tea. Might have to grow some mint, too. 
Want to learn how to make your own stevia syrup? You can at The Herb Garden blog.
©2010 Sally Dinius
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Sally Dinius is writer-in-chief here at CrazyBusyMama.com, a blog created to inspire and motivate busy mamas everywhere to feel healthy, fit, and in control of their lives. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/sdinius, and become a member of the CrazyBusy Mama Facebook fan page by clicking here.
