Sweeten Your Life with Agave Nectar
Our tongues are a marvel in engineering! With 10,000 taste buds covering their surface, they are fully equipped to identify the foodstuffs we sample as being sweet, sour, salty, or bitter. For most people, the food and drinks which register as “sweet” on our tongues seem to bring a special joy. The problem with sweetened food products is that they typically contain white table sugar, which wreaks havoc with your blood sugar—not to mention your waistline.
So what did we clever humans do to avoid these evils—while still satisfying our desire for sweets? We manufactured artificial sweeteners such as Sweet-n-Low®, Equal®, and Splenda®. The problem with these laboratory-produced powders is that they register as far sweeter on our taste buds than sugar does—up to 600 times sweeter! This has prompted many researchers to theorize that even though these substances have little effect on our blood sugar or waistlines, their hyper-sweetness actually causes an increase in our cravings for sweet treats—which is what continues to feed our type-2 diabetes and obesity epidemics.
As science began to reveal the darker side of these sugar substitutes, the food industry turned to nature—a brilliant move, I’d say. One of the most promising natural sweeteners to come on the market in recent years is agave nectar (pronounced ah-GAH-vay). This nectar, or syrup, is produced from the sap harvested from the core of the Blue Agave plant, which is native to Mexico.
Light (colored) agave nectar is similar in shade to honey, though thinner in consistency. Since agave nectar does not create a rise in blood sugar as sugar and honey do, it has received the nod of approval from the American Diabetes Association. (Though I must caution you, it does contain calories.) The other beauty of this product is that it has virtually no perceivable taste beyond that of “sweet”. I have even been able to use in my tea (both hot and iced) without noticing a flavor change—and that makes me very happy!