In this video, I'll uncover natural sugars and natural sweeteners and help you determine
which one you should be using.
When you first embark on a health journey, one of the things that's really frustrating
is truly understanding what you should and shouldn't have.
I mean, the truth is I've been there and one of the things that was really frustrating
for me is I was given so much misinformation, especially around the topic of sugar and natural
sweeteners and that's what we're going to uncover in this video.
So, stick around to the end, but before we get started, I'm Dr. Zyrowski and welcome
to the channel.
If you're new to the channel, it's a pleasure to have you here.
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And I'm going to help you excel your health and your life.
So, let's go ahead and dive into all these different sweeteners here, these natural sweeteners
to sugars.
Let's break it down and help you understand what you should and should not have.
So, let's go ahead and start off with a big huge bag of organic sugar.
Now, a lot of people are used to having the bleached white sugar and of course that stuff
is terrible for you.
Now, a lot of people when they first embark on a health journey, they go and they go to
the organic sugar because they figure, well it's organic, it's going to be a little bit
healthier.
Well, truth is, it is a better option.
There's no doubt about that.
There's some minerals in it.
There's a little bit of health benefit that you can get from it compared to the refined
bleached, white sugar.
However, it's not something that you want to be consuming in excess.
So, we do want to stay away from this kind of sugar.
Now the funny thing is I was actually curious why we actually had all this sugar in my house
and it turns out we use it for making kombucha.
So, we have a lot of this sugar for kombucha.
We do not consume this for any other purpose.
When you're making kombucha, you have to have sugar though.
Now the next thing on our list is going to be erythritol.
Erythritol to be one of my favorite sweeteners.
Now the reason for this is because this is a zero glycemic sweetener.
It's not going to raise your blood sugar and it's going to help you maintain a good, healthy,
low carb keto diet.
And so, this is something that I personally like quite a bit.
I use this in my coffee.
We use it for baking in our home.
We use it for a lot of purposes, definitely one of my favorites.
Now I want to mention that this organic sugar is still going to highly, highly raise your
blood sugar, so we want to stay away from this type of sugar as mentioned before.
Let's take a look at another option here.
Well, we got some good organic, raw honey.
Now with this organic raw honey has a lot of benefits, right?
Antifungal, it is going to be an antibacterial, it has benefits and you're helping with your
gut health.
It offers a lot of good benefits.
It's considered a super food - antioxidants, phytonutrients, all kinds of stuff in this.
Now, this is often one of the things that many people turn to when they decide that
they want to start eating healthy and following a good healthy diet, they typically turn to
a sweetener like this.
And right next to the honey when people start consuming, that typically comes the maple
syrup.
Now maple syrup is a favorite of a lot of people, so a lot of people will go and put
this in their coffee.
It's a great natural sweetener.
I mean these are both great natural sweeteners.
One of the things we have to consider is that they still will raise our blood sugar even
though they are better than this option right here.
They're still going to raise our blood sugar up and still have a glycemic impact on our
body.
Now let's go ahead and talk about some monk fruit.
Now this is an interesting type of fruit that is found in Asia and this was known to be
used by the monks and so that's why it's called monk fruit.
It’s considered to be 300 to 400 times sweeter than sugar, and so this is a favorite of many
people.
Now, me personally, I'm not a huge fan of the flavor that comes with the monk fruit.
Many people don't mind it.
It's just my own personal opinion.
So, I don't use it myself that much.
However, it's a good zero calorie option that you can sweeten your coffee, sweeten your
things that you're baking in your home and of course not have a glycemic impact as a
result of it.
So, zero calories, zero glycemic impact.
Let's talk about xylitol.
Now, xylitol is also one that is a bit of a favorite of mine.
I mean, it's simply because it's probably the closest you can get for to sugar.
Now, truth is I grew up on sugar and grew up on a lot of sugar unfortunately.
Now, xylitol is going to be the closest to sugar as I mentioned, but there's also a couple
of downsides to it.
First of all, it's going to be a little bit more caloric dense and it also can cause a
little bit of gastrointestinal distress in people.
So, we have to be careful with it and we want to use it sparingly.
It's still a good option, but think about using it sparingly because that is going to
offer you some benefit.
Now, let's go ahead and talk about another common sweetener.
This is a big go-to for people who are trying to start eating healthy.
The reason that they go to something like a coconut nectar is simply because it's all
natural, right?
I mean, think about it.
It’s coming from the sap of the coconut and when we look at coconut nectar, there's
a problem with it.
It's still very high-glycemic.
It still has 18 calories per teaspoon.
It's not something that we want to be consuming in excess.
Better option than bleach white sugar?
Sure.
However, it all depends on your health goals, which I'm going to talk about in just a moment
as to why you would choose some of this stuff and why you'd stay away from it.
Now let's talk about the next thing on our list and that's stevia.
Now, one of my favorites is going to be the sweet drops stevia.
This is really excellent.
As a matter of fact, this is a vanilla cream flavored one, and I love making an apple cider
vinegar drink with this.
I take some apple cider vinegar, put it in a cup, but if you drop to this in, and it
tastes excellent when you mix them together.
So, the sweet drops sweet leaf sweetener is an excellent zero calorie, zero glycemic impact
sweetener that you can utilize when you're trying to follow a good healthy diet.
So, this one we'll put right here.
Next one on our list is going to be a raw cane turbinado sugar.
Now this is something, while it's natural and it's raw, so a lot of people think to
themselves, well, pretty healthy stuff right here.
But unfortunately, when it comes to this guy right here, there's about 15 calories per
teaspoon.
It also is going to be very high on the glycemic index scale.
And so we've gotta be careful with this.
This is not something we want to use an excess.
It's not something that we want to use every single day.
So, let's go ahead and set this right here.
Now taking a look at all these different sweeteners, what do I do with them?
How do I wrap my head around what to use?
Like I said, for me personally, when I first started going from eating a pretty unhealthy
diet to eating a high-quality diet, one of the first places I was led to is going all
to the natural stuff.
The natural stuff was the maple syrup, the honey, and trust me, it was a different world
when it came to eating healthy back then.
You were kind of a hippie if you were eating healthy whereas now it's the right thing to
do.
And we knew it was back then too, you just didn't get the credit for it.
Now we went and turned to a lot of things like this - the coconut nectar, the maple
syrup, the honey, all of this stuff, the organic sugar, like we got away from the bleached,
white sugar, went to the organic sugar.
But then as I just grew in my knowledge of the situation, I realized like this is still
stuff that we don't want to be consuming.
Now, there's a few things here.
If you use sparingly, it's okay.
Using some maple syrup sparingly, some coconut nectar, some honey, that kind of thing, that's
okay.
A lot of this sugar right here, your organic cane sugar, this sugar right here, we want
to stay away from that generally because it's not good for us.
Now we also, if we're trying to follow a ketogenic diet and a low carb diet, we want to stay
away from this stuff completely.
Maybe it fits into a paleo type of diet, but it doesn't fit into keto and low carb.
If we're thinking keto and low carb, we want to be over here with the xylitol sparingly.
We also can use the stevia, the erythritol, and the monk fruit.
Now there's a few other considerations to think about here.
Now, if you're somebody who is suffering from cholesterol issues, metabolic syndrome, if
you have blood pressure issues, if you have insulin resistance, diabetes, any of these
different health concerns that you're working to reverse, you want to stay away from this
stuff completely, okay?
And you want to stick right to this side.
So, there's kind of a time and a place.
If you're someone who is weight loss resistant, you want to be on this side.
If you're somebody who is just really working to lose weight, you want to be over here.
You want to stay away from this stuff.
I mean, think about it.
This is going to have about 16 calories per teaspoon.
This is going to have about 21 calories per teaspoon, 17 calories per teaspoon.
Whereas when you come over here, we're going to be looking somewhere in the range of about
0.24 calories per gram.
Very, very few calories.?
When we look at the monk fruit and the Stevia, we're looking at zero calories.
So, you can see if you're trying to lose weight, these calories can really add up and these
of course are going to be zero calories or very low in calories.
So, when it comes to sweeteners, first of all, some of it depends on your goals.
If you're someone who doesn't have any of those issues that I mentioned, there might
be no reason that you don't add a little bit of maple syrup in here and there, there may
be no reason not to use some honey as it's a super food with a lot of benefits, but one
the things that we want to do is first of all, understand our goals, understand where
we're trying to be with our health, and then make these choices accordingly.
Like I said, in our home, these are the main sweeteners that we use.
Of course, we use some of these sparingly.
Not this guy over here.
This is for kombucha.
We don't use that one, but these ones right here, we're going to use sparingly and this
is just how we operate in our home.
This is how we understand using sugar properly in order to make sure that we're not just
causing insulin resistance for ourselves, causing health problems for ourselves.
And if you want to learn more about no sugar diets, be sure to check this video out right
here.
I'll put a link.
It's a powerful video on how you can remove sugar and eat a good healthy diet.
Other than that, put in the comment section below your experience with these different
sugars.
I'd also like to know you or your thoughts on this video.
Just trying to change the content a little bit, like to know your opinion of what you
think of it.
Give it a thumbs up, and then also check out this video over here if you want to improve
your health.
People who are suffering from like diabetes, insulin resistance, it's very hard on the
kidneys.
So, if we want to improve organ health and also cardiovascular health, we want to make
sure that we are cutting out sugar.