A Sweet Life Without Sugar

On Ripples’ developing homestead, we’re trying to consume less sugar.

Even though we’re not giving up sugar for good yet (after all, I do have a home baking business!) we’re open to sugar substitutes and only want to buy fair trade or organic products.  Several of my friends from various states in the US have already given up sugar either completely or severely restricting it in their diets.  Such positive peer pressure is making me eat even less sugar than before, which was already low compared to the average American.

What?! Sugar tastes BAD?!

Ryan & I already don’t drink sodas or eat candy bars.  I still have cravings for cookies, but have noticed since I improved my diet in April that I can’t eat more than one cookie per day or 3 cookies per week.  Sugar has begun to taste BAD when something is too sweet or when I eat “too much” of it, which has become a smaller and smaller amount.  My preference for dark chocolate has only gotten stronger this year, along with my preference for dark leafy greens and their bitterness.  I can’t recognize my own tastebuds! I think that’s a sign of healing, when the foods I loved as a child (M&M’s, Reeses peanut butter cups, etc) now taste odd or downright bad.

Some common sugar substitutes that help reduce refined sugar in our diet include agave nectar, stevia, honey, and maple syrup.  Some say that honey and maple syrup can have health benefits, such as honey helping reduce allergy symptoms.  However, sweet is sweet, and we feel that anything with empty calories and no nutritional value doesn’t need to be part of our dream alongside the earthbag home and grazing sheep.  Raw sugar sounds attractive, but is still a refined sugar and can still give you cavities.  Brown sugar is just white refined sugar that had some molasses added back into it after the refining process.

We also try to avoid sugar due to the reasons illustrated in the infographic below: