Sugar is fast emerging as the biggest, most effective drugs known to man. It does cause diseases like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease and cancer. So, what are the options before you? Should you stop sugar once and for all? And as some people say, is brown rice syrup the best alternative to white sugar?
This post has the answers. Continue your read.
Added sugar, or the processed sugar that you add to your tea, cakes and desserts, can cause diabetes and cardiac diseases because of what happens to the two simple sugars it’s made of (glucose and fructose), inside your body. It is important to get an answer to this question if you want to understand why sugar is bad for you.
Glucose, a simple sugar enters directly into your bloodstream and gets broken down by every cell in your body for energy. It is really important as your body’s fuel source.
But what about fructose? Fructose is absorbed by your small intestine and transported to the liver, where it is broken down into energy. So, glucose metabolism does not put too much load on your liver, whereas fructose metabolism overloads the liver (1), especially owing to the fructose rich diets we are consuming.
The fructose in sugars causes a sugar spike in blood that is really bad for your body as it can cause insulin resistance and diabetes (2).
Fructose also gets converted into fat, which either gets stored in your liver causing the dreaded condition called fatty liver disease and insulin resistance (3), or is shipped out into the blood raising your blood triglyceride levels which are linked to cardiac problems (4).
So, people are naturally trying to avoid fructose and have turned to fructose-free sweeteners, like Brown Rice Syrup, which is made entirely of glucose.
Now that we understand that one of the principle reasons sugar is harmful for you is because of the fructose, let us take a critical look at Brown Rice Syrup and its pros and cons.
Brown rice syrup is a sugar made from fermented cooked rice, that is treated with enzymes extracted from sprouted barley. It doesn’t look like white sugar at all but resembles a thick, brown syrup.
Brown rice syrup is free from fructose but has the same sweetness as sugar.
Brown rice syrup contains maltose, soluble carbohydrates and glucose. It is high in several minerals including magnesium and phosphorus, and has a 7 percent protein content. It also has vitamins B and B6 that are good for your hair, nails and mental health.
According to research, brown rice syrup has a low glycemic index (GI) of 25 compared to white sugar’s GI of 64. Glycemic Index is a measure of how quickly foods raise blood sugar levels. High GI foods raise blood sugars fast and vice versa.
However, lots of people don’t agree with the claims of low GI for brown rice syrup (5). According to the Sydney University GI database, brown rice syrup has a GI of 98, which is much higher than white sugar, high fructose corn syrup, and also higher than almost any other sweetener in the market!
If you eat brown rice malt syrup, it can raise your blood levels rapidly which puts a lot of pressure on your pancreas. This can result in obesity, insulin resistance, and many other diseases.
The bottom line is that brown rice sugar should be consumed cautiously and in limited quantities. Remember this, and please do share your experiences and thoughts here with us. We love hearing from you.