Are Sweeteners Bad For You? On How To Choose The 'Right' Sweeteners
By: Katherine Metzelaar, MSN, RD & Lindsay Hodgson, MSN
There are so many myths and misinformation out there about sweeteners that it’s hard to determine facts from fiction. This lack of clarity, paired with lots of fear-inducing food documentaries, is enough to leave you feeling like you should never use sweeteners, and if you do, only specific kinds.
In this diet(ing) culture that you exist within, sugar is one of the most demonized and thus most feared food ingredients. As a result, you may have been told to cut out sugar and sweeteners. Or you may have been led to believe that there are “superior” sweeteners that you should consume over white sugar, such as honey, molasses, brown sugar, etc.
Most people feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame because they like foods and beverages with sweeteners in them, and so they cut them out. This usually only leads to disordered eating patterns and bingeing on foods with sweeteners.
The reality is that sweeteners are a part of life and part of having a normative, joyful relationship with food. You’re going to eat foods and drink beverages with sweeteners in them even when you’re attempting to cut them out. For example, for me, coffee is not the same without a big-ole dollop of sugar in it. Pancakes and waffles are not pancakes and waffles if there’s no syrup, etc.
And guess what? This absolutely ok! This may come as a surprise, but sweeteners are not something that you need to be afraid of and we’re going to dive into why.
This article is meant to shed some light on sweeteners and give you the facts about nutrition science so that you can make your own decision when it comes to sweeteners and see that they can be a delightful addition to your foods and beverages.
Let’s break down a few things together:
what is sugar anyway?
Sugar is a type of carbohydrate (yep, that means that sugar is a nutrient.)
All carbohydrates are made of chains of simple sugars (think when you were a kid and glued together the chain-linked colored paper to hang on your teacher’s wall)
Glucose is the most common (simple) sugar that makes up the starch chains (in this case the chains that are in sweeteners).
Glucose is the preferred source of fuel for your cells. In fact your brain cells and red blood cells can only use glucose to generate the energy they need to function. (Glucose is literal brain and red blood cell food)
Fructose (commonly found in fruit) and galactose (commonly found in milk and other dairy products) are the two other simple sugars that make up the carbohydrates you eat.
Carbohydrates come in many forms (fruits, breads, pastas, baked goods, desserts, beverages, and even vegetables etc.).
what happens when you eat a carbohydrate?
When you eat a piece of toast for example, your saliva starts breaking down the starch as soon as you start chewing.(1)
Your body cannot use the carbohydrates in the bread’s starch until they are digested into smaller units of sugars. (think of those chains from before in your teacher’s room getting torn apart into smaller chains)
As the food moves through the gut, the starch is further digested and broken down by enzymes in your small intestine. This is where the sugar units will be absorbed into our bloodstream.
Once absorbed, they can circulate throughout the body, delivering fuel to your muscles and organs. Yay happy cells!
That being said, sometimes the carbohydrates in food are already in their simpler form. These kinds of carbohydrates are typically what people mean when they talk about ‘sugar’ or other sweeteners such as honey, molasses, monk fruit sweetener and more. When you eat these kinds of ‘simple’ carbohydrates (aka sweeteners) your body has to do less work to digest and absorb them because they are smaller molecules. In this way, sweeteners are not bad for you in the same way that carbohydrates are not bad for you.
Sweeteners are simply a type of carbohydrate that takes less work for your body to break down. Here are a few examples to illustrate this (put on your science hat and stick with it):
What’s with table sugar?
Table sugar, aka sucrose, is a disaccharide. This is a fancy way of saying that table sugar contains two simple sugar molecules linked together:
Glucose + Fructose = Table Sugar (sucrose), a double sugar molecule aka di (meaning 2)- saccharide (meaning sugar)
In food manufacturing, making table sugar requires crystalizing sugar cane or beet juice to form the sugar crystals that make up table sugar.(3) So, if someone eats a spoonful of sugar, they are consuming the combination of two molecules, which is made up of 50% glucose and 50% fructose simple sugars.
What about High fructose corn syrup?
High Fructose corn syrup contains the exact same molecules as table sugar; it’s just made differently and contains some water too.(3) According to the Food and Drug Administration, making high fructose corn syrup means that cornstarch is broken down into its simple sugars (i.e. glucose).(3) The glucose goes through some chemical reactions with enzymes (similar to those that happen in your body) to transform some of the glucose molecules into another kind of simple sugar, fructose.(3)
This forms a mixture that contains single sugars of glucose, fructose and water.(3) It’s called “high fructose corn syrup” because the fructose amount is slightly higher than table sugar. Instead of 50% glucose and 50% fructose like in table sugar; high fructose corn syrup contains 55% fructose and 42% glucose.(3) A marginal difference in composition. And, this is a very similar same chemical makeup of fruit sugars and other sweeteners.
But what about “natural sweeteners?”
Other natural sweeteners, as you might have guessed by now, contain a combo of glucose and fructose simple sugars. Honey, for instance, contains about 50% glucose and 50% fructose, so its profile is very similar to table sugar and high fructose corn syrup.(3) Other sweeteners from fruits will likely have higher amounts of fructose.(3)
In summary, there is very little difference between sweeteners. Your body will break them down into glucose no matter the kind of sweetener you use. Sweeteners are not bad for you and there is no “right” kind of sweetener to use. Allow things like taste preference to guide what sweetener you choose, not fear!
Take Home Messages:
Your body needs carbohydrates. Sugar is a type of carbohydrate. Glucose and fructose are small units of carbohydrates that your cells use to make energy. Your cells need glucose!
Sweeteners are more similar than they are different. There’s no good versus bad. Some have different flavors, textures and some additional (but minimal) minerals.
Sweeteners are not bad for you and they are not anything to be afraid of. Your body knows what to do with sweeteners even when you have diabetes.
It is common for this topic to bring up some confusion and fear. If this information is bringing up emotions for you it might be worth getting curious about your relationship with carbohydrates and sweets.
Reference List:
Mahan LK, Raymond JL, Franz MJ, Evert AB. Krause's Food & the Nutrition Care Process. 14th Edition. St. Louis, MO: Elsevier; 2017.
Compound Summary: Sucrose. National Library of Medicine in National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/Sucrose#section=3D-Conformer. Accessed September 28, 2021.
High Fructose Corn Syrup Questions and Answers. U.S. Food and Drug Administration Web site. January 4, 2018. https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/high-fructose-corn-syrup-questions-and-answers. Accessed September 28, 2021.
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