Time to Ditch Sugar and Replace it With These 5 Natural and Healthy Sweeteners

Everyone needs some sweetness in life! At the same time, isn’t it too much of a price to pay if your moments of sweet cravings lead you to a scenario where you have to constantly deal with lifestyle illnesses, obesity or even life-threatening illnesses?Also Read – 5 Kitchen Friendly Foods That Can Help in Boosting Physical And Mental Health

Whether you savour your birthday cake, enjoy a movie with popcorn and cola, or pour a glassful of packaged fruit juice that the advertisement shows, they are all harming you more often than not. Also Read – Eat These 5 Foods to Stay Warm And Healthy This Winter

There is no doubt that sugar is the ultimate mood lifter. When you eat that scoop of ice cream, those hot jalebis or drink a fizzy cola, your body gets an instant shot of sugar, usually more than the amount that anyone should ideally consume. Over time, it can cause diabetes, heart diseases, depression, kidney and liver problems, cancers, and even loss of fertility among women. Not only that, the high consumption of processed sugar can also adversely affect the growth of young children. Also Read – Magical Benefits of Having Ghee With Jaggery After Lunch | Why to Have Gud And Desi Ghee After Meal

While our intent is not to tell you to stop eating anything sweet, we wish to guide you towards the right kind of sugars or other substitutes. By replacing the refined or processed sugar in our diet with natural sweeteners or adding food and drink items that are 100% natural, delicious, and free from all added sugars, colours and preservatives, we can have the best of both worlds.

Rishubh Satiya, Co-Founder, Plix shares some healthy alternatives to curb our sweet cravings.

• Organic Brown Sugar – Brown sugar has rapidly emerged as an alternative to refined white sugar in food preparations. While it is also processed, and made from sugarcane only, its formulation is more natural and allows for retention of the original nutritional value of sugarcane. It has a different flavour and can make hot beverages, as well as desserts and traditional sweets, which taste amazing.
• Coconut or palm sugar – Coconut or palm sugar is another natural sweetener with several health benefits. It is made out of the flower buds of the coconut palm tree and has a significantly low fructose content as well as a low glycaemic index compared to processed sugar. That’s why it is becoming increasingly popular among health-conscious people.
• Date Sugar – Dates have been used in traditional sweets since ancient times. They are reputed as one of the most nutritious natural sweeteners that you can find. Made from dried and finely powdered dates, the date sugar can also help in detoxing. To be honest, the taste might take some time to adjust to, but once you get the hang of it, there is no way, you would want to consume the harmful white sugar or any items made using it.
• Jaggery: Another sugarcane-based natural sweetener that is extremely affordable, and easily as well as abundantly found, is jaggery or Gur. It can be consumed in chunks and is also available in granular form. Jaggery has high iron content, and that’s why fitness enthusiasts love it.
• Forest honey: Raw honey directly sourced from the beehives is available in the markets as forest honey. It is unprocessed, and the naturally sweet liquid in its original form, and works perfectly as a natural sweetener.

For the health-conscious people who wish to have the best of both worlds, an even better option is to integrate natural, plant-based food and drink items into their daily diet that contain the sweetness of plant sugar. Clean nutrition labels offer a wide range of effervescent options that come in the form of delicious water-soluble tablets. All that a person needs to do is to put one tablet in a glass of water and let it dissolve. In no time, you would get a fizzy, tasty, sugar-free, and nutritious drink that not only quenches thirst but provides the necessary intake of vitamins, minerals, proteins etc.

Go ahead, integrate these alternative sugar options into your routine, and make your life sweeter, and healthier!