I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday, and the results were astonishing. They were a little puffier than the Original Tollhouse, but so delicious. The sugar content resulted in a beautiful golden-brown cookie with a slightly crispy bottom. These cookies were worthy of a television cooking show, or, at the very least, of sharing with a neighbor. I placed a dozen on a paper plate, covered it with plastic wrap, and trudged next door through the wind and snow. My neighbor and I sat together for an hour, basking in the joy of eating a forbidden delicacy. This lovely, guilt-free indulgence was possible because my latest sugar substitute had arrived in the mail last week. I talked to my neighbor about sugar substitutes, and she talked to me about diets while we ate cookies like two little girls at a tea party.
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I have a keen eye for sugar videos and articles because I’ve been searching for years for an answer to insulin resistance. Carbohydrates are like a poisoned apple to me. A few grapes for lunch can make me fall asleep while driving as though I have narcolepsy. Insulin resistance is a significant characteristic of metabolic syndrome, and I’ve read about the links between metabolic syndrome and chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. I recently heard that Alzheimer’s disease is now being referred to as type 3 diabetes and that cancer has been revealed to be a heavy feeder on sugar. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, people who revel in sugar while desiring to be healthy should question their mental faculties. A sane person will stop eating sugar.
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A significant number of us living in Utah must be lacking in sanity. We have a long heritage of abstinence from vices like alcohol and coffee, and our past flirtations with sugar extended only to modest addictions to root beer, breakfast cereal, and green Jell-O with celery and canned pineapple. However, the walls of our willpower have gradually crumbled with time, and we have eagerly embraced new addictions. All our main streets now have at least two cookie shops that sell sugar-laden cookies the size of small pizzas. Old-fashioned soda shoppes from the fifties are seeing a resurgence, but they specialize in soda combinations, not ice cream or hamburgers. They sell soda like Starbucks sells cappuccino: caffeinated or not; diet or not; and maybe with a shot of flavored syrup if you want a serious sugar high. One can purchase a “dirty” soda, a term that usually refers to a type of martini. In Utah, it means a non-alcoholic squirt of coconut is added, which is the closest we come to living dangerously. Never mind that all this carbonation can damage our esophagi. Aspartame in diet soda is our friend, even if it is possibly carcinogenic and is likely contributing to weight gain.
For the children, we find shaved ice huts in every corner parking lot. The ice cream man of my childhood with his little freezer truck and carnival music would have been astonished at the markup for a little mound of ice with a squirt of artificially flavored and artificially colored corn syrup and a dollop of whipped topping. The markups are equally impressive for candies that have been put through a freeze dryer for twenty-four hours. The first patent for a household freeze dryer was issued in 2013 to Harvest Right in Utah, and the last ten years have been a time of local experimentation with freeze drying all our favorite candies. The machine will also freeze dry eggs, meat, and cheese, but what fun are those when one can suck on exploded Skittles? The Skittles taste the same after freeze drying as before, but the freeze dryer causes them to explode and squirt out into misshapen extrusions for which we’re willing to pay considerably more. We don’t care that all these treats cause metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and obesity—just give us our sugar fix!
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My pantry has always had designated places of honor for the traditional sugars such as a large canister of white cane sugar and a small jug of locally produced honey. These have been the two pillars of sweetening in our culture for generations. Add some molasses to cane sugar, and you get brown sugar. Pulverize cane sugar, and you get powdered sugar. Sucanat is an exotic name for brown, granulated cane sugar that hasn’t been refined. Some people call it raw sugar and think it’s healthier, but it’s mostly just sugar. I store all these old standbys in ample quantities. I also keep a little maple syrup in the refrigerator as a beloved reminder of early American history, even if it’s expensive.
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The cost for sweetness dropped dramatically when I was a kid as modern technology contrived to give us truckloads of golden, high-fructose corn syrup for pennies. It made its way into every package on the grocery store shelves and into rows of aluminum cans and two-liter bottles of sugar-water soda until our bodies grew to be made up of more corn than anything else. The documentary, “King Corn,” explores the true extent of corn in our diets and its shocking presence in our bodies.
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I laugh when I remember the candy cart that made its way through every classroom of my elementary school on Friday afternoons and took our quarters in exchange for Jolly Rancher candy sticks. The money was intended for some worthy cause that was presumably worth destroying our teeth and setting us up for a lifetime of sugar addiction. All I cared about was that I liked the watermelon flavor the most.
In those days, mothers allowed their children to ride their bikes into unknown adventures all summer long, and a local, street-corner market was one of our favorite destinations. There we could purchase candy necklaces that left rings of rainbow spit around our necks. Candy dots on lengths of paper were also attractive, but the dots stuck tenaciously to the paper, and we frequently found ourselves swallowing it as well. We loved Pixie Sticks, made of paper straws filled with sugary sand, but the end of the straw always became soggy from saliva, and again, we swallowed more paper. Candy cigarettes with painted red tips seemed somehow forbidden and reckless, so we rarely indulged in those, but we were fascinated by the little wax bottles of sugar-water that all tasted the same regardless of the color.
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Obesity quickly became the price for selling our health to corn syrup. The same science that was feeding our corn-syrup habit simultaneously stepped in to save our waistlines by giving us artificial sweeteners such as saccharin, aspartame, and sucralose. In the minds of Baby Boomers like my parents, science had sent a man to the moon, and science could do no wrong. Pink packets of artificial yumminess became a standard fixture next to the salt and pepper shakers on the tables of every diner in the country and on many kitchen tables, too. The Greatest Generation also embraced processed cheese, non-dairy topping, hydrogenated corn oil, and other fake foods; and I have mocked them for it.
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My Baby Boomer parents also believed that if science could send a man to the moon, surely it could produce a diet pill that would magically melt away their cellulite, but diet pill history is riddled with side effects to heart, liver, blood pressure, and mental health. Amphetamine diet pills became popular for their stimulant effect like the caffeine in coffee, but they were also addictive. The sixties produced “rainbow pills,” or amphetamine cocktails that were linked to enough deaths to warrant the label of “epidemic” by the National Institutes of Health. All the ladies in our neighborhood tried some variation of a magic pill, but the amount of weight lost didn’t seem worth the effects on the heart and the panic attacks, insomnia, and mood swings. The nineties brought us “fen-phen,” or fenfluramine, until women started having problems with their heart valves. An infamous class-action lawsuit awarded $200 million to the plaintiffs who were then defrauded by their lawyers and the judge. The dramatic story is recounted by Rick Christman in Fat Chance: Diet Mania, Greed, and the Infamous Fen-Phen Swindle. Today, we’ve moved on to weekly injections of diabetes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, which are so popular for weight loss that a nationwide shortage has developed, and side effects are gradually becoming evident.
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Exercise fads have been much less dangerous and far more entertaining. When I was a little girl, my mother owned a square twister board for a woman to stand on and twist her hips back and forth. It was most often used by the children, who sat on it and gyrated back and forth and around and around. We liked the sound it made as the ball bearings rattled against each other with a “shook-shook” sound. We also had a machine that looked like an army cot that folded in half. It was supposed to promote doing more sit-ups, but it functioned in our house as a great place to dry delicate laundry and swim towels. The funniest weight-loss gimmick was my mother’s gray, plastic sweat suit. It was supposed to promote sweating off the pounds as she vacuumed the carpet, but it looked like a hazmat suit, and my mother resembled the robot in “Lost in Space.”
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Science has made a significant marketing shift by changing the emphasis in dieting and exercise to be more about health, and weight loss is promoted as a side effect of healthy eating. “How do we eat healthy?” my neighbor asked me with some exasperation as we ate our chocolate chip cookies. We don’t know. We are bombarded with messages that are diametrically opposed. We are told to eat a vegan diet of carbohydrates like vegetables and grains with no contamination by animal products. This diet will supposedly keep our bodies “clean” and cancer-free and save the environment at the same time. We need vitamin B12 to live, and it’s only found in meat, but we can take a B12 supplement. We are also told to eat like our prehistoric ancestors before they mastered agriculture, which translates to a paleo or carnivore diet of meat and fat. If we do it right, this diet might keep us in ketosis, a highly desired state of fat-burning. It might also prevent insulin resistance and its related chronic diseases. Too much protein might cause constipation, but we can eat leafy greens to fix that problem. When we look to the US government for guidance, we see a constantly evolving food pyramid that has a checkered history of involvement with political and agricultural interests. We are left to educate ourselves about fats, proteins, and carbohydrates and make our own decisions about butter, salt, and sugar.
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The delightful tea party with my neighbor was unexpectedly interrupted by the ringing of her doorbell. Another friend had come to wish her happy birthday and was invited in to try a cookie. We quickly brought her up to speed on our conversation about sugar, metabolism, and diet. She began to share the details of her master’s thesis on vegetarianism. She had found that a vegetarian diet initially did wonders for a person’s lipid profile, but the benefits began to drop off with time. I told her about my study of keto and paleo diets. The air sizzled between us for a moment as we realized that we had taken opposing positions. Fortunately for good manners, we mentally retreated to our corners and acknowledged that we’re not entirely sure what we’re talking about.
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In a desperate effort to stem the overwhelming sugar tide, I bought some cookbooks for paleo and keto diets that focus on eating meat and protein. I found that I have no problem with reducing carbohydrates like bread, potatoes, rice, and pasta. The big problem is cake! Frosting is my Achille’s heel, and birthdays and holidays destroy every one of my resolutions. My willpower also doesn’t work for temptations like brownies, chocolate chip cookies, and lemonade. The solution I’m seeking is a healthy replacement for glucose, fructose, and sucrose. I taped a reminder sign on my refrigerator door that says, “Cake is my weakness!” and I began to search for the holy grail of sugar substitutes.
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Some terminology is helpful to know when entering the sugar debate. A calorie is the original key term in the weight-loss world. A calorie represents the amount of heat produced when any given food is burned. We accepted for years the dogma that all calories are equal, and weight loss depends on reducing calories taken in, regardless of the food source. This is a brute-force kind of approach to dieting that relies on self-denial and self-discipline. It also doesn’t take into account that all foods are not created equal, which means that different foods have different effects in the body even when the calorie counts are the same. Calorie counting has gradually given way to the glycemic index, a table of numbers from 1 to 100 assigned to represent the rise in blood sugar level after eating a food. Most of us tend to use the table to compare foods to table sugar, or sucrose, which has a glycemic level of sixty-five. The glycemic index doesn’t measure the quantity of carbohydrate in a food, but rather the blood’s response to it. Insulin is a hormone released to control the amount of sugar in the blood. Spikes in blood sugar can lead to the body’s resistance to insulin, which prompts the production of more insulin. Insulin resistance is one of the precursors to metabolic syndrome that leads to diabetes and heart disease. One dietary strategy to improve insulin sensitivity is to eat protein or extra fiber at the same time as a carbohydrate to slow down the body’s uptake of the sugar. Another strategy is to consume sugar substitutes that aren’t metabolized normally by the body and pass through without triggering an insulin response.
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My favorite metabolic terminology is TOFI: Thin on the Outside; Fat on the Inside. Doctors have recently realized that while some of us might be thin on the outside, we might not be healthy on the inside.
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A successfully marketed sugar substitute today must be able to claim the virtue of originating from a natural source. My collection of sugar substitutes resides in a Rubbermaid tub in my pantry next to the big canister of white sugar to remind me that I have “natural” choices. I determined that my gold-standard test for a sugar substitute would be to bake it into a pan of brownies, and I started experimenting.
I began my collection with stevia that comes from a plant with sweet leaves but zero carbohydrates. Completely natural, it works well as a liquid sweetener and as a powder. It’s 200 to 350 times as sweet as sugar, so the taste is a little cloying, but it has no significant side effects. Stevia is becoming popular in mainstream food items and familiar in most grocery stores. Unfortunately, it fails as a substitute in recipes that require sugar to have bulk. Stevia by itself can’t be equally substituted for the sugar measurement in a recipe. It’s frequently sold in a combination with maltodextrin to provide bulk, but maltodextrin has a glycemic value greater than table sugar. Brownies aren’t a possibility with stevia alone.
Next, I tried the sugar alcohols, xylitol and erythritol, that exist naturally in some plants but are synthetically manufactured. They are primarily metabolized by the liver and have little impact on insulin levels. They both have bulk, so they can be substituted for cane sugar, one cup for one cup. They both can ferment in the gut and irritate one’s digestion. Xylitol is derived from corn cobs, is 100% as sweet as sugar, and has a glycemic level of seven. Unfortunately, it has a fatal flaw—it’s toxic to dogs. Even a small amount can kill a canine. I don’t have a dog, but my family members do, and I don’t dare take the risk. Erythritol is made from fermented corn and is 80% as sweet as sugar. It has a glycemic level of zero. Unfortunately, it didn’t make it past the first brownie trial. By itself, it has an unpleasant aftertaste that some describe as minty, but I would describe as metallic.
Prebiotics are alien sugars to me because they’re intended to feed the microscopic creatures in our digestive systems. Inulin from chicory root is a fiber powder that feeds the gut biome but can cause bloating and flatulence. It has a glycemic level of zero, but it’s only 10% as sweet as sugar. Monk fruit is extracted from monk fruit juice, has a prebiotic effect, and has a glycemic level of zero. It’s 100 to 250 times sweeter than cane sugar, but it leaves an unpleasant aftertaste and is frequently sold in combination with erythritol. Monk fruit combinations are typically expensive and less practical for my brownies.
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Allulose is my new, great hope. It looks and tastes like sugar, and it substitutes one for one in recipes. It’s supposedly 70% as sweet as sugar, but I don’t think I could stand it any sweeter. It has no aftertaste and no known side effects other than a possible gut disturbance if eaten in too large a quantity. Allulose isn’t metabolized by the human body but is almost entirely excreted in urine, so it has a glycemic value of zero. It might just be a miracle.
This allulose information was enough to impress me, but YouTube interviews with researchers left me stunned. A video popped up on my phone of an interview with Dr. Benjamin Bikman from Brigham Young University. Dr. Bikman is a leading researcher in nutrient metabolism and insulin and speaks of allulose qualities that are scarcely believable. Not only does allulose not prompt the release of insulin, but it also blocks the absorption of traditional sugars and reduces their impact on insulin. By reducing the impact of carbohydrates, allulose might be a new tool to help lower blood sugar in diabetics. Scientists like Dr. Bikman are hopeful that allulose can help with weight loss, reduce heart disease, and reduce A1C scores. It doesn’t feed cancer, and it doesn’t contribute to tooth decay. When I shared all this with my neighbor, she looked appropriately skeptical.
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Surely there must be a catch. To find out, I tried allulose in a batch of brownies with a thin layer of frosting. Amazing! I had a difficult time finishing my first piece because it didn’t seem right to be able to eat something so decadent. The frosting had almost too much sweetness, but my insulin response didn’t even show up. The next day, I made hot chocolate, and I nearly cried. I had given up hot chocolate a decade ago because it had become a liquid sleeping drug for me. Now it was liquid chocolatey goodness coating my stomach. I tried making syrup for pancakes, but it took quite a while to boil it down. I could have cooked it to be a little thicker, but I was impatient. Next, I sprinkled some of the white allulose granules on a half of a grapefruit and remembered being a kid and squeezing out every drop of sweet and sour juice.
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Finally, I was eager to try the big Kahuna of treats—chocolate chip cookies—but I was missing brown sugar and chocolate chips. We like to think that brown sugar is cane sugar that hasn’t been completely refined, but the sugar industry figured out that it was easier to refine the raw sugar and then spray some molasses back onto the white sugar. It’s the molasses that makes it harden into a rock—despite all the housewife tricks we try. I doubted that a brown sugar version of allulose could exist yet, but I checked online anyway, and there it was. The producers spray molasses onto the allulose granules, and it looks and tastes like original brown sugar. The molasses adds some carbohydrates to the nutrient profile, but only a tiny percentage.
Chocolate is also an essential part of stocking my pantry, but the big bags of chocolate chips that I had stacked up had cane sugar as their main ingredient. That sugar was likely to overwhelm the virtues of the allulose in the cookie dough. Fortunately, I found a bag of chocolate chips that were made with stevia tucked away in my tub of sugar substitutes. I pulled my mixer out of the cabinet and started measuring ingredients. I quickly learned that the allulose creates a lovely browning effect, but it also causes baked goods to bake a little faster. When the perfect cookies came out of the oven, I might have done a little dance.
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The catch showed up eventually, of course, when I was ready to know the nitty-gritty details of how allulose is made. It was first identified eighty years ago and classified as a rare sugar because it occurred naturally in very small quantities in wheat leaves and a few other plants. Eventually, food scientists discovered an enzyme that would produce allulose from fermented fructose, which is extracted in large quantities from corn. Corn, as an ingredient, raises a red flag because most corn grown in the United States is genetically modified, but I found allulose to be readily available with the non-GMO label. My further exploration revealed that the enzymes used to manufacture allulose are genetically engineered, but scientists hasten to reassure that no trace of the enzymes are found in the final product. In summary, allulose is found naturally but mass-produced synthetically from non-GMO corn using genetically engineered enzymes that get filtered out. Will health-conscious Americans accept genetically engineered enzymes that disappear? Based on our history with diet experiments, I would hazard a guess that we’ll give it a try. My neighbor did—she asked me for a link to order it.
Out of curiosity, I spent some time reading food labels in the condiment aisle of the grocery store. Condiments are a Trojan horse for sugar. I was surprised to find allulose in ketchup and barbecue sauce. It’s even more plentiful online. One can find candy bars, chocolate chips, and cake mixes with allulose. The future is bright for a sugar substitute that tastes good and carries no consequences.
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Last night, my neighbors and I attended a lecture on depression in women by a local family therapist. Attendees were invited in advance to sign up to bring a pan of brownies for the refreshments. At the end of the lecture, I placed my tray of sugar-free brownies on the table next to the gluten-free brownies and the fat-free brownies. We all laughed at the symbolic representation of our dietary confusion—no one should wonder that we’re all depressed. My sugar-free brownies were covered with a thick layer of mint frosting and topped with a chocolate drizzle. It was too much. During the night, I listened to my insides gurgle and rumble in distress, and I realized we are no saner than our predecessors. We might have donned the cloak of self-righteousness with our “healthy” diets, but we are counting on science to give us a magic pill or a fake food to save us from the evils of sugar. We want to have our cake and eat it, too.