My taste evaluation - 3 lower blood glucose impact of (somewhat) natural sweeteners

Pablo

Pablo

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Oct 28, 2002
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Everson WA - Pacific NW USA
Please don't bring up artificial sweeteners xylitol, sorbitol, erithrytol, aspartame, etc - this is NOT the thread for that. Start your own thread

Recently I was looking for a sweetener for my homemade egg nog. A couple were recommended that I have never tried. I decided to just do a little taste test. Date sugar, Allulose and Inulin.

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Nothing science based (you can google each if you like).

First I alone tasted a small equally measured VOLUME (not weight) of each.

Date sugar for sure tastes the sweetest, followed by allulose, and then inulin. Date sugar has a pleasing flavor to me, but may not be the best for all things. Sometimes, for example I don't want that datey flavor in my coffee.

Allulose tastes almost like a fruity sugar. Which gives me pause. It does taste a bit like sucrose, but without that cloying over sweetness.

Inulin is a tiny bit sweet, powdery neutral.

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Coffee, Lungo espresso, illy Forte Nespresso pods. Cacao powder. Heavy Cream. All equal amounts. Equal amounts of sweetener. In a lungo cup.

Date sugar: Plenty sweet, tasty treat.
Inulin: Sweet enough, some body added. Tasty treat. Sweeter than allulose oddly.
Allulose: Oddly not as much sweetness comes through. Not bad or anything, maybe that fruity taste is still there, but tasty still. This one is quite weird to me. Must find out the mechanism.


TBC
 
Delete...This looks like just a "review" of sorts. Not to discuss any alternate sweeteners.. My misunderstanding.
 
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I always liked those "flavoury" sugars, coconut sugar tastes almost like a rich brown sugar, monk fruit was good too and probably the safer choice here if you want to use sugar.
 
Sugar is sugar . I over the years have tried to eliminate excessive sweet and Now I find candy, ice cream, cakes, frozen yogurts over sweet, years ago the sweet tasted good. IfmI bake pies or cookies or anything sweetened I use about 1/4 of the recipies sugar. I can not stomach diet or regular soft drinks or adult beverages any more, too sweet of an after taste.. I guess we are used to sweet.
 
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I tested each in 250 ml of ~68°F water, 1 level tablespoon

Date sugar - Allulose - Inulin

Quickly 1 tablespoon in each, take a picture.
Then wait one minute, take a picture.
The stir around well, equally, take a picture.
After 5 minutes, take a picture.

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Water Solubility Commentary.

Taste.
Date sugar tastes a bit sweet with light date flavor
Allulose tastes very lightly sweet, no other flavors detected
Inulin just barely sweet, but pleasant almost caramel flavor, extremely light

Aroma.
Date sugar - slight brown sugar aroma, light
Allulose - no aroma
Inulin - a very light aroma, barely detectable, almost cotton candy like

Solubility
Date sugar not completely soluble. Contains solids. Heat might help, guess.
Allulose 100% soluble in a minute
Inulin - soluble in 5 minutes, some 2-3 small white particles hung around then dissolved, foam remained
 
Regarding the use of inulin:

When mixing inulin into liquids, stir well right away to prevent clumping.
Inulin holds up under heat and helps baked goods to develop a nice brown color.
Inulin is not ideal if you require a lot of sweetness because you will need a huge amount of inulin - 8x the volume of sugar
Inulin works very well when you use it as a replacement for some of the sugar in a recipe. Remember, in many recipes, sugar is not only for sweetness but also for texture and volume.
 
Yeah date sugar doesn’t really dissolve has a little fiber and quite a few nutrients so even if it’s high in glucose, sucrose, fructose it at least has some nutrients and vitamins

I never liked dates by themselves but honestly never tried using them as sugar either .
 
Pablo said:
My blood glucose only hit 121 after all that!

TBD on the allulose. BUTT I have been drinking inulin in my espressos for 4 days now. Farting is up a bit, but no explosive diarrhea.
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The gas production will calm down as your bacterial buddies acclimatize.
 
I'm glad you made this post, Pablo. I had been avoiding dates since my diabetes diagnosis last year due to high "sugar" content. Your post encouraged me to look up date sugar and dates. Dates have a fairly low glycemic index. I may very well get some and enjoy them in moderation. Since my diagnosis I have dropped my weight from 205 to 180. I gave up alcohol and (obviously) as much added sugar as possible. My A1c went from 6.7 to 5.5 as a result. Thanks for bringing up the topic!
 
DBMaster said:
I'm glad you made this post, Pablo. I had been avoiding dates since my diabetes diagnosis last year due to high "sugar" content. Your post encouraged me to look up date sugar and dates. Dates have a fairly low glycemic index. I may very well get some and enjoy them in moderation. Since my diagnosis I have dropped my weight from 205 to 180. I gave up alcohol and (obviously) as much added sugar as possible. My A1c went from 6.7 to 5.5 as a result. Thanks for bringing up the topic!
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Whole dates are metabolically different from date sugar. Research has shown that one or two dates can help stabilize blood sugar levels. More than one or two dates will certainly raise a diabetic's BG considerably. Dates contain mostly fructose which is much sweeter than sucrose, resulting in possibly lower sugar consumption. Figs contain less sugar than dates. Both taste great with black coffee.
 
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vavavroom said:
Whole dates are metabolically different from date sugar. Research has shown that one or two dates can help stabilize blood sugar levels. More than one or two dates will certainly raise a diabetic's BG considerably. Dates contain mostly fructose which is much sweeter than sucrose, resulting in possibly lower sugar consumption. Figs contain less sugar than dates. Both taste great with black coffee.
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Yes I agree. Go easy. It is is sugar and fructose to boot. I use just less than a qtr teaspoon in my espresso. Even after a couple espressos I have tested my blood at 15 minute intervals, for a couple hours plus and really no detectable spike over say 10 mg/dl. (I can chase my cat and make it change more than that, so just saying)

I had two dates in a small bowl of ricotta yesterday. Whoa, that was gewd.
 
I found pears to not affect my BS much, same with melons, watermelon especially. But oranges and some apples really would spike it.
 
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