I wanted to ask the question, should we even use sweetners given how sweet fresh fruit is on a whole food plant based diet? What do you think? Is that playing with fire to possible overstimulate our sweet tooth?

If we do need sweetners, which ones are our best options? Caloric and non-caloric?

I think for me, my first choice is a dried fruit, usually dates or raisins, sometimes banana (not dried). Dr. Michael Greger, a vegan MD who works for USHS says date sugar # 1, molasses #2. [nutritionfacts.org]

If I wanted to use an artificial sweetner, I'd probably use Z-sweet based on price, ratings (Amazon) and Dr. Greger's assessment of Z-sweet (erythritol) [nutritionfacts.org].

What do you think? Is fresh or dried fruit all we need?

Paul

Dried fruit most definitely if not probably yacon as it has prebiotic properties.

I never use them anyway, if i want something sweet ill go with fruit usually. But sometimes ill make raw treats and use yacon syrup.

Id like to try that coconut sweetener.

[www.vegankingdom.co.uk]

Yes, we need them. Well, I like them. Date sugar? I don't think I could put that in a liquid to sweeten it, could I? Agave is not my fave; I do like honey.

Banana, yes, you could put date sugar into a liquid to sweeten it. I hope you will consider looking into several other vegan sweeteners that you might like as much as honey. How about the mango powder that John Kohler was talking about on his video? Honey has a taste that overpowers a lot of what it's added to. But if you like a strong flavor, how about maple syrup?

The John Kohler anti-agave video is really good, until he got to the very end and promoted honey (sort of).

I guess one reason honey just seems like such an awful option to me is because I live on an island, and everyone here is so very aware of what is happening to the bees. I hope you will take the time to read this and learn a little more about the honey. I know you are an intelligent woman, and, if I remember correctly, you are a practicing yogi as well.

The Big Island of Hawaii had previously been the source for 20% of the queen bees that are used in mainland beekeeping operations.

But since around 2009, we have had the varroa mite here, and already our bee populations are dying off like crazy. The varroa mite carries several diseases. In 2010, over half the hives on the Big Island were lost, and over half the beekeepers lost every hive they had. Even "organic" beekeepers are now having to clip their queens' wings and inseminate the queens - meaning they'll never fly again to mate. The queens are inseminated using Asian bees, a solitary bee immune to varroa.

The fact is: There IS a humane solution to keeping our flora pollinated! The solution is to allow the solitary bee varieties (no hive) to do the pollinating. [www.pollinatorparadise.com]

Asian bees are solitary bees that carry a VSH gene (varroa sensitive hygiene) that allows them to resist the varroa mite. But the solitary bees are currently being crowded out by HONEYbees that spread the varroa. Why? Because solitary bees don't make HONEY!

So, to keep the HONEY beekeepers in business, the solitary bees are being used – even by the “organic” honey beekeepers to genetically manipulate the honeybees.

Please read this from “organic” honey beekeepers in the Big Island:

"Tom Glenn, a bee breeder from Southern California, has yet another approach to varroa control. He selects for a remarkable trait–bees carrying the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) gene that can sense if a capped cell holds mite-infested larvae. Workers will chew through the beeswax caps and eat or discard these larvae, reducing the number of mites in the colony. Since introducing VSH queens into his hives, Tom has not had to treat his bees for mites in ten years.

Accelerating the process of natural selection for desirable traits through artificial insemination of queen bees seemed advantageous to many in class. Others found the idea distasteful, suggesting that instead of tinkering with Mother Nature, we should allow bees and mites to achieve a balance where the two could live together without the bees being decimated. It was argued that the use of toxic chemicals and selective breeding might cause the mites to adapt, becoming even stronger, more formidable foes!

Later that afternoon I watched as Tom anesthetized a queen with carbon dioxide, delicately pulled open her “bottom end” and injected 8 micro liters of semen (collected from 100 drones) into her. An identifying number was then super-glued to her thorax, and one wing-tip clipped to prevent her from flying and mating again. I felt an anthropomorphic pang of sadness. She would never zoom 600 feet up into the sky on a glorious and dizzying flight – never merge in ecstatic union with drones on the wing...

Artificial insemination and VSH Queens seemed like the perfect natural solution, until Jenny Bach presented a counter argument by asking the question, “What is natural?” Her reasoning was as follows: We have interfered with bee genetics for a while now, producing calmer bees which produce more honey and less propolis. We’ve put them in boxes that make honey production easier for us. We’ve transported them across a whole continent to pollinate mono crops such as the almonds in California, where they inter-mingled and spread diseases. We’ve flown bee packages all over the world, spreading mites and Africanized bees. So should we let natural selection take place so that the bees can recover on their own, or should we help them by speeding up the process with VSH queens?

[www.volcanoislandhoney.com]

Organic honey beekeepers are now using artificial insemination - not to save our trees, our fruits, and our planet's flora - but to stay in the business of selling the HONEY. The survival of these bees will now become dependent upon human manipulation, and we have no idea how the use of the solitary bees will effect their populations.

I wrote this for you Banana, but I think I'd like for others to see it too, so I'm going to start a new thread with it.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/20/2011 12:47AM by suncloud.

Fruit's usually good enough; I have used raw cane sugar(never with raw foods)but don't like it much anymore. After a time, I realized my body was reacting to agave as to High Fructose Corn Syrup or refined glucose, so I won't touch the stuff today. Date sugar does not dissolve fully! but is very nice in coffee--complements the flavor--if one still drinks that. It's good in a smoothie that has insufficient sweet fruit in it; sometimes that wonderful smelling peach turns out to be a dud, right? Can't be bothered to try yacon, nor any of the other "superfoods" sweeteners because I find sweet ripe fruit to be preferable/cheaper/more convenient. I have found that the more sweet fruit I consume, the less other sweetener I need, so for example, I can now drink tea unsweetened. I used to crave dates by themselves, and The Unmentionable[which I shan't discuss], but don't really want them as long as I've had enough banana or mango or figs or whatever, in the first half of the day. The dilemma is limiting sweet fresh fruit, for reasons of regimen or digestive difficulty. I have not had to do this, yet, and don't know what I'd do if I had to . . .

Tamukha, I was surprised to read in your post that: "Date sugar does not dissolve fully!"

I think you're right, and my "date sugar" is actually organic cane juice sugar. I'm not exactly an expert on sugars obviously, but I'm reading that date sugar is ground up dates, which is why it doesn't dissolve fully.

Organic cane juice sugar does fully dissolve, in addition to a whole lot of other sugars on the market.

I also use "raw sugar," which is turbinado. It can't possibly be raw but it's a lot less processed than the white stuff (plus vegan).

Suncloud, on the other honey thread I asked about my buying local honey, like from Wisconsin. Would that be the same treatment of the bees as in HI?

Maple syrup has a particular flavor but I have definitely used it to sweeten (it's not raw, as you know). Problem is that it's now outrageously expensive!!!! I don't know why it shot up in price in the last several years but I have limited it to a Christmas splurge

I'm sad hearing about white stevia from Kevin Gianni
[renegadehealth.com]
i might get the natural green leaf stevia powder,or better yet,the plant.

We have honey from a local producer and also maple syrup from a local producer.
Turbinado i use sometimes too.
Now,dates i can't have too much,i've never liked too much dates or date sugar,just weird for me.Yacon syrup i didn't like too.
I think i'll try the coconut sugar.Anyone knows about it?

Maybe in the near future (i hope) i'll stop any kind of sugar,just fruit.Any fruit
is better than anything else.

banana who,

I am always slightly alarmed about vegetarians using maple syrup as a sweetener, as many maple concerns use lard, that's right, LARD, as a foam suppressor in the boiling process of maple syrup manufacturing. Likewise, I switched to evaporated organic cane sugar many years ago, after learning that plain old "white" sugar was bleached by heating it with cattle bones, leftover from the slaughtering process, because the bone meal acts as a binder for impurities in the sugar. Yuck!

Yes, that's why white sugar is not vegan although you can sometimes see more processed forms listed as vegan because they retain the beige color and don't bleach.

As far as the lard goes (just the thought of lard grosses me out), does it ever mix in with the maple syrup? If it's suppressing foam, I would think so! It doesn't matter--it's totally expensive and I bought some from Trader Joe's that had an unpleasant burnt flavor so until I can get the good stuff at a cheaper price (plus Crisco-free), I just lost my desire for it!

On the non-raw front, I kind of like brown rice syrup. It's not super sweet but it's a complex carb, has a carmel flavor, and is okay on certain foods. It's hard finding a proper substitute for honey or agave when it comes to sweetening beverages! I am also interested in coconut sugar so if anyone has tried it, please give us the @#$%&...(Sorry!)

I find fruits and juiced veggies are already too sweet for my tooth.Would never need more.

Lard in maple syrup? Well, I didn't know that! I remember the people I stayed with in Vermont heated the maple syrup in a big vat over a wood fire until the maple syrup was concentrated, and I think they kept it flowing. I don't remember any foam, but I guess this operation was pretty low key.

Banana, I can't figure out what you wrote to get the @#$%&! But never mind.

I don't really know if they use the same treatment on the Wisconsin bees. It seems to me like they'll probably have to if they keep selling honey, since the varroa is spreading everywhere (thanks to shipping around all the honeybee hives!) I'm also concerned about the effect on the native bees of having so much disease introduced by honeybees. The varroa brings in a lot of disease because it weakens the bees. Native bees are already suffering from habitat loss, and they're also having to compete with the honeybees.

Another consideration (though there doesn't appear to be clear evidence - yet), is that Wisconsin grows huge fields of soybeans that are genetically modified to contain Bt, among other things. Bt is a (normally) naturally-occurring pesticide that can kill bees. I kind of feel like, with the other challenges the native bees have to deal with, they really don't need the honeybee industry.

Rice syrup, though not raw, sounds like a good option.

I wrote P.O.O.P. Cannot believe it would be censored!

Tam,

I would like to explore this a little bit if you don't mind. Do you think your taste for sweet has declined? By which I mean, you are eating less sweet food overall than say 5 years ago for the sake of argument? Does eating fresh fruit actually help overcome an addiction to sugar? Just a question.

Paul


Tamukha Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Fruit's usually good enough; I have used raw cane
> sugar(never with raw foods)but don't like it much
> anymore. After a time, I realized my body was
> reacting to agave as to High Fructose Corn Syrup
> or refined glucose, so I won't touch the stuff
> today. Date sugar does not dissolve fully! but is
> very nice in coffee--complements the flavor--if
> one still drinks that. It's good in a smoothie
> that has insufficient sweet fruit in it; sometimes
> that wonderful smelling peach turns out to be a
> dud, right? Can't be bothered to try yacon, nor
> any of the other "superfoods" sweeteners because I
> find sweet ripe fruit to be
> preferable/cheaper/more convenient. I have found
> that the more sweet fruit I consume, the less
> other sweetener I need, so for example, I can now
> drink tea unsweetened. I used to crave dates by
> themselves, and The Unmentionable, but don't
> really want them as long as I've had enough banana
> or mango or figs or whatever, in the first half of
> the day. The dilemma is limiting sweet fresh
> fruit, for reasons of regimen or digestive
> difficulty. I have not had to do this, yet, and
> don't know what I'd do if I had to . . .

Paul,

What I meant was that, as my sweet fruit consumption has increased in a regimented way; i.e. making sure that I have several hundred calories from fruits before 2 p.m., my taste for other sweeteners, such a sugar in coffee or tea or starchy sweets has diminished or ceased to be. When I am careless about consuming sweet fruits, like, if I have fruit that hasn't ripened sufficiently to eat and not enough back-up--ripe bananas or mango or whatever--in the freezer, my body asks for other carbs, like bread or sweetener in my hot beverages. Though, to be honest, the craving abates almost immediately: I have dumped many cups of sweetened organic tea down the drain upon tasting it and finding the sweetener too cloying. The sweetness in a fruit-rich green smoothie tastes very natural and appealing to me, whereas sugar, stevia, agave, "bee juice," etc. tastes foreign to my palate now. The repeated dumping out of sweetened organic tea is a.) pathological, and b.) wasteful. Keeping these two things in mind helps me to be disciplined about eating enough ripe fruit in the morning.

I do not think it's possible to entirely eliminate a sweet tooth, as this is the brain's way of staying fueled. I think that's why so many raw foodists gravitate naturally to "fruitarianism" with minimal vegetable consumption--the metabolism gets super efficient at using fructose for fuel and ceases to need other sugars. I know that as I have gotten further into high fruit and greens raw[caveat: I still eat some cooked foods on occasion], my metabolic appetite, if you will, for "sweets," even gourmet raw concoctions, has severely decreased. If I never eat a raw fruit pie or date torte again, it will be too soon