Humans naturally love sweet-tasting foods. These foods are usually energy-dense. They give us a burst of brain and muscle fuel. But energy-dense also means calorie dense and sweet foods can be fattening.
Refined white sugar or some variation of it is in almost every highly processed food imaginable and the harm it can cause to our health, from tooth disease to depression and heart disease, is well documented.
The Dextrose Evaluation (DE) scale
There are other ways to add some sweetness to your food besides table sugar. And, just as the heat of peppers is measured on the Scoville scale, the sweetness of different sweeteners is measured by its Dextrose Evaluation (DE), often called Dextrose Equivalent. Dextrose is a little less sweet than table sugar (i.e. sucrose). Table sugar is listed as a 1 on the DE scale and dextrose is a 0.9. Every other type of sweetener is then compared to dextrose as either more sweet (a number higher than 0.9) or less sweet (a number lower than 0.9). Some sweeteners such as stevia are more than 200x sweeter than dextrose or table sugar.
Some sweeteners such as maple syrup or dates do have some nutritional benefits. Some types of sweeteners hit your blood stream faster than others (this is called the glycemic index) and some add their own taste and texture. But to your body sugar is sugar is sugar. Use sparingly and enjoy it when you do.
