Honey is NOT healthier for you than regular granulated sugar

I’ve got a bee in my bonnet today, and really, no pun intended! 🙈

I am really glad this topic has come up in the mainstream media. I have read so many books and blogs by nutritionists making you believe that natural sugars such as maple syrup, agave syrup, blossom sugar etc are better for you than just regular white granulated sugar, but it is just NOT so. Sugar is sugar is sugar.

🙏 Stick with me on this – it will be worth it 🙏

I am pretty angry about this. I feel it is my duty to make people aware of the correct information in a bid that hopefully an argument will be raised against poor and misleading nutritional information to the public.

I am certainly not the sugar police! The *issue* I have is that the general public is lead to believe that these natural sugar alternatives are better for you. I certainly fell for it. This is the problem. I would say most people know that if you have a diet high in sugar all day every day, you know the consequences. BUT being made to believe by the big corporations that making a change by buying natural sugar products is better, is just wrong wrong wrong!

So why are these big brands trying to make us think we are buying healthier options? To get more money. Well-known authors who sell their ‘sugar-free living’ are trying to sensationalise and sell more books. I feel cheated to be honest.

I’m sure I’ll have cynics come back to me here and mention that the Glycaemic Index of natural sugars is lower (in short, the higher the GI of a food, the more it affects your blood sugar level which has many negatives consequences if it happens often) but according to paediatric dietician Judy More, ‘this is irrelevant because this applies to eating 100g of the sugar or syrup on its own which never happens in real life. You eat these sugars as an ingredient in a whole food – a biscuit sweetened with sugar or a biscuit sweetened with syrup would probably have much the same GI value because of the influence of all the other ingredients especially the fat, protein and fibre in them will have more influence on the GI of the biscuits than just the sugar or syrup’.

I hope this post hasn’t come across as preachy, this is not my intention. I believe I had a good education but I had no idea about any of this stuff until I started researching it. So, it got me thinking that if I didn’t know about this, then I’m guessing others might not too and I want to share my findings.

What food have you recently bought that contained these natural sugars such as maple or coconut and you believed it would be better?

For further reading, please see below in the news today:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/may/02/consumers-being-duped-by-misleading-claims-about-honey

Thanks - Grace