Often patients will state, with a self-satisfied sense of virtue, that they are not consuming any sugar at all. But by now I know better than to take this at face value. A little digging will lead to statements like –

I only use honey

I used dates

I use jaggery (unrefined cane sugar)in my tea.

And fruits do not count as sugar at all! In fact most of them see fruit as necessary and a large proportion of diabetics will state that they eat only fruit for breakfast.

Also their food intake is replete with carbohydrates, which are not taken into consideration at all!

The truth is that honey is a natural sugar in that it occurs naturally in nature. But it is an ‘added’ sugar when added to food, it is not naturally occuring in food like fruit sugars do. Most importantly, honey / jaggery/ dates / coconut sugar – any form of sugars are metabolised in the body in exactly the same way that table sugar is. They all lead to a blood sugar surge followed by an insulin surge. Thus they all carry the risk of causing complications just like sugar does. The small amount of nutrients these sweeteners contain does not justify the large metabolic risk they carry.

 

All carbohydrates such as wheat, rice, alternative grains like jowar, bajra and similar, are converted to glucose before absorption and again these are metabolised the same way in the body. So even if you give up sugar and you eat bread – even the so-called healthy types – or biscuits, or poha, or upma, or idli, or dosas, you are adding to the sugar load on your body. Additionally biscuits contain a harmful kind of fat called trans fats, which keeps them from spoiling for several months. Bacteria, worms and fungi understand that these biscuits are not edible, but we happily consume them. Remember, Advertising is not Nutritional Information.

 

 

Fruits are held in very high esteem for some reason. But the sugar in fruit, fructose, is even more harmful than table sugar which is sucrose. This post: https://drlilykiswani.com/diabetic-eat-fruit-breakfast/ explains the issue in detail.

Artificial sweeteners can raise blood sugar levels even more than sugar itself! This includes compounds like saccharine, aspartame and sucralose. Read more here: https://drlilykiswani.com/551/. However natural sweeteners like stevia can be used, so can sugar alcohols like erythritol and xylitol, though they can cause a bit of digestive upset. A combination of stevia and erythritol often works well.

Consuming sweets, even when the sweetener is non caloric like stevia, can cause the brain to develop a sweet addiction.

So save the sweet for a special occasion.