What is your Favorite Sweetener?

I use only sugar, though I just went through a scary period where my health professional was sure I had diabetes.  I have been rethinking a lot of foods that I eat

I got my test results back today and I do not have diabetes.  Basically all was good.

I feel that I make good choices for myself though they might not be good for someone else.

What sweeteners do you use or prefer?

I bought stevia Splenda years ago and did not like the flavor.

Turbinado sugar or honey. I like the extra flavors they come with beyond sweet.

I swear I didn't cheat off of Christopher's paper.

Turbinado sugar and honey are my go tos.

We will use 'regular' sugar and brown sugar where it is needed but I really enjoy what turbinado sugar is giving.

I've got type 2 diabetes. It may sound like agony, but the easiest path really is to just remove sugars and sweeteners for the first month or so. Your taste buds adapt, and that's what will make it easy long term to stick to a low glycemic index (GI) diet.

The zero cal, zero GI sweeteners I use are stevia (read the ingredients, avoid the mixes) and monksfruit. Stevia has herb/mint undertones. Monksfruit has sort of a berry hint.

But most of the time if I want something sweet? A little sugar or honey or syrup is easiest. Once the tastebuds are adapted, things can easily taste too sweet.

honey and maple syrup are the main go-to’s in our house. coconut sugar if a recipe really needs it to be dry.

Stevia or honey.

Date syrup. It's 100 percent dates, nothing else added, so it doesn't ramp your blood sugar like the refined stuff does. My favorite after that, benefit and taste wise, is honey, and after that maple syrup. But date syrup wins hands-down in my book. They sell it at our Walmart under The Date Lady brand.

j

I like date sugar because it's the only whole food sweetener that I know of. Nothing but dried, ground dates. I follow a whole foods, plant based way of eating so the date sugar fits in nicely with that. I just make sure to get the finely ground kind.

The date syrup is 100 percent dates, too. My wife and I are also following a mostly plant-based diet. The syrup is a bit more processed than date sugar, but it is lovely because it dissolves in drinks, etc. I find myself preferring it to maple syrup on pancakes much of the time because I use less and it's just tastier.

j

Annie Collins wrote:I like date sugar because it's the only whole food sweetener that I know of. Nothing but dried, ground dates. I follow a whole foods, plant based way of eating so the date sugar fits in nicely with that. I just make sure to get the finely ground kind.

My go-to sweetener is raw unfiltered honey. Raw honey has so many health benefits. Primarily, I sometimes use it in tea or if I want to sweeten plain yogurt. I also use it to macerate strawberries to serve over plain yogurt. If I need a real sugar for baking, which I rarely do, I use Golden sugar which has less processing. I have tried the turbinado sugar in baking, but usually it doesn't achieve the same results. I do not believe in using artificial sweeteners. Maple syrup is another sweetener that I might use on occasion. I did try coconut sugar a long time ago and was not happy with it.

My history with sugar is that over a decade ago, I was 200 lbs and told I was pre-diabetic. I made a series of lifestyle changes, to include significantly reducing my sugar intake. I took up a mostly Mediterranean style diet. I eliminated soft drinks, pre-packaged sweets and Starbucks! lol. So, now I drink a variety of hot and cold teas. Most of them plain, sometimes adding some raw honey. I drink my coffee with only a little organic half and half added to it to give it the creaminess. No sweetener. I adapted to it. I also significantly reduced my simple carbs. I lost 50 lbs over the course of 3 years. Slow and steady wins the race. Now I am so used to not having sweeteners, most sweet foods taste TOO Sweet to me. I was served southern sweet ice tea by accident at a restaurant and it was so disgusting I had to spit it out. I cannot tolerate the sweetness of birthday cakes, etc. Candy bars are too sweet as well. So, I have actually developed a dislike for sweets now. I find that I have to reduce the sugar in recipes. For instance I made a baked strawberry oatmeal once. I always follow a recipe the first time and then see if adjustments need to be made. It was sweeter than a dessert in my opinion. Next time I will eliminate the maple syrup in that recipe and let the sweet strawberries shine. It takes time, but after a while, your taste buds do change. When they are not bombarded with sugar all of the time, they become more sensitive to sweetness.

I really thought I would hear a lot about planting stevia though it is good to hear the other options.

Date syrup sounds lovely.

We use stevia in our tea but that's about it. I don't cook with it.

We tend to use fruit in various forms for sweetening foods. We've been off refined sugar, honey, fructose, etc. for almost 30 years due to the effect on my health. I don't have the same problems with whole fruits.

Bananas are great as a sweetener in desserts. One of our faves is fresh/frozen raspberries cooked with chopped bananas and just a trace of salt.

I've used canned pineapple in it's own juice as a sweetener with rhubarb and strawberry. The combination is nice.

I just recently made seed/nut/cocoa balls using chopped dry cherries for a bit of sweetness. The combination is really good. Other finely chopped dried fruits would have worked just as well and they provide more flavor and nutrition than just sugar.

Someone already mentioned dates and date syrup. Those are great but I use them in moderation because they are very sweet to me.

In general I try to use the sweeter fruits to balance the more tart fruits or to just sweeten a dish. The combinations are endless.

Malt syrup is good for baked goods. Same with rice syrup.

I have thought of planting Stevia as well. I think you boil the leaves. I've read that store bought stevia is heavily processed and not as healthy or natural as using the plant. Just like honey. If you buy simply "honey" in the store, it is seriously processed and it changes the product significantly. A local beekeeper did a honey comparison with some youth in the area.

I have not tried the date syrup.

Anne Miller wrote:I really thought I would hear a lot about planting stevia though it is good to hear the other options.

Date syrup sounds lovely.

Maple syrup, local raw honey or sorghum syrup.

Melissa Stroud wrote:I have thought of planting Stevia as well. I think you boil the leaves. I've read that store bought stevia is heavily processed and not as healthy or natural as using the plant.

I grow stevia, and use it like this. I also buy stevia extract (liquid) for use in tea (the only reason I sweeten). The stuff I can get is only stevia and water, but this certainly varies by country and I'm not sure what you have access to.

🍁🍁Hands down….maple syrup or maple sugar. THE BEST!!! 🍁🍁

I recall standing in line once at a hospital cafeteria alongside an internal medicine resident who had loaded his plate with mac and cheese and tater tots. I asked him if he had been taught anything about the dietary causes of insulin resistance. His answer was a somewhat sheepish, “Not really.” Pretty sure he was typical.

Having grown up in the 60s and 70s I feel somewhat victimized by nonexistent or even outright damaging medical advice, and of course by the manipulations of food advertisers. It took me an embarrassingly long time to discover even the most basic truth about sugar, namely that too much is very bad. Advancing from there has been a bit of a nightmare—dietary science is fraught with conflicting opinions.

So I lean heavily on intuition. Begin with Less Is More, move on to Natural Is Better, and finally, Personal Health Patterns Matter. Mix that with whatever seemingly reliable science is available, and…

The end result: Local maple syrup has become our primary household sweetener. Raw honey and minimally refined organic cane sugar find their way in as well, and occasionally stevia. As such we can eat homegrown and some purchased fruits and still maintain reasonable body weights and avoid sugar related heath problems. One part of great big puzzle.

I grow my own stevia from spring to late autumn, it dies off then so I just harvest the seeds for the next spring. I can't stand the taste of the commercial brands and they are mostly full of additives so I give them a miss. I also have my own sugar canes and squeeze syrup direct from the canes in moderation when I need to, I bottle enough to keep me through winter when the stevia dies. I share both these with my neighbours.

In winter depending on what I am making I also use date sugar for cakes or desserts, (soak dates in hot water overnight and use the liquid, used dates make a nice toast spread).

Monkfruit in anything needing a light sweet taste - from tea to Thai and other Asian food, and very occasionally pure maple syrup, or raw honey in moderation.

I don't sweeten things very much anyway, but find that using unsweetened natural fruit purees also works well in baking.

I've seen a few things I haven't tried here - sorghum was mentioned, so am looking forward to experimenting.

Annette Jones wrote:I grow my own stevia from spring to late autumn, it dies off then so I just harvest the seeds for the next spring. I can't stand the taste of the commercial brands and they are mostly full of additives so I give them a miss. I also have my own sugar canes and squeeze syrup direct from the canes in moderation when I need to, I bottle enough to keep me through winter when the stevia dies. I share both these with my neighbours.

Just a quick note to say that this statement warmed my heart. As far as I can tell by looking at a satellite view of Schofields, Australia, Annette lives in a relatively urban area, yet grows her own sweeteners(!) and also, and not incidentally, shares with neighbors. Perfect.

And… not to muddy the topic, but as a secondary note, posts like this give me a twinge of desire—a niggling wish that my growing zone was several digits higher in number (we’re in zone 5). I went to some trouble to soften the blow of our long, cold winters by building a greenhouse with a rudimentary ground-to-air heating and cooling system. One of my goals was to grow some tropical and semi-tropical foods. This worked, and didn’t work. In the pic I’ve identified a representative range of success and failure. The mandarin orange (failure) never produces fruit, even with careful hand pollination. The figs produce somewhat (minimal to moderate success). The lemon guava produces pretty well (success). I’ve come to the tentative conclusion that the primary problem behind the failures is too few light hours (we’re in a relatively cloudy place, and of course have short winter days).

David Milano wrote:wish that my growing zone was several digits

I moved from 3-ish to 9 and while you do have a lot of great semitropicals, one big problem with year-round growing is the bugs. The bugs never die. You never get a good hard frost to kill off the eggs, so you have pests forever. Also generally in these areas (at least mine) we don't have a lot of deciduous trees, so no huge resource of falling leaves for mulch, leaf litter, etc. I guess everything has tradeoffs!

As for figs. I grew up in urban NJ and everyone had a fig tree in their yard, which generally got cut down to the ground in the winter, covered with a metal trash barrel and some dead leaves, and did all its growing that year before the Big Chop again around Halloween. I ate so many figs from neighbors (mostly Italians)! See what's growing around you or what cultivars you have available, they may do just fine outside. And pruning the crap out of figs helps a lot- I used to feel bad about chopping mine way down, but it's the only option if you want fruit. David the Good has a nice video on youtube about scalping a fig (he's a good source for encouragement about pruning in general), you may find it helpful.

Okay, I don't yet know if this will actually work (ask me in a year!) but I've found this amazing plant called Rubus chingii var. suavissimus, or Chinese sweet tea. It's a close relative of raspberry whose leaves contain a substance called rubusoside, which is similar to steviol glucosides. So no calories, and extremely sweet. I've got a plant, ordered another, and am trying to grow some from seeds as well (diversity!)

The plant is supposed to survive temperatures down to -25 degrees C, and even if the tops are killed off, it's not necessarily a huge deal, since it works like raspberry in that each cane only lives for two years even though the root system is perennial.

I haven't really used the leaves for much yet, since I don't want to slow the plant down too much, but I did taste the leaves directly and made tea from them. Both the leaves and the tea taste extremely sweet, and without that "off" taste that I get in both stevia leaves and steviol glucoside based sweeteners. As a bonus, it's supposed to have a whole lot of good medicinal benefits, including reducing insulin resistance! In short, from everything I've read and seen, it seems awesome. The only remaining question mark is whether it will actually survive our winters.

I actually do plant Stevia. I harvest all summer, hang drying, then put through a coffee grinder. Also, the dried leaves I will sometimes make a tincture, as they are easy to use, but also when on the road.

I also have not tried the date syrup, but I do use molasses in my coffee. Since I do not consume a lot of sugar, neither does my husband, I don't worry to much about what we use. I do have on hand a variety of sugars, and purchase in bulk Maple Syrup, Honey and Molasses. When I make jams and jellies, I use half what they call for.

Melissa Stroud wrote:I have thought of planting Stevia as well. I think you boil the leaves. I've read that store bought stevia is heavily processed and not as healthy or natural as using the plant. Just like honey. If you buy simply "honey" in the store, it is seriously processed and it changes the product significantly. A local beekeeper did a honey comparison with some youth in the area.

I have not tried the date syrup.

Anne Miller wrote:I really thought I would hear a lot about planting stevia though it is good to hear the other options.

Date syrup sounds lovely.

David Milano wrote:

Annette Jones wrote:I grow my own stevia from spring to late autumn, it dies off then so I just harvest the seeds for the next spring. I can't stand the taste of the commercial brands and they are mostly full of additives so I give them a miss. I also have my own sugar canes and squeeze syrup direct from the canes in moderation when I need to, I bottle enough to keep me through winter when the stevia dies. I share both these with my neighbours.

Just a quick note to say that this statement warmed my heart. As far as I can tell by looking at a satellite view of Schofields, Australia, Annette lives in a relatively urban area, yet grows her own sweeteners(!) and also, and not incidentally, shares with neighbors. Perfect.

David, yes I do live in an urban area with a small backyard less than 600sqm. It is a permaculture designed yard which is used as a teaching garden - and house - for permaculture enthusiasts who want to see first hand how to layer plants to fit optimal amounts of food in small areas successfully using micro-climates.

I am very lucky as our climate spans from cool temperate to sub-tropical well, with some tropicals in created micro-climates. I've been doing this over 60 years now and love what I can grow and how I can add to sustainable home improvements. My first teacher was my dad, an environmentalist, then Bill Mollison and a few others here in Oz. As time went on, each added wonderful knowledge in their own unique ways, so I've been blessed in what I had access to.

I love seeing how others here on permies get around their climate, soil and water issues so creatively and am always learning something new no matter how long I've been at this.

David, it's people like you who also care and share that keep showing me how learning and resilience make permies a group of people I just love to interact with and be part of.

I don't really have a favorite. I have used and do use all of the above except fig sugar as I've never seen one, or synthetic sweeteners.
It also depends what I'm eating, baking or making in general, or what's on hand.
I tried stevia and wasn't impressed by it. I still have dried leaves  from the plants I grew. Just not crazy about it

Eino Kenttä ,  Ooooh! That sounds intriguing!  I'm going to look this plant up to get more information. I'm a tea drinker and this sounds like right up my ally. Thanks

I'm a die-hard fan of Mike Haasl's maple syrup, straight outta Wisconsin. It even makes yogurt palatable to my inscrutable taste buds. Also, anyone who has ever visited Wheaton Labs has probably heard me sing praises of the local vegan donut shop. I visit there a couple times a month, on the regular. I suppose they use typical cane sugar and fruits like apples and blueberries for their stuff, and that suits me just fine.

Beyond that, I think I would only add agave nectar to my coffee on special occasions, otherwise it's straight black. Other sweeteners for other foods I could take or leave.

Honey

Another vote for maple syrup, maple sugar, and honey.

I use I minimum of sweeteners.  Nothing in coffee, tea, cereals, etc.   For baking I use about 1/2 of whatever is recommended in the recipe.  Stovetop cooking I will use wine.

Nobody has mentioned our favorite, apple cider syrup. Boiled down from 1 gallon to 1 pint (8:1) it's ideal for making salad dressings or as a topping on breads. We like maple syrup too but no longer make it ourselves. We mostly eat fruits if we want something sweet, although we grow stevia for a tea herb as well. A plant or two of stevia supplies all of our tea needs with surplus to give away. If grown in a pot it can be set outside for the summer and brought in over the winter, and will grow for a couple of years or more with this method.