Top 10 Sugar Substitutes You Should NEVER Eat & Sweeteners You Can Eat

Keto sugar substitutes which are the good ones

everyone loves sugar we are genetically conditioned to love sugar this taste of

sweet is very attractive but then when we get too much as in processed sugar

then we get insulin resistance and we gain weight and we become diabetic and

really really sick so then they come up with these sugar substitutes some of

them can help you lose weight and they can help you stay in ketosis but are

those the main things that we should be concerned with or are there others that

are equally or more important when you talk about all those things so that you

get the full picture coming right up

I'm Dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympian if you want to truly

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majority of people in the Western world are overweight and keto and low carb and

intermittent fasting is the biggest promise to resolve that that most people

have seen so in the wake of that people still want to have something sweet once

in a while or in their coffee or certain desserts so which sweeteners are okay

and keto is one of the most powerful ways of losing weight and and reversing

insulin resistance but at the same time keto can be a little bit oversimplified

and it can turn into a religion as if ketosis was the only thing that mattered

we're gonna evaluate a 16 different sweeteners sucrose or sugar table sugar

being one of them so there's 15 other sweeteners that we're going to compare

it to and we are going to look at keto whether it keeps you in or kicks you out

of ketosis whether it's keto approved but we're also going to look at how it

does as far as glucose instantly resistance and then we're going to look

at a couple more things that most people don't

about we're gonna talk about the biome what is that that is the sum total of

all the bacteria good and bad that live in your gut so you have somewhere in the

neighborhood of 40 trillion cells in your body human cells but then you have

an equal or slightly larger number of bacterial cells of parasites of protozoa

you have a whole jungle of life-forms and one of the most important things for

your health is to maintain balance in that jungle a lot of wise people have

said that you are only as healthy as your gut and the bacteria in the gut is

what determines how healthy that is it determines your levels of

neurotransmitters your digestion whether you're prone to bloating if you have

constipation and hundreds of others the more they look into the biome the more

they realize that that might be the key to health so we don't want to take that

lightly and then the final category we're going to look at is toxicity is

this a toxic thing so yes it's nice to lose weight it's nice to reverse insulin

resistance but if we load up on toxins if we poison our brain if we poison the

liver if we destroy the kidneys in the process then is that really what we were

looking for so keep toxicity in mind as sort of a measurement that if you like

to make it to retirement then it that would be an important factors don't want

to be too harsh but I just want to make the point that we want to look at at

several different factors here to determine if these things are good for

us or not just as not just a single one so let's dig right into it here and

let's look at aspartame sucralose saccharin and acesulfame potassium these

are the most popular artificial sweeteners and because they are cheap

and they are stable and the end we likes them they are in thousands and

thousands of different foods they are non-caloric they have no impact on blood

glucose so as far as keto then aspartame would be okay sucralose would be okay

saccharine and acesulfame potassium would be okay

then we look at things like xylitol erythritol maltitol there are many

others they all end in -ol which means O L which means that they are sugar

alcohols that means that they have a chemical group on them that prevents

them from being digested by humans and they taste be really nice and sweet

they're not as sweet as these guys because these can be like hundreds of

times sweeter these are in the neighborhood of equal sweetness to sugar

and they often taste quite good they're more natural sweetness compared to sugar

it's more like we used to to the flavor humans can't digest them so therefore

they have they're okay for keto they have a negligible impact now we look at

sucrose honey agave high fructose corn syrup coconut sugar and all of them are

sugars so they will have an impact on blood sugar they will kick you out of

ketosis they contain calories etc so that would be a big red X for all of

them and then we get into the alternative but more natural because

these are made in test tubes they're made from toxic components but down here

we have natural substances with similar properties so we have stevia and monk

fruit and those would be definitely okay we might want to put a tiny little

question mark on some of these because anything that tastes sweet could

potentially create a little bit of an insulin response but as far as keeping

you out of ketosis then none of these would probably have enough to kick you

out so we're gonna get them a green then we have something called glycerol or

glycerin and it is the same word root as in triglyceride so it's a natural

substance it is something that the body uses all the time it's a backup fuel it

has a sweet taste but it's not a carbohydrate or a fat so it has calories

it is a fuel but it's like it's its own thing and it is an okay one when the

body makes triglycerides and then it burns off the fat it burns off the fatty

acid and it keeps the glycerin and it can turn that into sugar so it can

generate blood sugar and that's where a lot of the blood sugar comes from when

people are in ketosis another interesting one is chicory root this is

something that is almost a hundred percent fiber it tastes sweet but it

can't be broken down by humans and it is definitely okay it has a little bit of

similar properties to the sugar alcohols but we're going to look at that also in

a second so as far as ketosis then it's pretty clear-cut the ones that the the

synthetic ones and the sugar alcohols are okay the non-caloric sweeteners are

okay but anything with calories anything that's extracted from a food

basically is going to change blood sugar it's going to kick you out of ketosis

for sure but then let's look at how they differ also so glucose there is no

glucose impact from any of these guys xylitol there is nothing here but now

that we start looking the sucrose honey agave high fructose

corn syrup and coconut sugar now we need to look at how are they different

so sucrose is 50% fructose and 50% glucose the glucose raises blood sugar

but the fructose hardly raises blood sugar at all so therefore let's put two

Xs in that it's 2 times bad for blood sugar with sucrose honey agave has 80%

fructose so they have a less impact on blood glucose so we're just going to put

a single X here high fructose corn syrup varies but it generally also has more

fructose than glucose so it also gets one X and that's why a lot of these have

been promoted as alternatives the honey the agave the high fructose corn syrup

because people thought that the glucose impact was the only way that they did

damage so they say oh look here's a better sweetener because it has a lower

glycemic index but we're going to look at that and see why that's not the whole

story coconut sugar is very very close to

sucrose there's been some show some studies that suggest that it has a lower

glycemic index and others have suggested that it's exactly the same as sucrose so

we're gonna give it two x's there as well all of these are essentially no

impact on blood sugar so we're good there so so far it's pretty much the

same pattern but we're starting to distinguish the differences between the

natural the food sugars that they have different properties so now let's look

at insulin resistance here the these are going to get a check mark the

are gonna get checkmarks but here we're gonna start looking at this again so as

far as insulin resistance there's two ways that you can create insulin

resistance and one is by raising blood sugar to require an insulin response and

that's what the glucose response does so we're still gonna get a double here

because it has two different ways sucrose has two different ways of

creating insulin resistance honey has the same two sugars but it has more of

the fructose but the fructose creates insulin resistance basically by jamming

up the liver it overloads the liver because fructose can only be processed

in the liver so from that point of view there's not so much impact from the

glucose aspect but there's even more in terms of insulin resistance so we're

even going to give this a triple insulin resistance and we're going to do the

same thing for agave and high fructose corn syrup coconut sugar again is going

to behave very much like regular sugar so some people think oh well you know

it's brown it's natural yes it has a few minerals it has a few vitamins it's a

little more natural it's sort of like turbinado sugar or Demerara sugar or

something where it still has some traces of minerals in there but whatever they

call it a sugar is a sugar is a sugar is a sugar all right these guys down here

as far as insulin resistance they are okay now let's look at the biome let's

talk about which ones will feed bacteria and which will maybe feed the wrong

kinds of bacteria so again if it has no nutrients it's not going to feed the

biome either so we we can exclude the the artificial the synthetic ones we can

exclude right away the xylitol however these

sugar alcohols the bacteria some of the bacteria especially the pathogenic ones

especially the ones that you don't want they tend to get fed by these sugar

alcohols and some of them get fed more some of them are absorbed in different

places but basically they still feed the bacteria so here X's for the biome and

here we want to also understand that some people say oh well erythritol

that's a better one it gets absorbed sooner in the digestive tract it never

reaches the bowel but there's two places there's two regions where you

have bacteria normally bacteria are only going to be in the bowel in the large

intestine which is the last portion of the bowel but if you have a problem with

your biome then the bacteria tend to move from the large intestine and back

up into the small intestine and now you have something called SIBO small

intestinal bacterial overgrowth and the people that have really big problems

with bloating that gets painful and uncomfortable bloating and gassiness

they're the ones who not only have the bacteria where they're supposed to be in

the large intestine but who also have them in the small intestine and now it

doesn't matter if the erythritol doesn't make it to the large intestine because

it's still going to be around to feed the bacteria and the small intestine and

that's where you have the issues typically if you have issues sucrose

honey agave high fructose corn syrup these are just different combinations of

sugar they're all going to feed the biome to feed the the pathogenic to feed

the wrong part of the biome the stevia monk fruit glycerol glycerin they are

going to be okay and we could put a little bit of a question mark on the

chicory root because it is a fiber fibers tend to be can be having some

similar effects but it's gonna be a fraction of what you're gonna find with

the sugar alcohols the sugar alcohols will tell you on the package that this

product will cause laxative effects it may cause diarrhea if you consume a

significant amount of these so the significant amount is different for

different people some people it's a couple of tablespoons or three or four

tablespoons and for other people it might be a teaspoon or two so people a

lot of people are sensitive to these and some people who are really sensitive

might have a little trouble with the chicory root but it's not going to be

anywhere near the problems with with this one now let's talk about toxicity

do you want to live to see retirement then it's not just about losing weight

it's not just about how you look it's what your organs look like on the inside

and here is where these are some of the most potent neurotoxins that we know

they're right up there with with lead and arsenic and margarine and things

like that and I would put probably a triple X on the aspartame because it has

so many different toxic substances it breaks down into wood alcohol it breaks

it down into formaldehyde it's an excitotoxin it kills off your liver and

your kidneys and your brain it's really just not a good idea the others have

various different degrees and I wouldn't recommend them for anything in the world

but they're probably not quite as bad as the aspartame if you want to rank them

xylitol erythritol maltitol they are typically considered natural substances

but all of them are industrially produced now they are produced through

various chemical processes so let's just put a little question mark on these

because it depends as I'll eat all for example is called birch

because it supposedly occurs naturally in birches and that's where they started

deriving it but that's not where they get it from anymore sucrose honey agave

high fructose corn syrup most of these are relatively natural so

honey obviously is a very natural product and it even has some good

healthy benefit it has some nutrients it has some properties to it so here I

would have to say checked depending on the how the sugar is made but a good

organic turbinado sugar is still basically a natural product honey I

would even put two check marks as far as natural agave is usually made from

cactus from cactus sugar but depending on how its processed we might want to be

careful high fructose corn syrup is a very very synthetic product and it has

been shown to be laced with various toxins including mercury so I would

probably put a couple of exes on that coconut sugar is generally a a healthy

sugar so I put that up there with with a good quality sugar if there if you want

to call it such a thing stevia monk fruit glycerine glycerine

chicory root I would say are for the most part okay you want to be careful

though because with stevia and monk fruit primarily it depends on how they

process it and it depends on what they mix it with so stevia itself is a plant

and then they extract it into a concentrated white powder and then

because the powder is so concentrated they usually dilute it with something

and oftentimes they dilute it with these sugar alcohols or they dilute it with

like an inert powder like an inulin so it could be if you don't get the pure

kind it could be a mix of these different things so I would recommend

either liquid stevia or a concentrated powder stevia and

you'll know because one of these tiny little bottles would have about five six

hundred serving same thing with a monk fruit it's even a little bit more

concentrated than the stevia so if you find a little bottle with five hundred

servings then that would be the kind of stevia or monk fruit that you want to

get so out of these the only one that I would recommend for health would be the

ones at the bottom they are natural they'll keep you in ketosis they have no

impact on blood sugar or insulin resistance they have no impact on the

biome and they are not toxic so the synthetic ones here they look

pretty good on paper all the way up to here but the toxicity aspect is so

important in my mind a lot of people kind of brush over that but being a

holistic doctor and seeing what this stuff does to people

I can't caution it strongly enough so even though there's a bunch of green

checkmarks that that last aspect means that it's a poison that you want to keep

out of your body sugar is not a poison but for health purposes for all the

things that you're trying to accomplish it is not a good idea the sugar alcohols

they can help you and they may be okay in moderation so if you just like if you

don't like the taste of anything else but you find that you know the xylitol

it's not so bad in coffee for example and you just use a teaspoon or two

teaspoons a day and you don't notice anything bad with it then I wouldn't

worry about those I think any of the sugar alcohols would be okay then but if

you notice any kind of bloating then that means that that's not a good thing

for you and you want to start looking at your biome and doing the things that you

can as much as possible so if you'd like to learn more about insulin resistance

ketosis toxicity holistic health etc we have a whole library for you to learn

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