Associations with sweets are, for many people, complex. Positive associations might include birthdays, Christmas, and treats we’re rewarded with as children, while negative associations such as cravings, binging, weight gain, and health complications are a source of shame for many.
After a lifetime on and off the sugar wagon - and all-too-familiar failures with a cold-turkey approach - my philosophy is to take a nuanced approach to this issue. Arming yourself with basics of nutrition and psychology, as opposed to self-recrimination, can be the best of both worlds, letting you experience the benefits of carbohydrates without the worst of their side effects.
Glycemic Index
Crucial to managing carbohydrate intake is awareness of high- and low-glycemic index foods. The GI index is a measure of how fast sugar hits the bloodstream, which is determined by both the amount of carbohydrates in a serving of a food and the simplicity of complexity of those carbs.
Simple sugars like sucrose, fructose and lactose hit the bloodstream fastest, while long-chain carbs, known as starches, hit the bloodstream slower. Grains and legumes are richest in starches. Consuming fiber, protein, and fluids can also slow the rate of digestion, lowering the glycemic impact of high-GI foods.
Awareness of the GI can also support weight loss, since high-GI foods trigger massive releases of insulin and insulin is a fat storage hormone.
Resistant Starch
Among starches, resistant starch is most desirable. Resistant starch resists digestion until reaching the large intestine, where it finds its use in feeding the microbiome. Your microbiome is a rich milieu of hundreds of billions of bacteria with myriad functions, including aiding in digestion and assimilation of nutrients, producing energy, and synthesizing vitamins, hormones and neurotransmitters.
My go-to source of resistant starch is green banana flour, which can be used to produce delicious, guilt-free baked goods like the recipe below. I recommend the LiveKuna brand.
Sugar-Free Green Banana Flour Pancakes
Serves 2
2 Tablespoons Oil
1 Cup Green Banana Flour
2 Tablespoons Cocoa Powder
1 Teaspoon Pure Stevia Powder
⅔ Teaspoon Baking Soda
½ Teaspoon Salt
1 Cup Milk of Choice
2 Large Eggs
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Heat oil in a skillet over medium high heat.
Whisk dry ingredients in a bowl with a fork, then add in liquid ingredients. Whisk until egg is thoroughly incorporated into the mixture and no dry powder remains.
Pour mixture onto oiled skillet, letting cook for several minutes until golden brown on the underside. Flip the pancake(s), turn off heat and let cook several minutes until golden brown.
Serve with (greek) yogurt, berries and/or nut butter.
Sweeteners
While many online sources will try to persuade you that some sweeteners are good sources of nutrition, I won’t. White or brown sugar, turbinado sugar, molasses, maple syrup, agave, and a number of others are all high-GI foods with negligible nutritional value.
The only sweetener of that class that is defensible, in my eyes, is honey. Some studies have found that it has antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties and fights oxidative stress. Dr. Josh Axe advocates for consuming local honey to introduce the immune system to local pollens so that it won’t overreact come pollen season. Dave Asprey, the Bulletproof guru, also recommends taking a tablespoon before bed to keep blood sugar steady all night long.
For my part, I suggest limiting even honey and instead relying on the two singlemost unproblematic (and calorie-free!) sweeteners: stevia and monkfruit extract. Both are delicious, and stevia has the distinction of being the only sweetener actively beneficial for the gut.
Vitamin Water Zero is sweetened with both and is worth a try if you’re skeptical of those sweeteners’ tastes.
I recommend purchasing pure stevia (try Now brand BetterStevia) as grocery store brands are typically 99% erythritol so it can be used in the volume as sugar in recipes. Some people have no issue with erythritol, but it can aggravate gut symptoms in the sensitive.
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