Unrefined Sugar Suggestions

Artificial sweetener.

I use liquid stevia. One dropper full is about the equivalent to 1/4 - 1/2 c sugar for sweetness. I tend to slightly under sweeten because too much stevia can leave an aftertaste that some find distasteful.

I use Sweetleaf, I think it is called. Try one drop per tsp or Tbs in your morning tea or coffee and see how it is. Just start low and add more to taste.

I use xylitol or stevia or sucralose

nvmomketo wrote: »

I use liquid stevia. One dropper full is about the equivalent to 1/4 - 1/2 c sugar for sweetness. I tend to slightly under sweeten because too much stevia can leave an aftertaste that some find distasteful.

I use Sweetleaf, I think it is called. Try one drop per tsp or Tbs in your morning tea or coffee and see how it is. Just start low and add more to taste.

I use this too! I just posted about this a little while ago! It's zero calorie and Stevia is an herb that just tastes sweet, just like oregano and parsley. I have actually just chewed on a Stevia leaf and it's bizarre how it tastes like sugar but is just a green leaf. I love the stuff, but the extract is very concentrated, so one careful squeeze of the little bottle is enough to almost oversweeten my coffees and teas.

I use Sweetleaf liquid Stevia, Better Stevia powder and Lakanto monkfruit sweetener (the golden is my favorite) in no exact order. I find them all to be tasty, with no weird aftertaste, and am still experimenting with them in cooking. But I use them all regularly in my coffee.

RejsGirl wrote: »

I'm considering cutting out refined sugar (or at least trying to cut out the majority of it, since I find myself eating SO much of it these days). I'm wondering for those of you who have cut it out or at least tried to cut down, what's your first choice to use in place of the sugar...

...for baking? And can you use it in all your cooking needs?

some of the suggestions above will be broadly useless for baking, like the liquids for example. Sugar provides bulk, moisture retention and other things that 10 drops of a liquid concentrate cannot.

Erythritol and Xylitol (poisonous to dogs) are bulking agents that might be combined with an artificial sweetener or used on their own for replacing sugar in baking.

I'll talk about baking. There's a Splenda brown sugar blend that can substitute cup for cup for the real thing. It has half the calories.

You can experiment recipe by recipe cutting the sugar called for by up to a third and get used to your recipes having less sweetness. You may also skip the icing.

You may cut out the baking altogether other than special occasions. For a treat I have baked apples with walnuts, the Splenda sugar blend mentioned, and cinnamon.

There are tons of raw, natural sweeteners out there. This guide should help.

The issue with the raw natural sugars @LHWhite903 is that they will all have the same calories. I had to pay attention to that when I was T2 diabetic.

The artificial sweeteners are the only way to reduce the calories in a food.

Well, @RejsGirl said she was thinking of to cut out refined sugars and wanted a more natural substitute, @jgnatca .

RejsGirl wrote: »

I'm considering cutting out refined sugar (or at least trying to cut out the majority of it, since I find myself eating SO much of it these days). [...]
I bake and I cook a lot, so something that's a healthy and usable alternative for all recipes would be great and I do add about 3 teaspoons of sugar per cup of coffee in the morning. [...]

That's why I posted the guide. It was more a way of saying, "here, look at the options", rather than making any recommendations.

jgnatca wrote: »

The issue with the raw natural sugars @LHWhite903 is that they will all have the same calories. I had to pay attention to that when I was T2 diabetic.

The artificial sweeteners are the only way to reduce the calories in a food.

I understand AODM very well, as my father has it. He uses saccharin (sweet 'n' low) in his tea. However, there are also some natural sweeteners of lower calories in there, such as that "miracle fruit" stuff, and stevia and monk fruit, which others have mentioned. You would have seen them as the first options listed on that page, had you bothered to look. Artificial sweeteners are one way to go about reducing calories, but they're not quite the only way.