A Natural Sugar That May Cultivate Health-Promoting Effects

Have you ever told yourself that you need to quit or limit eating sweets, drinking soda, and adding sugar to your coffee but just can’t? Perhaps the thought of leaving some of these more decadent dishes is not worth the speculative notion that it may benefit my health. After all, we’ve all seen or known someone who eats whatever they want yet seems to be in perfect health. So we tell ourselves, why can’t I be that person? Why will I weigh a pound more the next day if I eat an extra apple? An apple— How is that even possible? And finally, we conclude that if there’s that much discrepancy in weight management, then I can’t be sure that any alteration in food habits will lead to any noticeable transformation in my health. Moreover, who is to say I’ll even adapt to the stress? I might just be miserable for a month until I quit and give in. Do I really want to waste all that time? So, we do nothing or, at best, passively and carry on.

Would quitting sugar be worth it if we could minimize the stress that comes from changing habits? What if scientific research shows I can support my well-being without renouncing all things sweet? Would it then be worth it? Is that even possible?

A history of prospective sugar substitutes

An artificial sweetener called saccharin rose to the occasion when a shortage of sugar during World War 1 increased the demand for sugar alternatives. It was nearly perfect: A zero-calorie sugar substitute, three hundred times sweeter than sugar, making its scalability easier, with no noticeable side effects. Well, at least until a study in 1977 showed noticeable side effects (cancer) in male mice caused by high doses of saccharine. Four years later, saccharin was banned, sales plummeted, and some companies died with it. However, the yearning to find the magic sugar did not.

Vehement arguments led to more pressure, and shortly afterward, the FDA controversially approved aspartame in 1983. Five years later, acesulfame K was approved, and ten years after that, in 1998, the FDA approved sucralose. But the question remained: Were synthetic sweeteners an apt surrogate for sugar, and were they fostering well-being?

With this in mind, scientists began to measure biomarkers such as glucose, insulin, glucagon-like peptide 1, and cognitive function in these sugar replacement studies. With each passing year, the consumers’ encouragement grew as most of their findings (with a few exceptions) showed no impact on these biomarkers. It was a victory for artificial sweeteners! They began to be more readily promoted and distributed, and the daily consumer gravitated toward these sugar alternatives, leading to an increasing trend in 2012.

But in 2014, researchers and scientists gathered and asked an altogether unique question. Would artificial sweeteners induce glucose intolerance by altering the gut microbiota? What the scientists found was, by most interpretations, shocking and, at the very least unoptimistic for the future of artificial sweeteners. First, they saw unfavorable changes in intestinal bacterial communities from mice consuming artificial sweeteners. Then, they found that if you give humans artificial sweeteners daily and transfer their gut microbiota to germ-free mice, these mice would develop glucose intolerance, a marker of metabolic disease. However, despite these findings and the brief fright among smaller, more health-conscious communities, artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, acesulfame k, and sucralose were still highly desired among the general public.

Yet, many people have opted for other sugar substitutes, even among the general public. One, in particular, has been quietly changing the narrative of what it means to reinforce well-being.

Allulose, a brief introduction

Discovered a decade before aspartame and approved by the FDA in 2019, allulose is the most undervalued replacement for sugar, and its unique features separate it from its competitors. For instance, unlike its competitors, allulose is a natural sugar atomically similar to fructose. Still, unlike fructose, its arrangement of atoms makes it so that when consumed, it is rapidly absorbed by the small intestine and is excreted intact in the urine with little to no metabolization. Unlike regular carbohydrates, which get metabolized for energy production and storage, the carbohydrates found in allulose do not add additional calories to a significant degree. Every 40 calories of sugar are equivalent to 4 calories of allulose, and the sweetness in every 10 grams of cane sugar equals 14 grams of allulose, making allulose about 70% as sweet and 10% as many calories as table sugar.

Taste profile

Although allulose is found in fruits like figs and raisins, it is not the case that this sugar tastes or acts anything like these fruits. I say acts because raisins have been noted to carry an after-taste, but allulose does not share this same feature. Instead, this low-calorie sugar can be described as having a polished, clean, sweet taste, similar to table sugar. The sweetness profile is so identical that you may have to compare them side by side unless you have a knack for such discernment to distinguish one from the other.

Deeper dive into allulose

Despite being similar in taste to sugar yet calorically insignificant, what makes allulose special? Due to its unique chemical composition, allulose not only resembles sugar, but a study shows that if adults consumed 10 grams of allulose along with 50 grams of sugar, the postprandial glycemic response was lessened. In other words, adding a little allulose to your tea when eating dessert could reduce insulin secretion and peak glucose response caused by the dessert. In this way, it is conceivable that adding allulose to a high carbohydrate meal may marginally attenuate the risk of diabetes by stabilizing the insulin-to-glucose relationship. This is believed to be partially caused by mild inhibition of alpha-glucosidase (an enzyme that breaks down molecules into glucose) in the small intestine. This then increases a peptide called GLP-1, which slows digestion and promotes weight loss.

But does allulose genuinely support weight loss? This question was asked in a different study evaluating the pre and post-body measurements of people who drank a placebo (Sucralose), low allulose (4 g), or high allulose (7 g) beverage two times a day for 12 weeks. After 12 weeks, the researchers found that the placebo group had an insignificant change in their weight. However, the low allulose group lost 2 pounds, and the high allulose group lost almost 3 pounds on average with no change to lean body mass. That’s a difference of 3 pounds in 3 months for consuming 14 g (about a tablespoon) of allulose, and perhaps more if the study was extended. Fascinatingly, you may lose weight by eating this natural sugar, and this result may go beyond GLP-1 activation. It is also believed that some of these effects can be attributed to a reduction in liver enzymes involved in fat metabolism. However, more research must be done to validate or discredit this claim. And more research will be done as more people gradually veer from table sugar.

Bottom line

A strange and mysterious phenomenon occurred a few millenniums ago in ancient Greece. A few patients exhibited an atypical disposition toward frequent urination and more uncannily emaciation. At the time, the disconcerted physician hypothesized that the disease could be the product of environmental factors. After further examination, Hippocrates recommended a low-starch diet and vigorous exercise.

Fast forward more than two millenniums later, and our recommendations have mostly stayed the same. Except now, scientists have identified the pathophysiology and the means to develop insulin for diabetic patients. Pharmacists have capitalized on these findings and calculated the best cost-to-return ratio for maximal profitability while urging marketers to get on the social boat and flaunt its efficacy surpassing the risk of not taking it. This persistent influx of discovery, scalability, and adverts assured the public that their best interest was at hand. After all, many people do need insulin.

But what about the foreign notion of preserving your well-being by preventing insulin resistance? Is that even possible? If not, we would have to explain how diabetes prevalence increased over tenfold within one human lifetime. We would further have to explain how exercise and diet have been shown countless times to inhibit and suppress type 2 diabetes and its progression. Scientific research is creating a world where now more than ever, it is more accessible to support well-being with little to no alteration in daily habits. The challenge arises when the pool of complacency runs deeper than the preference for health.

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