Sweet Cheats

‘You don’t need sugar; you’re sweet enough already’

Reducing sugar is so tricky – it’s something most of us need to do, and it’s also one of the most challenging. Between strong cravings and the abundance of sneaky everyday foods, it takes real effort to cut the sweet stuff. Luckily, there are several ingredients that can help you eliminate sugar and other sweeteners, but still enjoy some sweetness

There’s no one food, but an abundance of food that has secret (when you get your sweet taste back where it should be) foods:

• Fruit: apple, apricot, banana, berries, kiwi, mango, melons, papaya, pear, plum, peach, and citrus

• Vegetables: sweet potatoes, yams, beets, carrots, winter squash

• Nuts: cashew, coconut, macadamia, pistachio, and pecan

• Spices: cinnamon, clove, nutmeg

• Extracts: almond, hazelnut, mint, and vanilla

Now let’s look at some of these in detail, and not just reading more and more content but trying to add 1-2 of these to today’s meals!

Citrus

The acid in citrus brings out the flavor in foods and brightens it. So, sweet foods taste sweeter with a splash of lemon or a bit of orange zest. Blend zest, juice, or both into sauces, dressings, baked goods, or drinks. Use any that you like (lemon, orange, grapefruit, lime, etc.), or combine them.
Sugar tastes sweet and lemons taste sour so how can lemons be sweet like sugar? The truth is that sugar addiction changes your perception of taste, and lemons bring out the flavors of other foods. Lemon is actually sweeter than sugar. Oh and lemons are like magic fairy dust for your insides, especially your liver.
When you give up excessive and unnecessary sugar you relearn how food is supposed to taste, including “sweet”. And while lemons may not be your choice of an afternoon snack, they’re powerhouses to bring out the flavor of other foods. They also contain unique flavonoids with great antioxidant properties which give lemons great healing properties—including the decision a cell makes about whether to divide or die, which are altered by lemon (and lime) juice, as are the activities of special immune cells. Like I said, lemons are pretty much magic fairy dust right?

Try adding lemon or lime to a pho or other spring broths (natural Botox and sweetness in a bowl!).

Onions

Onions at breakfast are easily incorporated into bitter braising greens sautéed with butter and garlic, and while it’s well known a good sausage sizzle cannot exist without onions, it also needn’t be limited to lunch or dinner! Onions are both a sugar and digestive cheat: they add that little something sweet at the end of each meal we all look for, but also, alongside garlic, scallions, green onions, spring onions, shallots and chives, alliums all contain odoriferous sulfur compounds important for our liver’s paths of detoxification. They can also help your body grow healthy bifido bacteria that reduce the growth of harmful bacteria.

Try adding caramelised onions to your next breaky or raw soaked in lemon to your next salad (my personal favourite).

Vanilla

Vanilla just smells like candy! Sometimes adding an ingredient can trick us into thinking foods are sweeter because we associate that ingredient with sweetness. Such is the case with vanilla. When researchers at Penn State added vanilla to milk, study participants, who didn’t know vanilla was added, perceived the milk as sweeter. Studies on vanillin also suggest it contains strong antioxidant and antibacterial properties.

• Since ancient times, vanilla has been regarded an aphrodisiac.

• Antibacterial properties of vanillin help cleanse skin problems and help fight the damage caused by free radicals, slowing the signs of aging.

• Cough syrups often use vanilla flavoring to mask bitter tastes. Although there is little evidence to prove the effect of vanilla extract on coughing, the mild anesthetic properties may relieve symptoms such as pain from a sore throat or headache.

• Vanillin contains active compounds, which have an effect on the central nervous system. Capsaicin acts as a pain reliever, while eugenols work effectively as topical anesthetics, to aid aches and infections.

Vanilla in 1 minute snickers add that little bit of something even over maple syrup!

Coconut

We think of coconut as a nut, but botanically it also can be considered a fruit. Though we usually associate sweetened coconut with desserts, coconut on its own has a mild, sweet flavor, and that’s true of the flesh, oil, and milk. Use coconut oil in baked goods, make a custard out of coconut milk (or cream), sweeten a smoothie with coconut water, add coconut flakes to bar cookies or crumble toppings, or mix coconut butter and maple syrup into a glaze for lemon bread.

Try these recipes for coconut sweetness almond bark Thai red curry and coconut (or chocolate) pannacotta.

Beets

Loaded with good nutrition, beets boost brain and heart health, add color and flavor to salads. Along with their earthy edge, beets boast plenty of sweetness, so you can use them in some unexpected places to reduce or replace sugar. Try adding beets to your bliss balls or fudge, blending them into smoothies (try rainbow smoothies), beet kvass for digestive super strengthening or pour some of the juice into a cocktail or mocktail.

Cinnamon
Cinnamon is an exotic-spice-made-every-day, lending itself to both sweet and savoury dishes. It has a rich culinary history as both a spice and a medicine and is a particularly high source of antioxidants that may improve blood glucose control. It’s the epitome of nutrient density.

Your brain does not like blood sugar changes, up or down. Each one signals a state of emergency in your body. But cinnamon has direct effects on our body’s blood sugar lowering hormone, insulin, at the same time as lessening food’s impact on our blood sugar. It’s really a double whammy!

Try sprinkling cinnamon on carb rich veggies like sweet potato to lessen the impact on blood sugar. I add it to my training fluids too, for that little extra buzz but also for the effects on insulin surging around my body during and post exercise. 

Dates

With their caramel flavor and soft, chewy texture, dried dates are a natural way to sweeten dishes without sugar (plus, unlike sugar, dates are rich in fibre and minerals. Use them to make cookies, butters for pancakes, as a sweetener in cakes, to bump up the sweetness in banana pancakes or a guilt free sticky date mini pudding!

They’re also great in savoury sauces like teriyaki and hoisin.

Salt

Yes, you read that right - salt makes foods sweeter. Along with making foods saltier, salt lights up glucose receptors in our mouths, so we sense the sweetness more. Salt also causes butter tastes to fall into the background, further enhancing sweetness. Of course, it’s always a balance – too much salt makes all manner of dishes unpleasant. The interaction of salt and sweetness is why we love salty-sweet combos so much, as in almond bark and single serve fudge.

Sugars have a two pronged effect of your blood sugar. Firstly they make you crave because of the vitamins and minerals it displaces in order to remove them from your blood (remember your brain does not like blood sugar spikes up or down) but also dehydrates you because all those lost vitamins and minerals are dissolved in water for transport. When you give up excessive and unnecessary sugar, we relearn how food is supposed to taste, including natural sweetness in foods.  Have you tried to ‘quit’ sugar ?