Agave - Is It Really Good For You?

Not long ago I settled as using agave for my sweetener thinking it was better than sugar or any other processed sweetener out there. While we knew it wasn’t raw, even though many raw recipes call for it, we still thought it was better than other sweeteners. You can see that we used it in our raw ice cream.

It’s from a plant for god sakes. But the more I think about, after reading up on it, I realize that it’s not straight from the plant. It’s taken and processed to become the liquid we know as agave. If it was straight from the plant we would be able to go to the plant and squeeze out some agave. This is a major bummer for me cause I like agave but the fact that it may be worse than high fructose corn syrup make me go 'uh uh'.

Today, I found a few articles about the negatives of Agave but I think the one I refer to below is the one that really hit home for me. The purpose of his article is to show how agave nectar is not a natural sweetener but a highly refined form of fructose, more concentrated than the high fructose corn syrup used in sodas. I need to research it more but I absolutely understand what's been said in this article and it's enough to make me stop using it until I read more and learn more.

The article entitled ‘Agave Nectar, the High Fructose Health Food Fraud written by Rami Nagel can be found here http://www.naturalnews.com/024892.html.

So until I learn more and satisfy myself on something different I'll be using alternatives to agave.

Some alternatives to sugar:

1. Fresh Fruits. This one's pretty self explanatory. A lot of fruits are naturally sweet and can give your recipe the sweetness it craves.






2. Stevia leaves. It's a herb that tastes sweet. What I found out about stevia is to avoid the white stevia powder and the stevia liquid drops because they have been highly processed. (Another one that surprised me but is good to know)





3. Use dried fruits. If you need it to be liquid you can soak them in water and blend them up with the same soak water. This is kind of like making almond milk. Dates, figs, and prunes are some of the sweetest dried fruits that tend to work well in recipes.



4. Raw Honey - It occurs naturally in nature. Honey is not vegan though and wouldn't work for a lot of people for that reason .





The more I read the more I learn about this seemingly simple thing. I think I will stick to the fruit for now.