One of the hot new “healthy” sweeteners is agave nectar. It is produced from the agave plant (the same one used to make tequila!) and has been marketed as a healthier alternative to sugar and other sweeteners. In this article I will be explaining why this is false and why other sweeteners like Agave nectar should be avoided!The Glycemic Myth
The main reason Agave nectar is promoted is because of its low glycemic index and load. The glycemic index measures the increase of blood glucose after eating any form of carbohydrate. The glycemic load takes this measurement and accounts for the amount of food needed to produce a given glucose response. The most important thing to know is that they both measure glucose in the blood.
While this can provide some information for diabetics to better control insulin (increased glucose means elevated insulin levels) it does not tell us the whole story about the foods that we eat. You see, glucose is only part of the picture when it comes to sugar. Sugar (sucrose) is in fact made up of two molecules: glucose and fructose. While glucose goes into the blood and can be used by all your muscles, fructose is sent straight to your liver for processing, therefore it does not show on the glycemic index.
This explains why Agave nectar has such a low glycemic index: it is almost 100% fructose. This does NOT, however, mean that it is a healthier choice. Once fructose hits the liver, it is broken down and used to replenish and fuel the liver. Once the liver is replenished, fructose has no more useful function. So what is to be done with extra fructose? It is stored as fat!
Fructose = Fat
Until recently, fructose was mostly found in fruits, honey, and some vegetables. In quantities available in nature, you would normally consume no more than 15 g of fructose per day or 12 lbs. per year. Today in America, the average person consumes around 62 g of fructose per day or 50 lbs. per year! What makes this particular form of carbohydrate so unfavorable is that because it cannot be fully used by our bodies, it generally turns straight to fat!
We already mentioned that only your liver can utilize fructose. What we didn’t mention was how little your liver actually needs. Besides the fact that the liver can actually use any kind of sugar to help keep it fueled (fructose is not the only kind needed), it also takes a lot of work to even deplete liver fuel stores in the first place! Unless you work out vigorously for an extended period of time, consuming no carbs in the process, it would be hard to deplete the sugar stored in your liver. With moderate workouts every day, it would take 2-3 days of having zero carbs.
Unless you are dealing with one of those two scenarios, you are probably doing just fine. And if your liver is doing just fine, then any fructose you eat will turn straight to fat. Now some of this can be used as fuel, but if you are relatively sedentary, you can bet that a good amount is being stored as fat.
(This diagram is showing that both glucose and fructose can be metabolized in the liver, but that once glycogen stores are full, fatty acid synthesis goes in full swing. There is no reason for the derivatives of fructose to move up the chain to help with storage. All efforts toward creating more fat!)
The Game Plan
While you do not have to cut out ALL fructose from your diet, there are some things that we would recommend to keep your sugar levels in check:
1a) Start reading labels! If you buy ANYTHING that has a label on it, see what is in it. If it has Agave nectar, it might not be a winner. Other high fructose sweeteners include HFCS (High Fructose Corn Syrup), sugar, beet sugar, cane sugar, or just straight fructose.
1b) Don’t buy things in packages! If you really want to be sure you are staying clear of fructose, just avoid packaged/processed food altogether. NOTE: bread, yogurt, deli meat, and even some soups can be just as bad as cereal, potato chips, and candy bars.
2) Keep away from caloric beverages. Soda and juice have a significant amount of sugar, and coffee and tea are usually filled up with sugar. Remember, “raw cane sugar” has the same amount of fructose as HFCS.
3) Eat in. You would be amazed at how much restaurant food has sugar added. Well, I guess it’s not that amazing, that’s why it tastes so good!
4) Limit fruit. This is always a hard one for people to accept, but it is important to understand that you do not NEED much fruit. This doesn’t mean you have to completely cut it out, but if you are having 4-5 servings a day, you are consuming a serious amount of sugar and fructose. If you do decide to include fruit, 1-2 servings are plenty and it is best to emphasize berries.
(NOTE: If you are working to lose weight, 0-1 servings is best. You can still get all of those vitamins and minerals from veggies. Did you know that one spear of broccoli has just as much vitamin C as an orange?)
5) If you MUST sweeten, use Stevia or a small amount of local honey. While even these can easily be over used, we must still respect the need for alternatives.
Wrap Up
If you are looking to lose weight, or more appropriately, lose fat, you must consider your fructose intake. Regular exercise can help tremendously, but it takes limiting the amount of sugar you eat to really make a difference. Agave nectar is particularly bad because it is almost all fructose, but other sugars are not much better. In the end, it is all processed, so we must continue to work toward providing our bodies with whole, natural foods if we hope to truly be healthy. And that’s the goal anyway right? So let’s watch our sugar, drop some pounds, look better, and feel better in the process!
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