Contents:
- Medical Video: Dr. Sarah Hallberg: What are the best artificial sweeteners?
- Why do diabetics need to use special sweeteners?
- 3 tips for choosing sweeteners for diabetics
- 1. Know the womb and choose the low sugar
- 2. Choose a natural sweetener
- 3. Avoid sweeteners that have side effects that endanger health
Medical Video: Dr. Sarah Hallberg: What are the best artificial sweeteners?
At present, choosing sweeteners as a substitute for sugar has begun to flourish. In fact, there are many types and various brands of sweeteners available that can make you confused. However, if you suffer diabetes, what is the best and healthiest sweetener?
Why do diabetics need to use special sweeteners?
Before choosing a sweetener for diabetes, you should know the ins and outs of sweeteners and their types.
Why do people with diabetes need special sweeteners? People with type 2 diabetes need to limit the amount of calories. Sugar has high calories and insulin is not able to regulate it if you have diabetes, because you have a problem with insulin. This will cause high blood sugar levels. High blood sugar levels in the blood will make various dangerous complications, such as blindness to the difficulty of wounds to heal.
For diabetics, it is certainly very important to always keep blood sugar levels under control, to prevent dangerous complications. The use of sweeteners to replace sugar that is high in calories is one of the mandatory things for diabetic patients. However, now there are many choices of sweeteners for diabetic patients. How do you choose it?
3 tips for choosing sweeteners for diabetics
1. Know the womb and choose the low sugar
As you know before, it's important for diabetic patients to choose low-calorie sugar. How to?
The trick is to know the contents of various types of sweeteners. Choose one that has the lowest carbohydrates (sugar) and how much calorie content in these carbohydrates.
The lower the number of calories available, the better for you, especially for those of you who still eat rice or other carbohydrates. In fact, some types of sweeteners also label zero calories, meaning the calories are zero. In other words, this sweetener has no sugar content at all.
2. Choose a natural sweetener
Apparently, special sweeteners for diabetes are not only synthetic or artificial, but can also come from various natural ingredients such as plants. It is important to choose from plants because some artificial sweeteners can also cause various other health problems.
A research published by James Yarmolinsky et al in 2016 at The Journal of Nutrition prove that there is an increase in blood sugar or blood glucose levels for those who routinely consume artificial sweeteners. This research used a survey on 12884 participants.
In addition, according to a publication article Nature In 2014, the research carried out by Jotham Suez et al., several types of artificial sweeteners such as saccharin can change the composition of bacteria in the intestine. This can cause glucose intolerance so that it can increase glucose levels in the blood.
Therefore, you can choose sweeteners from plants such as corn plants and stevia plants. Stevia comes from plants in Paraguay, South America and has long been used by Indians there.
Research has proven that stevia does not cause substances that harm the body and will not increase blood sugar levels. In fact, sweeteners with stevia can also be used for cooking because the sweetness will not disappear when heated, such as for aspartame. In addition, stevia is also a sweetener that contains zero calories, so it's good for maintaining your weight.
3. Avoid sweeteners that have side effects that endanger health
Apparently, sweeteners for diabetes can have harmful effects on your body's health, one of which is the type of saccharin. According to Diabetes.co.uk, saccharin made from petroleum molecules can increase the risk of cancer. An experimental research has been carried out on animals to prove this. It turns out that many animals have cancer in their bladder.
Also, avoid sweeteners with aspartame types. Glassman said that aspartame can cause various negative effects, such as migraine, leukemia, lymphoma, and breast cancer. Aspartame is also not good for people with phenylketonuria (PKU). People with this disorder are not able to metabolize an important component of aspartame, namely phenylalanine.
In addition to saccharin and aspartame, it turns out sweetener sodium cyclamat or commonly called cyclamate also has serious side effects. Artificial sweeteners commonly added to saccharin because they have a taste more like sugar, have been banned in the United States since 1969 because they can increase the risk of bladder cancer to infertility in men.
Therefore, check the product packaging and find out what ingredients are in your sweetener to avoid the negative effects. You can choose sorbitol sweeteners, apart from having a good taste and not causing a bitter taste and not having an effect on your teeth. Sorbitol is currently widely used as a special sweetener for diabetes.
In addition, you can also choose Sukralose sweetener. Sukralose will not have an effect on your blood sugar levels and will not lose its sweetness due to heat so it is good for cooking.
