{"id":1367,"date":"2012-03-20T10:52:21","date_gmt":"2012-03-20T14:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/?p=1367"},"modified":"2012-03-20T10:52:21","modified_gmt":"2012-03-20T14:52:21","slug":"agave-nectar-healthy-option-or-another-poison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/03\/agave-nectar-healthy-option-or-another-poison.html","title":{"rendered":"Agave Nectar &#8212; Healthy Option or Another Poison?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Eating healthy was hard enough when you just had to avoid chemicals.\u00a0 Now bad-for-you stuff is sneaking into the stores masquerading as natural and healthy.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/03\/207166_10150566829270537_758175536_18018906_565319_n16.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-1368\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/261\/2012\/03\/207166_10150566829270537_758175536_18018906_565319_n16-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>I was delighted to discover agave nectar. The very name sounds healthy.\u00a0 Agave is the plant that grows wild in Mexico and nectar conjures up the image of a flower and bees.\u00a0 Besides that, one of my favorite \u201cclean eating\u201d blogs uses it in the recipes so I don\u2019t have to bother to do a conversion.\u00a0 And I\u2019m NOT good at converting recipes.<\/p>\n<p>So I was dismayed when my food-knowledgable daughter found it in my cabinet and said, \u201cMom, you shouldn\u2019t be using this.\u00a0 It\u2019s worse than high fructose corn syrup.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That was condemnation, indeed! \u00a0After all the reading and research I\u2019ve done I\u2019ve come to the conclusion that fructose = poison.\u00a0 It may be a slow poison and, like arsenic, a tiny bit won\u2019t kill you.\u00a0 A big amount over time, though, will make you obese and lead to a host of horrific diseases.<\/p>\n<p>Surely not&#8230;. I checked it out and found, as usual, contradictory Web sites.\u00a0 The pro-agave ones (all produced by the manufacturer or online store selling the sweetener) say it is natural, harmless, and does not cause a jump in your blood sugar.<\/p>\n<p>The con-agave sites tell a different story.\u00a0 While it does come from a plant, we don\u2019t get the natural product. That\u2019s not sap in the bottle, as I wrongly assumed.\u00a0 Food producers strip off the leaves and take the bulb that is the agave\u2019s core. That starchy root is processed until it is 90% fructose.\u00a0 High fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose.\u00a0 My daughter was right.\u00a0 It is worse. \u00a0 More fructose than high fructose corn syrup makes agave nectar a bad-for-you food.<\/p>\n<p>Why then does agave have a low glycemic index?\u00a0 More research and I found another sad answer.\u00a0 The sugar from agave is metabolized in the liver and goes straight to fat, never getting to the blood stream.\u00a0 Since the glycemic index is a measure of the sugar in your blood, it has a low number. \u00a0 Besides, it contributes to insulin resistance, which is also bad news.<\/p>\n<p>So this \u201cnatural\u201d sugar substitute just got an eviction notice from my kitchen &#8212; and I\u2019m going to be more careful to check out these things in the future!<\/p>\n<p>Eating to live and living for Christ,<\/p>\n<p>Susan Jordan Brown<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Eating healthy was hard enough when you just had to avoid chemicals.\u00a0 Now bad-for-you stuff is sneaking into the stores masquerading as natural and healthy. I was delighted to discover agave nectar. The very name sounds healthy.\u00a0 Agave is the plant that grows wild in Mexico and nectar conjures up the image of a flower&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[397,396,372,141,389],"class_list":["post-1367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eating-plan","tag-agave","tag-agave-nectar","tag-high-fructose-corn-syrup","tag-sugar","tag-sweetener"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Agave Nectar - Healthy Option or Another Poison? - Beyond Gorgeous<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/03\/agave-nectar-healthy-option-or-another-poison.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Agave Nectar - Healthy Option or Another Poison? - Beyond Gorgeous\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Eating healthy was hard enough when you just had to avoid chemicals.\u00a0 Now bad-for-you stuff is sneaking into the stores masquerading as natural and healthy. I was delighted to discover agave nectar. The very name sounds healthy.\u00a0 Agave is the plant that grows wild in Mexico and nectar conjures up the image of a flower&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/03\/agave-nectar-healthy-option-or-another-poison.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beyond Gorgeous\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-03-20T14:52:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beyondgorgeous\/files\/2012\/03\/207166_10150566829270537_758175536_18018906_565319_n16-150x150.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"sbrown\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Agave Nectar - Healthy Option or Another Poison? - Beyond Gorgeous","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beyondgorgeous\/2012\/03\/agave-nectar-healthy-option-or-another-poison.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Agave Nectar - Healthy Option or Another Poison? - Beyond Gorgeous","og_description":"Eating healthy was hard enough when you just had to avoid chemicals.\u00a0 Now bad-for-you stuff is sneaking into the stores masquerading as natural and healthy. 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