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I spend a lot of time researching where my food comes from and it is very important to me to buy whole, least-processed foods, and to limit my family’s sugar intake. So, what I learned about agave syrup was very disheartening.
Agave syrup or “nectar” is often touted for its low glycemic index—meaning that it is relatively low in glucose, and therefore does not raise blood sugar as much as other types of sugar or provoke as much of an insulin response. It may be low in glucose, but agave syrup is very high in fructose, a type of simple sugar found in fruit that can only be processed by your liver.
People tend to think that fructose is a benign sugar because it is found naturally in fruit. But, despite the name “fructose,” ounce for ounce, whole fruit actually has a relatively low concentration of fructose (10-20%) compared to processed sweeteners like agave nectar, high-fructose corn syrup, or cane sugar. And whole fruit comes with fiber and water that reduce how much of it you can eat, making it hard to consume very much fructose from fruit at all!
So just how much fructose is in agave nectar?
Agave syrups and nectars ! Nowhere does this ratio of fructose to glucose occur naturally. By comparison, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has 55% fructose, and white cane sugar has just 50% fructose.
The announced that they have halted and banned all future clinical trials of agave, and legally “de-listed” and placed a ban on agave for use in foods, beverages, chocolate and any other products, due to results of 5 years of human in-vivo clinical trials on agave. Additionally, they have warned that manufacturers who produce and use agave in products can be held legally liable for negative health incidents related to ingestion of agave.
In sum: Agave syrup is bad for you.
Agave is not naturally sweet like sugar cane, honey or fruit. In fact, agave is high in polysaccharides, and typically requires an intensive, industrial process to extract its sweetness on a commercial scale.
The main carbohydrates in the agave sap are complex forms of fructose called fructosans, one of which is inulin. In this state, the sap is not very sweet.
To produce agave syrup, juice is expressed from the core of the agave, called the piña. This liquid (or sap) is then heated anywhere from 120°F t 140°F for about 36 hours not only to concentrate the liquid into a syrup, but also to develop the sweetness.
When the agave sap is heated, the complex fructosans are hydrolyzed, or broken into smaller fructose units. The fructose-rich solution is then filtered to a product that ranges in color from light to dark depending on the degree of processing.
An alternative method of processing the agave juice without heat (“raw” agave) uses enzymes derived from (black mold) to hydrolyze the polysaccharide extract into fructose. Excess water is then evaporated using heat lower than 115°F.
Only a handful of companies use this method because it is labor intensive, and they cater specifically to the raw food crowd.
Whether by heat and chemicals or by enzymes, this process destroys all of the nutrients and other health promoting properties of the agave plant. Today’s agave syrup is not a whole or traditional food. It is a factory-made, modern product made on an assembly line.
For most of our long existence on this planet, humans have eaten very little sugar. Most wild fruit was much less sweet than the hybridized fruit available today, and unless you lived in a tropical region, there were very few fruit varieties, which were only available in their season and could not be stored well.
Wild honey was rare and, as you can imagine, very hard to procure.
It was only in the past 300 hundred or so years that we actively exploited Third World countries in part to ensure a steady supply of sugar cane for First World tables. And it is only in the past 150 or so years that we began to hybridize our fruits in earnest to make them sweeter, larger, and more prolific.
It is even more recently that we began to grow and ship fruit on an industrial, international scale so things like strawberries and mangoes would be abundantly available all year round in all parts of the world.
And most recently of all, we have been using modern industrial and chemical processes to manufacture sweeteners not found in nature at all, like agave nectar.
Since that time, whether from fruit, honey, cane sugar, or hydrolized high-fructose syrups (corn, rice, agave), Americans have steadily increased our sugar intake up to the 130 pounds we each eat per year today.
The epidemics of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, tooth decay and other degenerative diseases today would suggest that is maladaptive and harmful to our survival.
So what’s a health-minded person to do? Choose the least-processed, natural sweetener you like best and use it in moderation. Your body will thank you!
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