What's Your Favorite Sweetener?

29 Comments

1. Honey is a great medicine in small quantities. New Zealand sells Manukau honey for antiseptic properties. I have an antiseptic honey ointment that cleared up burns very fast as if you never got a burn. So I believe in honey
   However I do grow stevia in the garden and that is an excellent sweetener without the calories. Go for natural and stay away from anything that you don’t know anything about.

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   • That’s awesome! Thank you so much for sharing your opinion and tips!

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2. I don’t usually sweeten stuff but, when I do, I use brown sugar (or raw sugar) if it’s available. I usually drink tea as it unless I have a soar throat. Then I add honey.

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   • I don’t like my tea sweet either. Thanks for sharing!

3. I love honey in tea. I like acacia and meadow honey, and I drink coffee without sugar

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   • I love acacia and linden honey. My great grandfather used to have bees and make acacia honey.

4. I love honey, but fresh raw honey. If you buy honey from a local farmer it helps with allergies, or so I am told. I put it in oatmeal, hot tea, even in vinegar and water for an upset stomach.

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   • Thanks for sharing your tips, Carol! I didn’t use to like honey, but it has many benefits, so I started using it more. I prefer acacia and linden honey.

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     • As long as it is local and fresh I like it.

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5. We use muscovado sugar for coffee whenever it is available — it is a by-product of sugar cane

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   • Thanks for sharing! I’ve heard of it but I haven’t tried it.

6. I don’t make or eat desserts very often but when I do I’ll normally use Demerara sugar (it’s dark brown and moist, and adds flavour as well as sweetness). Of course it depends what I’m making. But my favourite sweetener has got to be concentrated date juice, what is called in Arabic ‘dibs’. In Iran, it is mixed with tahini and eaten for breakfast. Yeah, it’s pretty darn good, but very rich 🙂 Try it if you get a chance!

   • Thank you so much for sharing! I have a love–hate relationship with dates, but this juice sounds interesting.

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7. We always had honey at home. We’ve been producing it until today.

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   • That’s awesome! I didn’t use to like it, but now I started using it more. 🙂

8. For me, it depends on what I’m sweetening. I use stevia for most things, but some of my recipes don’t taste right without brown sugar or molasses, though stevia is a healthier alternative. Still, my *favorite* is maple syrup. We seldom get any because of the expense.

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   • Thanks for sharing! My favorite as taste and flavour is maple syrup, too. I try not to waste it and I only use it for raw desserts. I can’t get used to stevia, so I decided to mix it with another sweetener that I already know.

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     • In many baking recipes, I’ve found that stevia can’t actually be tasted. Only the sweetness is. That is the reason I use strictly stevia in my zucchini bread recipe. Like most sweeteners, though, it does take some getting used to in other things. I remember when saccharine first came out…I never did like it because of the aftertaste.

       Incidentally, the slight bitterness in stevia can be overcome. Commercial stevia producers simply don’t usually bother. Pure stevia is 100 times sweeter than sugar, too. When I make extract, I don’t let the leaves soak in alcohol longer than 2 days. Any longer than that and the bitterness can be tasted.

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       • This is very interesting! Actually, I bought my stevia, I’ve never tried making my own.
         When I used it for the first time, I felt as if my blood sugar levels got up and down quickly, which is very weird. Later, I read that it can have such an impact because the body feels like it’s eating something sweet and it’s ready to process it, but there’s no glucose, and this may cause weird reactions from the body. (I’m not sure whether I explained it well.) I don’t know if that’s right or makes sense, but I still avoid stevia on its own. Or, the brand I got may not be good.

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         • Yes, you made perfectly good sense. I call that the ‘punished dog’ syndrome. If every time you roll up a newspaper, you smack the puppy on the nose with it, after awhile, the puppy will run if you roll up a newspaper. If you roll up a magazine instead of a newspaper, the puppy will still run. (I don’t know if anyone has ever actually tried this to see if it actually happens. I’m thinking it would be a bit cruel.)

           Our bodies are the same way. If they expect to react in a certain way to certain stimuli, they can often react the same way to a similar stimulus.

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9. Great poll…out of these I chose Stevia….although I think I prefer erythritol.

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   • Thanks for sharing! I recently bought stevia, but I still can’t get used to it.

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     • Yeah I had the same issue, that’s why I like Erythritol…there are some sweeteners that are a mix of stevia and erythritol…I think that’s a good combo.

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       • I see, I’ll look it up! I don’t have a health condition that requires a specific sweetener, but I feel that some things like dates or honey are too sweet for me, so I prefer using them only in baking.

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         • I’ve never baked with those, so I wouldn’t know….so just sharing what I use when I bake low carb….otherwise I’d just use regular sugar haha!

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       • Haha, good old sugar can improve the texture of some sweets, but I feel intimidated by the big quantity I have to use. 😀

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         • I totally agree, so much can be used at once…that can’t be too healthy! That’s why I like using substitutes!

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       • That’s true! Everything about the sweeteners is so controversial that sometimes it’s hard to pick the right one. 😀

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         • Yes that is so true…in the end we should just choose the one we prefer! 🙂

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