Refined Sugar versus Sugars from Fiber — What’s the Difference?
We Break It All Down for You Here
We get this question a lot: what’s the difference between refined sugar, and sugars from fiber?
A lot actually, and we think it’s a distinction that’s helpful to understand.
Most refined sugar comes from plants like sugar cane. It’s refined to the point that there aren’t many of its original nutrients left. Things like beneficial fiber that we need to stay healthy have been taken out, leaving pure sucrose.
Refined sugar calories are often considered as “empty” calories, because you get the food energy, but not a lot else.
When you eat refined sugars, your digestive system turns them into glucose, a simple sugar that we also call blood sugar. The glucose enters the bloodstream, and the pancreas releases the hormone insulin to remove the glucose from the bloodstream. Some foods, like refined sugar, tend to cause what’s known as an “insulin spike” that over time wears down the pancreas, and damages the body’s ability to digest carbohydrates. This is the condition known as Type 2 Diabetes.
Beyond its effect on our bodies, refined sugar creates huge amounts of agricultural waste, leaving behind as much as 80 percent of the plant, and this inefficiency creates a need for more land which in turn seriously damages biodiversity.
Sugars from fiber is different because it’s an entirely different category of ingredient. We use our patented, fungi-based enzymatic process to upcycle unused plant fiber into “sugars from fiber” — a new blend of sugars with the properties of both a sugar, and a fiber.
Unlike refined cane sugar, which provides calories but no fiber, sugars from fiber is both a sugar, because of some of the shorter-chain carbohydrates it contains, and a fiber, because of the longer-chain carbohydrates. Sugars from fiber contains less than half the calories compared to refined sugar, causes little to no glucose and insulin spikes in the body (which can lead to diabetes), and it has prebiotic qualities — meaning it is good for gut health!
Sugars from fiber also makes efficient use of agricultural crops, redefining material that was otherwise inedible into something we can actually eat, and enjoy. By using what would otherwise be left over, we can get more food from the same harvests, which reduces the need to cut down more forests to grow food. This helps biodiversity, and our planet, thrive.
Learn more at www.supplant.com.
