Xylitol has actually been shown to improve oral gut bacteria. It's not supposed to be in your pantry. Do what I do, keep it in your pantry and give it to your hummingbird.
Oh, this is an excellent substitute for sugar. It's natural. No, it's not. There's nothing natural about it. Hello and welcome back to another episode of Gut Instincts.
I'm your host, Dr. Stephen Gundry, and I'm excited to share my thoughts on a highly requested episode you asked about. We listen. Based on your feedback in the comments today, we're looking into sweeteners. Most of us love adding sweeteners to our foods, but what are the effects on our overall health? I'll be ranking these sweeteners from S to F.
S stands for superfood and F means it belongs in the trash. Before we jump in, make sure to click that subscribe button and give this video a thumbs up if you're ready to improve your gut health with me. Let's go.
One of the new favorites, agave nectar. Sorry, folks. Agave nectar is basically concentrated fructose. And fructose is one of the most evil mitochondrial poisons known to mankind. If you want bad health, agave nectar is your buddy.
It's an F. Please stay away from it. This sounds good. Light brown sugar.
I mean... Who doesn't like brown sugar? Just because they didn't strip off some of the extra ingredients in sugar to make it white doesn't mean brown sugar is any healthier for you.
Remember, sugar is half glucose and half fructose, and so that sugar is called sucrose. And brown sugar isn't any healthier than plain old sugar. Don't come near it. F. Well, if brown sugar isn't any good, you can imagine what I'm gonna say about plain old cane sugar.
It's not supposed to be in your pantry. If you want, do what I do, keep it in your pantry and give it to your hummingbirds. They perfectly adapted to using sugar as a fuel.
You're not. It's down in the F. Now I gotta admit, when I was growing up, my mother used corn syrup all the time.
Made a great pecan pie, I might add. But corn syrup is once again Highly concentrated fructose. And fructose is the evil empire of all sweeteners. That's an F. Here's another group.
I love this one. Vegan-friendly brown rice syrup. Now, what could be better?
Except, sorry folks, anytime you see the word syrup, you better run because syrup is a code word for this is pure sugar. And more often than not, there's a ton of fructose. in that sugar as well.
Syrup is a code word, usually means an F. Maple syrup, oh, that must be great. By any other name, it is pure sugar. First of all, if you think about the amount of sap from maple trees that goes into making maple syrup, your head will spin.
You have to concentrate that sap so much that this is pure concentrated sugar. And yet you see all over the place, Oh, this is an excellent substitute for sugar. It's natural. No, it's not.
There's nothing natural about it. You're not having sap that comes out of a tree. This stuff is boiled and reduced. It's pure sugar. Darn it.
Oh, it's cousin, honey. Honey, by any other name, is sugar. It's loaded with fructose. Yes, it might have a benefit if you get local honey that the bees have been using that pollen. And it might have a benefit in allergies, but otherwise it's not an excuse as a sugar substitute.
It's sugar. That's it. That's what it is.
It should be down in the Fs, but we'll give it a D. Okay, how about molasses? Now, molasses is interesting.
Dark Strap Molasses was actually one of the favorite sweeteners of Gaylord Hauser. Now, most of you have never heard of Gaylord Hauser, but he's actually one of my heroes. He was a self-trained nutritionist.
who actually taught one of my most famous patients, Edith Murray, who lived two weeks shy of her 106th birthday. And I have every one of Gaylord Hauser's books. And he was a big fan of blackstrap molasses.
Why? Because it actually contains a large amount of B vitamins. And B vitamin deficiencies were incredibly common. If you gotta have a natural sweetener, then molasses is actually...
Okay, just don't go crazy. How about date sugar? You see date sugar everywhere.
It comes from dates. Guess what? Sugar.
They're nice enough to warn you what it is. Just because it came from a date doesn't make it any healthier or any different from any other sugar. And I just love the fact that we can change. Oh, what came from a date?
Dates are good for you. No, this is date sugar. It's sugar. Put it back. Okay, time for a quick quiz.
Here are two facts and one lie about date sugar. Can you guess which one is the lie? Date sugar is rich in beta carotene. This sugar dissolves easily when added to drinks.
It is made from dried dates. Ready? The answer is two. Date sugar actually doesn't dissolve easily in drinks due to its fiber content. All right, let's get back to it.
How about one last attempt at a natural sugar? Coconut sugar. You see the word sugar? That ought to tell you something.
Just because it came from a coconut doesn't make it any... different as sugar. And yet you see all the time, oh, coconut sugar, that's not sugar. Yes, it is.
It is sugar. So that's down on the list. All right. Well, what are we going to use? Well, what about some natural products?
How about stevia? So stevia used to be one of my favorite choices. And stevia comes from the stevia plant.
Most of you know that it has a distinct bitterness that has to be fixed. That can be done. chemically. It can be done by adding it to other things. But one of the things a lot of us don't know is that even brittle stevia can actually increase your insulin levels and can actually impact your gut microbiome.
So even though it's not as lethal as these things, stevia has kind of gone down the list of my favorite sweeteners. How about monk fruit? Now monk fruit actually still remains one of my favorite sweeteners. It's not at the top of my list, but it actually does not impact insulin levels, and it does not impact the gut microbiome. So we're going to put that up with egg.
Definitely well worth your time. Sugar alcohols. Now there's a number of them.
They're all very similar. There's xylitol. Now xylitol gets an interesting history in that xylitol has actually been shown to improve oral gut bacteria. And that in itself is pretty an interesting thing.
So xylitol is not a bad sugar alcohol. Sorbitol, erythritol, malitol, these are all sugar alcohol. Now, sugar alcohols aren't metabolized the way sugar is, thank goodness.
But sugar alcohols can absolutely give you some exciting gas and bloating as a part of using them. Recently, you probably saw that erythritol is evil and it makes your blood clot. That study has been so debunked, including by me.
One year of that study was when erythritol was not available as a sweetener. We actually manufacture erythritol in our body. And so please, folks, if we manufacture it, you don't really have to worry about it.
But all these sugar alcohols are pretty much down my list of good sweeteners. They have their place. They taste.
like sugar, which is one of their benefits. Saccharin. That was the original fake sweetener.
Saccharin, unfortunately, is one really good way to destroy your gut microbiome. There have been a number of studies suggesting, but not proving, that it may promote cancer. So most of the time, you just don't see saccharin anymore.
And it's this way down here. On the other hand, the next one was up was aspartame, sometimes called NutraSweet. Now, aspartame, unfortunately, can be converted into a really nasty neurotoxin. And aspartamate poisoning can occur. It's pretty much limited.
You'll still see it every now and then. Please stay away from aspartame. That's right in there with saccharin.
Well, now, if you go looking through almost every low-calorie drink, product, bar, you will see the word sucralose. Now, that's Splenda. Sucralose is part of the study that Duke University did that one packet of sucralose will kill off half of your gut microbiome. Yeah, it's that potent.
It's in most of these diet drinks. It's in so many of the bars. So please, please, please look for that word sucralose.
You may see it way down the list of ingredients, but sucralose is so sweet that you don't need much of it to have an impact. But it's really, really bad. So it's down here with everybody and it's everywhere. So please avoid that.
I'm missing one that's actually my favorite and that is called allulose. What is allulose? Allulose is actually a true sugar, but it's a sugar that has not only no calories, it's the first sweetener that's been approved by the FDA for having prebiotic properties. And there's good human data that using Allulose in, for instance, a cup of coffee, lowers your blood sugar. And there's some very good studies in humans and animals that allulose makes you lose weight.
Why? Because it changes your gut microbiome to a more friendly gut microbiome. So right now, the only superfood that I have on my list is allulose. I use allulose every day.
Feed my gut buddies what they're interested in. Allulose is a true sugar, and it was first actually discovered in figs. And that is my gut instinct. So if you enjoyed this episode of Gut Instincts, don't forget to subscribe and hit that like button. Let me know in the comments which food we should rank next.
Remember, eat smart, feel great. I'm Dr. Gundry, and I'll see you in the next video.