When we moved to Southern California from Washington, D.C. this year, we discovered agave syrup. I was excited because I wrestle with blood sugar irregularities, and agave 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. And because agave syrup is a popular sugar substitute in the raw food community, I guess I was naive enough to think that someone was squeezing agave leaves into a jar somewhere, making what I assumed was a minimally-processed, “healthier” sweetener.
Well… I spend a lot of time researching where my food comes from for my family’s health, for my MS in nutrition, and for this blog. 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 disheartening.
Agave syrup is very high in fructose. Depending on the brand, agave can contain as much as 92% fructose. Nowhere in nature does this ratio of fructose to glucose occur naturally. The amount of fructose in agave is much, much higher than the 55% fructose in high-fructose corn syrup or the 50% fructose in refined table sugar.
The fact that agave syrup is high in fructose is often hailed as a benefit of using it. What many people don’t realize is that concentrated fructose is probably worse for you than high amounts of glucose. People tend to think that fructose is a benign sugar because it is found naturally in fruit. But, despite the name “fructose,” whole fruit actually has a relatively low concentration of fructose compared to agave, high-fructose corn syrup, honey, or cane sugar. (However, eating huge quantities of fruit is just as bad for you as eating a lot of table sugar.)
There are a number of health problems associated with eating too much fructose:
- Fructose interferes with copper metabolism. This prevents collagen and elastin from being able to properly form. Collagen and elastin are components of the connective tissue which essentially holds the body together.1 A deficiency in copper can also lead to porous bones, anemia, defects of the arteries, infertility, high cholesterol levels, heart attacks, and an inability to control blood sugar levels.2
- When you take in fructose, it must first travel to the liver before it can be converted to glycogen—a source of energy. But if you don’t immediately burn this energy, the fructose gets converted to triglycerides—the fats in the blood that are associated with heart disease.
- Fructose can make you fat. Blood triglycerides made from fructose are stored as fat, which increases the size of your fat cells, contributing to weight gain and obesity.3
- Consuming high amounts of fructose on a regular basis can contribute to Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD), which even children are now getting from all the high-fructose corn syrup in their diets.
- The excess triglycerides created when you eat fructose increase insulin resistance, thereby boosting insulin production to very high levels, which fosters the development of diabetes in a “back door” fashion.4
- Consumption of fructose has been shown to cause a significant increase in uric acid. An increase in uric acid can be an indicator of heart disease and can contribute to gout and other circulatory problems.5
- Fructose consumption has been shown to increase blood lactic acid, especially for people with conditions like diabetes. Extreme elevations may cause metabolic acidosis.6
- Consumption of fructose leads to mineral losses, especially excretion of iron, magnesium, calcium and zinc.7 This can lead to bone and tooth demineralization.
- Fructose can cause accelerated aging through oxidative damage. Fructose contributes greatly to the creation of AGEs (advanced glycated endproducts), which are proteins that have inappropriately bonded to sugars in your blood. Fructose is the worst of the sugars for this, and when it bonds to proteins, these molecules stiffen the cells in your body, inhibiting their function (they literally age faster). This is the cause of arteriosclerosis, kidney problems and aging skin—the very types of damage seen in diabetic complications.8
Ironically, diabetics have been advised to use fructose for sweetening because it doesn’t directly cause a glucose or insulin spike. But whether you are diabetic or not, high fructose consumption does massive damage to your body.
How Agave is Produced
Agave is not naturally sweet like sugar cane, honey or fruit. In fact agave is high in polysaccharides, and requires an intensive, patented process to extract its sweetness. 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. The sap is then heated anywhere from 120°F to 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 Aspergillus niger (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 heavily processed with heat and chemicals or minimally processed with enzymes, agave syrup is not a whole or traditional food. It is a factory-made, modern product, and like all processed foods, agave syrup is missing many of the enzymes and nutrients that the original plant had to begin with. And like many processed foods, it contains very high amounts of fructose that the human body simply wasn’t designed to handle.
For most of our long existence on this planet, humans have eaten very little sugar. Wild fruit was much less sweet than the fruit available today, there were significantly fewer fruit varieties which were only available in their season and could not be stored. 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 and sugar beet to make refined sugar 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 it would be abundantly available 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.
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 156 pounds each we eat per year today. The epidemics of obesity, diabetes, tooth decay and other degenerative diseases today would suggest that so much sugar from any source is maladaptive and harmful to our survival.
So while our relationship was short and sweet, for many reasons, I must say, “Farewell, agave.”
P.S. I’ll be updating my recipes over the coming weeks to replace the agave syrup with good, old-fashioned date paste or honey.
Small Footprint Family is a proud supporter of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade!
- Fields, M, Proceedings of the Society of Experimental Biology and Medicine, 1984, 175:530-537.
- Klevay, Leslie, Acting Director of the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Human Nutrition Research Center, Grand Forks, N.D.
- American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 2002 Vol. 76, No. 5, 911-922.
- H. Hallfrisch, et al.,The Effects of Fructose on Blood Lipid Levels, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 37: 5, 1983, 740-748.
- J. MacDonald, Anne Keyser, and Deborah Pacy, Some Effects, in Man, of Varying the Load of Glucose, Sucrose, Fructose, or Sorbitol on Various Metabolites in Blood,American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 31 (August 1978)): 1305-1311.
- Hallfrisch, Judith, Metabolic Effects of Dietary Fructose,FASEB Journal 4 (June 1990): 2652-2660.
- A. E. Bergstra, A. G. Lemmens, and A. C. Beynens, Dietary Fructose vs. Glucose Stimulates Nephrocalcinogenesis in Female Rats, Journal of Nutrition123, no. 7 (July 1993): 1320-1327.
- Roger B. Mc Donald, Influence of Dietary Sucrose on Biological Aging, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 62 (suppl), (1995): 284s-293s.
{ 22 comments… read them below or add one }
Honey and date paste are also high fructose sweeteners. Raw honey, however, has so many other health virtues, it can, and should be enjoyed in moderation. Glucose in the form of dextrose is available and is devoid of fructose. I remember when fructose came out on the health scene as the great replacement of the evil sugar. I drank Hansen’s sodas because they were fructose sweetened. I was hood winked by agave as well, and it may have been the cause of my recent rampant tooth decay that struck overnight.
Stevia has a weird taste. Xilatol can’t be substituted for sugar and used only in small amounts. I guess we are just not meant to enjoy the sweetness levels that we grew up with. Less really is more once you lower your threshold. Agave could be enjoyed in moderation I suppose like honey. Me? A little maple syrup does the trick and I buy my chocolate 80% cocoa and above (not much room left for sugar).
Thanks for the info. Bittersweet is right. Hmm, date paste? Is this something you make yourself using dried dates? I don’t think I’ve noticed it with alternative sweeteners in health food stores.
Thanks for your comment, Tamara!
You won’t find date paste at the store, but it’s easy to make. I make date paste with just dried dates and water. Ideally, the dates shouldn’t be too dry, but if they are, soak them in water for several minutes to soften them a bit. I then put the dates in a Vitamix or food processor and add just enough pure water to make a paste, which I then use that in lieu of sugar in many recipes. It’s also easy to store for a week to spread on toast, fruit or even a nice prosciutto.
I also use stevia, grade B maple syrup, and unrefined raw honey as sweeteners in moderation. If I must have a granulated sugar (which is rare), I use whole coconut palm sugar. Generally though, because I have to watch my blood sugar, the only sweet foods I eat these days are fresh, whole, in-season fruits, homemade coconut yogurt and coconut kefir.
Best,
Dawn @ Small Footprint Family
Thanks for the info. Your explanation makes a lot of sense. Please keep me posted on low glycemic alternatives for baking etc. I’ve heard that palm sugar is low glycemic…?
Thanks for your comment!
Coconut palm sugar is lower glycemic than many sweeteners, and often is packed with minerals. It is the only dry sugar I will use—which is only 2-3 times per year. But all sweeteners (even fruit) should be used in extreme moderation by diabetics, especially those whose diabetes requires medication.
Stevia is the safest choice for diabetics, and comes in a 1-for-1 granular form now for baking!
Best,
Dawn @ Small Footprint Family
Thanks for the info. I will take this out of my kitchen! What is your take in brown rice syrup as a “natural” item?
All the syrups made from non-sweet foods (agave, rice, yacon, corn) must be highly processed and concentrated to become sugar-sweet (some more than others, like corn). They are all also very high in fructose, and should be eaten in moderation. Or not at all if you have pre-diabetes, hypoglycemia, metabolic syndrome, insulin resistance or related conditions.
Thanks for your comment!
-Dawn @ Small Footprint Family
Hi, I wish you all the best in your efforts to watch your sugar intake. I’d like to suggest that you might squeeze in one more bit to read before making your final decision. I do not work for any agave nectar company, nor does anyone pay me anything to be pro-agave at all. I’ve just done some of my own research due to my sugar sensitivity and contacted the head of Madhava directly to ask him for comment. I invite you to please see his comments and share them with your readers so that they can see both sides of the story: http://alteredplates.blogspot.com/2008/12/madhavas-craig-gerbore-responds-to.html . Good luck in all your efforts.
Indeed it is the Madhava agave I refer to (though not by name) when I write about the enzymatic process used to create some agave that caters to the raw food crowd. Madhava’s product is enzymatically processed and technically “raw”—and wow is it pricey! While this is a less-processed variety of agave syrup, it is still a high fructose product, and as such, is not very good for ones health, and should be used in moderation (if at all by people at risk of diabetes.) Considering that many recipes call for 1/4 to 1 full cup of agave syrup, to me this seems not only expensive, but also pretty far from “moderation.”
very information – thanks for clarifying agave for me. i’m going to toss my agave out now!!
Thank you for posting this insightful article. I had toyed with the idea of using agave, but now I know to avoid it.
Wow! What a surprise – I had no idea that agave was so highly processed. I wasn’t a huge fan of it to begin with, preferring my local raw honey, but now I will definitely cease to purchase this sweetener! I don’t allow any HFCS in my house and it looks like the same rule will now have to be applied to agave.
Thanks for the very informative post!
– RFM
“However, eating huge quantities of fruit is just as bad for you as eating a lot of table sugar.”
I have to disagree with you on this. Raw, sweet fruit in it’s whole state is our optimal fuel. It’s satisfying (both in volume and in calories), it’s water-rich, full of water soluble fiber, and packed with nutrients and vitamins vital for human health. Tender greens and non-sweet fruits are great as well, but do not provide much in the way of calories. They can in no way sustain us like sweet fruits can.
The only time that sugar presents a problem is when there is an excess of fat in the blood. The fat prevents the insulin from the pancreas from reaching the sugar and transporting it out of the blood. The sugar remains in the bloodstream for too long and the pancreas continues to send out more and more insulin. This can lead to Candida overgrowth as well as Diabetes.
Swayze
http://fitonraw.com
Thanks for posting! I agree completely that whole, organic fruit is a healthy part of any diet for sure, and many fruits are our best sources of bioflavonoids and other important antioxidants and phytochemicals. But today’s fruit is significantly sweeter, less fibrous and more abundant than the fruit we ate even just 200 years ago, and this must be taken in to account when considering how well or poorly some people are able to tolerate eating a lot of it.
Eating a lot of fruit is not good for everyone. No one diet fits all. I for one cannot tolerate eating more than 2-3 servings of high-fiber, low-glycemic fruit a day, with a meal. I find that fruit can make my blood sugar spike, my head spin, my heart race, my mood poor, and eventually, my candida grow rampant—especially when I eat it alone or first thing in the morning. For people with blood sugar issues like myself, whole fruit needs to be combined with protein and other food in order to not have our glucose go through the roof! Both my blood sugar, weight and energy levels fare much better when a good portion of my calories come from foods like nuts, seeds, coconut oil, avocado and fatty fish.
While fruit can provide a lot of calories to a healthy person who chooses not to eat much fat, glucose and fructose are not humankind’s optimal fuels, they are simply easily burned fuels meant to give us a boost when we need extra energy. There is substantial evidence to suggest that we are healthier with fat as our main calorie/fuel source, but most Americans eat a high-sugar, high-carb diet (whether SAD or vegan) and have become very poor fat burners as a result. Diabetes has only increased as our rate of sugar consumption has increased, but the peoples who eat the most fat and the least sugar, such as Inuit who eat their traditional diet, have no diabetes in their population.
Studies of long-lived, healthy peoples around the world suggest that health and lifespan is determined by the proportion of fat versus sugar people burn throughout their lifetime. The more fat that one burns as fuel, the healthier the person tends to be, and the more likely they will live a long time. The more sugar a person burns, the more disease ridden and the shorter a lifespan a person is likely to have.
Even though fat is our body’s best fuel, our bodies burn sugar first if it is present in high amounts. High levels of sugar are damaging to the body so the body wants to get it out as quickly as possible. It burns what it can, stores what it can as glycogen, and then converts the rest to saturated fat. When our cells develop a habit of burning sugar instead of fat, it sets the stage for a number of health problems.
When our body is in the habit of burning sugar instead of fat, it is more difficult to keep blood sugar levels in the optimal range, and then your body relies on stress hormones to raise the blood sugar when it drops between meals, which is taxing for the adrenal glands. Furthermore, when you are in sugar burning mode and blood sugar drops, your body pulls protein out of bone and muscle, turns it into sugar, and burns it for fuel. Over time people whose cells rely on sugar as the primary energy source lose muscle mass and develop osteoporosis and tooth decay. (This is precisely why frutarians have such problems with their teeth. See Protecting Our Children’s Teeth, Part 2 for more information.)
You said, “The only time that sugar presents a problem is when there is an excess of fat in the blood.” What is more true is that fat only presents a problem when there is an excess of sugar in the blood. When insulin is carrying more blood sugar than your cells need for energy, it stimulates the production of triglycerides in the liver. Simply put, it is excess sugar that causes fat in the blood! This becomes a vicious cycle that leads to leptin and insulin resistance. The main way out of this cycle is to eat a low-carb/low-sugar diet, because—all the vitamins, minerals, fiber and enzymes in fruit notwithstanding—when it comes to blood sugar, the body doesn’t differentiate between fructose from corn syrup and fructose from a lot of hybridized, high-glycemic fruit.
When you burn fat as your body’s primary fuel, your cells eat fat even when you’re not eating. When your cells need energy, they can get it from your fat stores—including from any unhealthy fat stored in your abdomen, liver or arteries. And when you eat fat, your body sends your brain a signal that it is satisfied, and you don’t get hungry as often as you do on a high-carb/high-sugar diet because your cells are being properly nourished.
Our prehistoric ancestors actually ate a lot more fat than we do today, and did not eat grains or much fruit because they weren’t often available. They had no choice but to be fat-burners, and not surprisingly, their bodies were leaner, their bones stronger, their teeth healthier, and they did not appear to suffer from the same chronic diseases we do today. I’m not suggesting that they ate an optimal diet, but ironically, they probably ate better than most Americans do today.
So I still maintain that while whole, organic fruit is a great nutrition source that should be consumed by everyone, for many people, eating large quantities of it as a major source of calories can be just as bad for you as eating a lot of table sugar.
Nicely done!
Isn’t fructose scary – at least a little bit? Two years ago I decided to eliminate HFCS from my diet and I have been simply APPALLED at all of the places HFCS, corn syrup, fructose-type additives show up. UGH!
Great article – I’d like to share it with a support group that I lead. I think they’d really appreciate it!
Yes, HFCS is everywhere, in the places you’d least expect often. Now agave is the darling of the health food industry, posing as a healthy HFCS alternative, but it really should be labelled HFAS (high fructose agave syrup). Now the handful of brands of agave that are processed using A. niger and lightly heated are somewhat better, they are still high-fructose and should be used in moderation, if at all.
Great article. as a holistic nutritionist here in California, I warn people about agave all the time.
Thank you so much for the great article. I too came by Food Renegade. I am particularly thankful for your very useful footnotes!
Great article! I’ve been meaning to do a post on agave syrup for a while now since I’ve been getting so many questions about it — particularly after my recent article on liver health in which I mentioned offhand that agave is not a “natural” sweetener and was hard on your liver.
Now I can point people to your post!
Thanks for sharing it in today’s Fight Back Fridays carnival.
Cheers,
~KristenM
(AKA FoodRenegade)
Thanks! That means a lot to me coming from you!
This post was incredibly interesting and informative. I appreciate the time and effort you’ve taken into researching and presenting this topic! I tried agave for a while, but never really took to it. I haven’t given it much thought since. I was shocked to read just how highly processed it really is!
Hi there
I just discovered your site through Food Renegade. This is a great article. Thanks so much for getting good information out there in an entertaining format.
I plan to keep reading!
Be well,
Marsha
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