What does naturally sweetened by dehydrated cane juice really mean?

Are products naturally sweetened by dehydrated cane juice really any healthier?

Have you ever wondered what all of those ingredients on the side of food containers actually are? Have you ever actually wondered what exactly yellow #5 or red #40 is? What does it look like? Does it have a flavor? How do they make it? Is it poisonous?

How about high fructose corn syrup? Sure, it’s in everything and you hear the arguments about its adverse health effects. But have you ever wondered what exactly it is? How do they make it? What does it look like? Why do they insist on using it? What’s the difference between high fructose and regular corn syrup? Etc…

If you’re like most people, even if you have had these questions, you simply haven’t had the time to actually sit down and do the research. For this reason I’ve decided to start a new intermittent series of posts to dissect just what exactly these ingredients are and how they affect your health and fitness goals.

For the first post in this series I’d like to address something I’ve been seeing more and more on health food packaging. The companies that have been rightfully moving away from HFCS and cancer causing artificial sweeteners seem to have found new healthy ways of sweetening their foods. In fact, you’ve probably seen some labels that say stuff like “naturally sweetened by dehydrated cane juice”. Have you stopped to think about what that means though?

This chinchilla has warm fuzzies about foods naturally sweetened by dehydrated cane juice.

Naturally sweetened by cane juice… It sounds so nice doesn’t it? It’s very natural and healthy sounding. Kind of gives me warm fuzzies and makes me want to type little emoticon smiley faces like this one J. The truth is, it should make you want to as well if for no other reason than it’s a million times better than foods sweetened with high fructose corn syrup or other artificial sweeteners.

Why not just use sugar though? Is dehydrated cane juice really superior to sweetening with regular old table sugar?

You may have figured out already that this is sort of a trick question. It would be impossible for dehydrated cane juice to be superior to regular table sugar because all table sugar is, is dehydrated cane juice.

When sugar cane was originally discovered in Southeast Asia it was mainly just chewed on by the natives for its sweetness. It had very few sweetening applications. However in about 350AD, the people of India discovered the secret of dehydrating the juice from the cane into crystal form which was easy to transport and cook with and allowed it to easily spread throughout the rest of the world. It quickly replaced honey as the number one sweetener used across the known world and the rest is history.

So next time you see “naturally sweetened by dehydrated cane juice”, you’ll know that this is just a feel good fancy way of saying, “We’ve added a bunch of sugar to your ‘health food’ but we’ve found that if we change the wording, you’ll still consider our junk food to be healthy and you’ll buy it!”

Nice huh?

Until next time,

Kris

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3 Comments

I'd never really considered that. Good information as usual! Thanks!

Posted by: Lisa Stauffacher | 19 June 2010 at 07:28 PM

Its an interesting thing. It seems so obvious once its in front of you but something about it just makes it slip past most people's radar. It makes you wonder what else out there is just slipping by the radar?

Thanks again for the comment!

Posted by: FitnessQuests | 19 June 2010 at 07:39 PM