Sugar is sweet, but agave is sweeter.
Agave nectar is an alternative sweetener for people with high blood sugar.
Agave is a blue to teal plant found in the Southwestern United States and Mexico. It is related to the lily and the yucca, but resembles a cactus.
Agave nectar is extracted from the core of the plant, which can be used as a sweetener.
"There are three types of sugars that occur naturally: fructose, glucose, and sucrose," said Adam Diaz, a senior in nutrition and dietetics.
Fructose is primarily found in fruits and vegetables. Sucrose is a combination of fructose and glucose.
"Standard sugar is called sucrose, and that's a disaccharide, and that is made of chemically bonded monosaccharides, and one of them is glucose and one of them is fructose," said Doug White, a professor of nutrition at Auburn University.
The presence of glucose causes the beta cells in the pancreas to release insulin, which helps the cells absorb the sugar and produce energy, Diaz said.
However, high amounts of glucose can cause insulin sensitivity, which means that insulin is not produced rapidly enough to absorb the sugar, White said.
The sugar not absorbed is left in the bloodstream, Diaz said. Insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance is a catalyst for type 2 diabetes.
"By substituting sweeteners that are high in glucose for those that are high in fructose, like agave nectar, people with insulin sensitivity can consume sweet foods and drinks without risk of raising their blood sugar," Diaz said.
Another benefit of agave is that it dissolves quickly, like most fructose-based syrups.
"They use high fructose corn syrup in soft drinks because it is sweet like table sugar, but its lack of a crystalline structure causes it to dissolve rapidly," Diaz said.
However, fructose sweeteners like agave are not a perfect solution to the blood sugar problem.
Fructose is equally as caloric as glucose, meaning it contains as many calories, Diaz said.
"There is some indication that fructose itself may not be as regulated as glucose, so there is some indication that it is more fattening," White said.
Another solution to the blood sugar problem is man-made sweeteners, like Splenda, or NutraSweet.
Splenda contains a chemically modified fructose, but it is not absorbed into the body at all, and therefore has no affect, White said. NutraSweet contains neotame, the main components of which are found in nature.
Neotame, is 7000 times sweeter than table sugar, so less of it can be used to produce a similar effect, White said. At this rate, such sparse amounts are unlikely to contain any calories. But the drawbacks to these sweeteners is that some people don't like the taste, Diaz said.
"They oftentimes cause food to taste artificially sweet, or too sweet," Diaz said. "And they are made in a lab, not naturally, like agave or honey."
Honey is a sucrose as well.
"For a person with high blood sugar, I would either recommend Splenda, because it is not absorbed into the bloodstream, but if someone is averse to the taste, agave is probably their best bet," Diaz said.
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