Kitchen Stewardship | Caring for All Our Gifts

Helping busy families live well without going crazy!

  • Home
  • About
    • About Katie and Her Mission
    • Overwhelmed? Start Here.
  • COVID-19
  • Shop
    • Stress Mastery eCourse
    • Kids Cook Real Food eCourse
    • Affiliates
  • Contact
    • Email Me
    • Media Coverage
    • Guest Posting
    • Advertising Disclosure
    • Privacy Policy
  • START HERE
  • Recipes
  • Reviews
  • Research
    • Understanding Disease
    • Understanding Your Body
    • Understanding Your Food
  • Remedies

Live Parenting Webinar

Thursday, February 25, 7 p.m.

Register Now
Building Less Stressed Healthier Families

Live Thur, Feb 25, 7 p.m.

FREE Parenting Webinar

Register Now

Live Parenting Webinar

Thursday, February 25, 7 p.m.

Register Now
Building Less Stressed Healthier Families

Live Thur, Feb 25, 7 p.m.

FREE Parenting Webinar

Register Now

Monday Mission: Use Less Refined Sugar

April 12, 2010 (UPDATED: June 18, 2020) by Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship® 22 Comments

This post may contain affiliate links which won’t change your price but will share some commission.

soaked brownies Your mission, if you choose to accept, is to find at least one way to cut down on refined sugar this week because of the link between sugar and inflammation.

My Story: White Sugar Free

Last year for Lent, I was just beginning my real food journey, and I decided to give up all white sugar and corn sugars for the whole 40 days. You can see that story here. I learned a lot, especially about all the many places refined sugars hide in our processed food world!

What is Refined Sugar?

There are many ways to sweeten food, but some are found naturally in the environment, like honey and maple syrup, and others are made in a factory or lab, like Splenda, dextrose, and high fructose corn syrup.

Although all sweeteners add calories to your meal and can feed nasty things like bacteria in your bodies, natural sweeteners have at least some redeeming value. Raw honey (use the code Katie15 for 15% off at that site!) is antiviral, and maple syrup and molasses have some vitamins and minerals. Refined white sugar comes from sugar cane, and it is so processed that all the minerals are stripped right out (they end up in the molasses). Refined sugars are 100% empty calories that do nothing but harm your body (and taste good, unfortunately).

There are some less refined sweeteners as well, alternatives to white sugar like Rapadura, Sucanat, and evaporated cane juice. I’m not entirely convinced that these aren’t just expensive replacements for white sugar. Some day I’ll find the time to do the research into sweeteners! Any thoughts on that subject?

For now, I just know I need to cut down on the white sugar and anything that ends in –ose on an ingredients label. It’s not doing anything good for me!

UPDATE:  Lisa Byrne, a biochemist who is also a certified holistic health counselor, offers a free 19-page eBook on Breaking the Sugar Habit here (link no longer available). It’s simple, to the point, and very well done.

Favorite Sugar-Less Recipes

soaked granola bars (1) Why not “sugar-free” recipes? I think that term has been taken over by products even more dangerous than sugar, the artificial sweeteners like Nutrasweet (aspartame), Splenda (sucralose) and other chemical sweeteners. Please, look out for artificial sweeteners on your labels and stay away from them like the plague!

I use honey most of the time as an alternative sweetener, and I also rely on natural fruits, nuts and coconut to add a little sweet to my treats:

  • Granola bars (soaked version)
  • Homemade granola
  • Almond Power Bars
  • One-Bowl Pumpkin Muffins or Bread (see how I took the sugar out and substituted honey)
  • 100% Whole Grain Healthy Fruit Pizza (there’s a tiny bit of white sugar in this, but so much better than a conventional one!)
  • Green Smoothies
  • Did you know sugar is in almost all the purchased salad dressings? Find out how to make your own dressings to avoid the bad stuff!
  • The rules for baking with honey

Get the Sugar Out!

Tomorrow Donielle from Naturally Knocked Up will tell you her incredible story about sugar and her fertility here at KS, and at her blog she’ll share some practical tips on reducing your sugar intake and have a linky for you to join in with related posts. Your posts might include:

  • Any recipe with an alternative sweetener (see below for details)
  • Your story about sugar
  • Research on the harms of sugar
  • Information about alternative sweeteners and how to use them
  • What else?

I’m also going to tempt your taste buds with lots of photos and a recipe list from my upcoming Healthy Snacks To Go eBook, plus you can become one of the first to see it if you win the giveaway Donielle and I are co-hosting!

Want more help and inspiration to reduce sugar? Check these out:

Refined Sugar

Refined Sugars

White Sugars

Sugar Alcohols

Sugar Alcohols

white sugar

Sugar and Inflammation

How to Bake with Honey

How to Bake with Honey

Raw honey health benefits

Raw Honey Benefits

Is stevia safe, stevia health benefits

Is Stevia Safe?

Unrefined Sucanat & Rapadura

sorghum syrup, how to use sorghum

How to Use Sorghum Syrup

Maple Syrup

Maple Syrup

agave, agave health benefits

Is Agave Healthy?

artificial sweetened pop

Articifial Sweeteners

Need More Baby Steps?

Sign up for weekly missions to take baby steps to real food!

Here at Kitchen Stewardship®, we’ve always been all about the baby steps. But if you’re just starting your real food and natural living journey, sifting through all that we’ve shared here over the years can be totally overwhelming.

That’s why we took the best 10 rookie “Monday Missions” that used to post once a week and got them all spruced up to send to your inbox – once a week on Mondays, so you can learn to be a kitchen steward one baby step at a time, in a doable sequence.

Sign up to get weekly challenges and teaching on key topics like meal planning, homemade foods that save the budget (and don’t take too much time), what to cut out of your pantry, and more.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
  • shares
You've probably seen 1000s of products recommended by bloggers you follow...but what would you ACTUALLY use?

Filed Under: Advanced Leap of Faith, Beginner Baby Steps, Mid Range Making Strides, Monday Missions Tagged With: artificial sweeteners, honey, molasses, Spring Cleaning: Get the Junk Out, sugar, sweeteners

« Previous Post What Was it Like to go Gluten Free for a Week?
Next Post » Agave and Stevia: All Natural, Unsafe, or Unhealthy?

About Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship®

Katie Kimball, CSME is a trusted educator and author of 8 real food cookbooks. She is passionate about researching natural remedies and making healthy cooking easier for busy families. She’s been featured on media outlets like ABC, NBC and First for Women magazine as well as contributing regularly on the FOX Network.

See more of Katie Kimball, CSME in the Media.

Over the last 10 years, Katie has spoken prolifically at conferences, online summits and podcasts and become a trusted authority and advocate for children’s health.

Busy moms look to this certified educator for honest, in-depth natural product reviews and thorough research. She often partners with health experts and medical practitioners to deliver the most current information to the Kitchen Stewardship® community.

In 2016 she created the #1 bestselling online kids cooking course, Kids Cook Real Food, helping thousands of families around the world learn to cook.

Certified Stress Mastery Educator BadgeA mom of 4 kids from Michigan, she is a Certified Stress Mastery Educator and member of the American Institute of Stress.

See all blog posts by Katie Kimball.

22 Bites of Conversation So Far

  1. Justin Wilson says

    April 14, 2010 at 5:09 pm

    The anti-”ose” diet is a sure loser.

    Replacing simple sugars with molasses, maple syrup, or honey will get you no where. They all contain the same basic building blocks: glucose and fructose. You shouldn’t switch from one sweetener to another and expect to lose weight.

    The bottom line is simple. Whether it comes from a sugar beets, sugar cane, or ears of corn—sugar is sugar. And no matter the name, they have the same number of calories.

    Reply
  2. Katie says

    April 13, 2010 at 9:40 am

    Lots of questions on Stevia here! I will put up a mini-post sometime this week and link from here about Stevia, agave, and other natural and “natural” sweeteners to better address the questions. Thank you!!

    Reply
  3. Stacy says

    April 12, 2010 at 7:20 pm

    We try to avoid white sugar, but we do use stevia. It is processed, but its a plant extract that has been used for thousands of years in South America. I know some people who purchase a stevia plant, and then use the leaves when they brew tea.

    Reply
  4. Theresa says

    April 12, 2010 at 5:48 pm

    OMG! How funny that this is the monday mission – I bought a bag of Organic evaporated cane juice instead of white sugar this weekend! I’m with you though – is it just an expensive version of sugar?? when we make more money, I’ll be able to switch to maple sugar, but till then… I LOVE baking, so sugar is neccesary in my house 🙂

    Reply
  5. Beth says

    April 12, 2010 at 3:43 pm

    Hi Katie! Thanks for this article… reducing processed sugars is something I know I need to do, but I’m afraid I don’t have the willpower for it. Anyway, I have a question for you… my MIL is diabetic, and uses Splenda and Nutrasweet like they’re goin’ out of style… (mainly to sweeten tea and coffee), as well as buying “sugar-free” items at the grocery store. She’s about as far from a real food diet as you can get, and has multiple health issues. I think asking her to give up the Splenda, etc. would be pointless. She can’t use the “good” sweeteners, like honey, because she’s diabetic. Any suggestions for someone like that???
    .-= Beth´s last blog ..Blogosphere Awesomeness =-.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      April 13, 2010 at 9:54 am

      Beth,
      That’s such a tough question. I use cinnamon and vanilla a LOT to try to mimic sweetness for my MIL, a diabetic. I think the goal is ultimately balance: every person is going to have some cabs, it’s just a matter of making them count and knowing how much one’s blood sugar can handle. I explored this topic a little here.

      Although stevia and agave have their questions, I would choose them 100x before I’d use Nutrasweet! Coconut oil in the coffee might help. ?? Diabetics are unfortunately called to a level of self-discipline and willpower that many of us don’t have, I believe.

      Katie

      Reply
  6. Fern says

    April 12, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    Several years ago, I found I have a intolorance to processed sugars, and my pancreas was shutting down.. I learned to prepare real foods for my family using natural sweeteners. I totally abstained from processed sugars for 5 years, giving my pancreas time to heal. I have to loses blood sugar in my family, and have educated myself and my children to the benefits of good nutrition. Thanks for sharing your information.
    Let me know what you have studied about Xagave. It claimes to be a natural sugar replacement , extracted from the avave plant. I have not found much negative information. I have used it quite a bit and have found it to really lower bloodsugar.

    Reply
  7. Suzanne says

    April 12, 2010 at 2:43 pm

    I have a question. What are your thoughts on stevia? I realize it’s processed, but I’ve heard it’s safe and no calories. What do you think? just marketing hype? Would love to know your thoughts!

    Reply
  8. Heather says

    April 12, 2010 at 2:39 pm

    im curious to see what else people use as sweetners, ive tried agave nectar, but now have seen that isn’t as good as once thought. I have used honey in some recipes, but not sure how to sub it for white sugar, i assume i need less of it.I do try to use less sugar in my baking, but its still always white.

    As for sugar free stuff, it all gives me headaches so I gave it up.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      April 13, 2010 at 11:41 am

      Heather,
      How to substitute honey for white sugar in baking recipes: Use 3/4 c. honey per cup of sugar called for, reduce the liquid in the recipe by 1/4 cup, and either reduce baking temperature by 25 degrees or baking time by 10-15 minutes or both. Honey makes baked goods brown faster, so just watch them the first time you alter a recipe! In my opinion, any cutting of white sugar is a good step! That’s how I started, too. Donielle also has some good ideas here: http://www.naturallyknockedup.com/2010/04/12/cutting-back-on-sugar/

      Thanks for visiting!
      🙂 Katie

      Reply
  9. Meghan says

    April 12, 2010 at 2:33 pm

    heavenlyhomemakers.com just did a review post on natural sugars today. I learned a lot from it.

    Reply
  10. Jen says

    April 12, 2010 at 11:52 am

    Aww shoot – I was hoping you had a “real food recipe” for that picture up top….. it looks yummy…… guess it has all the real junk in it 🙂

    As for my thoughts on sugar, I figure the less refined: ie turbinado vs white is better then just the white, so I use that when I can. In fact, a couple weeks ago my MIL couldn’t figure out why I had no more white sugar in the house for her tea- and I guess using the turbinado wasn’t the same 🙂 oops! I use the turbinado in my coffee, have tried honey, but don’t really care for the taste. But I use honey in almost everything else. I am with the comment above on stevia- I have heard good and bad about it, up to now I have pretty much avoided it. And I totally stay away from all the “sugar-free” stuff in the stores…….. I won’t let my husband buy sugar free ice cream, I tell him if he’s going to get some just get the regular stuff, I don’t want those nasty substitutes in there!
    .-= Jen´s last blog ..Split Pea Soup =-.

    Reply
    • Katie says

      April 13, 2010 at 8:56 am

      Jen,
      There is white sugar in there, but not much! It’s one I’m working on for a desserts ebook in the summer; sorry to try your patience so!
      🙂 Katie

      Reply
  11. LindsayP says

    April 12, 2010 at 9:56 am

    Hi Katie,

    Thanks for this post- I gave up all obvious sugar, chocolate, honey, maple syrup and refined carbs for Lent and have felt fabulous! I didn’t start again after Easter, it was so good for me. (I voluntarily turned down ice cream last night!)

    I’m now only using stevia and Splenda in small amounts. Some may argue that Splenda isn’t good for you, but at least it doesn’t affect my blood sugar or trigger binges like other sweeteners do. For a person who’s been known to down an entire package of Double Stuf Oreos, that’s a big step, so that’s where I’m at for now. Personally, I can’t even eat honey or maple syrup, because those are trigger foods that make me want more (and worse) sweets. Maybe others would be ok with them.

    My energy level is amazing; at 7 1/2 months pregnant with 2 young children, that alone makes it worth the sacrifice!

    Looking forward to reading what info/stories people have to share here,

    Lindsay

    Reply
    • klutzymama says

      April 12, 2010 at 5:17 pm

      Lindsay,
      Congrats on going sugar-free!! I’m wondering if you had feelings of withdrawal or headaches when you stopped consuming sugar. Also, how long did it take to feel the benefits and the boost in energy?

      Thanks!

      Reply
      • LindsayP says

        April 13, 2010 at 5:19 pm

        Hi,

        Thanks! I didn’t have any headaches and didn’t notice the cravings too badly because I didn’t limit myself on any other foods (I am pregnant and not bound by Ash Weds fasting). The energy boost began after about a week or so- less tired but also actual added energy. I had also given up coffee and was surprised at how awake I could feel even without a full night’s sleep.

        Good luck!

        Reply
    • Katie says

      April 13, 2010 at 8:53 am

      Linds,
      Amazing testimony!!! I read in a CCL magazine a few years ago that Splenda was possibly the least of the artificial sweetener offenders, because at least it’s made from regular sugar instead of pure chemicals. ?? I’ve read opposite too; it’s just so new that it’s tricky. Stevia may be a contraceptive; I will post on that this week in brief after all the questions here!
      Thank you for sharing!
      🙂 Katie

      Reply
  12. Simple in France says

    April 12, 2010 at 7:49 am

    I’m right there with you on refined sugar (white) but I’m always wondering about brown sugar or cane sugar. . .I suppose it’s no good either.

    And another thing that gives me pause is stevia. I know a lot of people use it in the States as a ‘natural’ substitute for sugar but stevia extract is not approved in Europe. I don’t know why, but since European countries have fought against such things as high caffeine energy drinks, it makes me wonder. . .
    .-= Simple in France´s last blog ..Pinching Pennies, Indulging in Luxuries =-.

    Reply
    • Anita says

      April 12, 2010 at 8:50 am

      Hi there in France,
      I read this on wikipedia- The European Food Standards Agency is conducting a safety review and is expected to permit stevia extract to be used in the EU member states in 2010, France first!

      Reply
    • Tiph says

      April 12, 2010 at 4:36 pm

      From what I understand… brown sugar is nothing but refined white sugar with molasses to make it brown. Def not a healthy substitute!

      Here is one of my favorite articles on healthy sweeteners: http://www.passionatehomemaking.com/2008/09/my-favorite-natural-sweeteners.html
      .-= Tiph´s last blog ..Green Blessings…. =-.

      Reply
      • Tiph says

        April 12, 2010 at 4:37 pm

        From wiki:
        “Brown sugar is a sucrose sugar product with a distinctive brown color due to the presence of molasses. It is either an unrefined or partially refined soft sugar consisting of sugar crystals with some residual molasses content, or it is produced by the addition of molasses to refined white sugar.

        Brown sugar contains from 3.5% molasses (light brown sugar) to 6.5% molasses (dark brown sugar)….”
        .-= Tiph´s last blog ..Green Blessings…. =-.

        Reply
        • Laura says

          April 14, 2010 at 5:54 am

          That is good to know, thank you! Also, all the information shared on here is very helpful regarding real foods and the effects of sugar and other preservatives, thank you!

          Reply

Take a Bite (of conversation) Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Looking for something?

Hi there!

I’m Katie, the voice of healthy kids cooking, and I’m on a mission to connect families around healthy food.

You’ll find recipes, research, reviews and remedies here to help you figure out how to stay healthy without going crazy!

Read More

Rookies Start Here
Free Email Course

 

Katie’s Cooking Class

We teach kids how to cook with online video lessons!
Better Than A Box eBook

Katie Kimball, CSME

Making real food and natural living possible for busy families!

Katie Kimball, CSME

Certified Stress Mastery Educator Badge

Stay Connected!

Kitchen Stewardship® Books on Amazon

Subscribe By Email

Subscribe

Readers’ Favorite Posts

  • Best Natural Hand Sanitizers
  • Recipes for Side Pork [Bacon Included]
  • How to Cook Frozen Ground Beef in the Instant Pot
  • Foods For Gut Healing
  • Everyone has Parasites - Get Rid of Them Naturally!
  • How to Freeze Avocado and Guacamole
  • Healthy Homemade Sweetened Condensed Milk Substitute
  • Why is Sugar Bad for You?

Some Articles Medically Reviewed By

  • Scott Soerries, M.D.
  • Sheila Kilbane, M.D.
  • Jess Sherman, RHN
  • Madiha Saeed, M.D.

Katie Kimball Has Been Featured On:

Featured on Wellness Mama Featured on Rodale Wellness Featured on Popsugar Featured on Money Saving Mom Featured on Huffington Post Featured on Fox News Featured on BuzzFeed Featured on Amazon Kindle Top 100 List

Please remember that I’m just a gal who reads a lot and spends way too much time in her kitchen. We at Kitchen Stewardship® are not doctors, nurses, scientists, or even real chefs, and certainly the FDA hasn't evaluated anything on this blog. Any products mentioned are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please talk to your health professional (or at least your spouse) before doing anything you might think is questionable. Trust your own judgment…We can’t be liable for problems that occur from bad decisions you make based on content found here. Here's the full legal disclaimer.

Some posts on this blog contain affiliate links which generate commission if you purchase anything starting with those links. KS also accepts private sponsorships and we are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. More info here.

Contact · affiliates · ad disclosure · privacy policy · ebooks
Copyright © 2021 Kitchen Stewardship®