Looking for a sugar alternative? With so many options available at your local grocery store, it's hard to know which sweetener is safe to eat, tastes great, and will have little impact on your blood sugar.
Though variety is nice, when you're trying to swap out table sugar for a healthier alternative, too many options can create confusion.
In this article, we'll discuss what allulose sweetener is, why it has little impact on blood sugar, and whether it can help you pursue a low-sugar lifestyle.
Let's start with the basics:
What Is Allulose Sweetener?
"Allulose is a type of sugar that resembles fructose, which is the sugar that occurs naturally in fruit, (Medical News Today).
In its granulated form, allulose sweetener looks and feels like the table sugar you've probably used to bake cookies or stir in a hot cup of tea. Because it's a simple carbohydrate, it actually tastes like real sugar, too—whether you bake it or freeze it. That's because it contains 70% of the sweetness of sugar.
In fact, allulose sweetener is the only sugar alternative that browns like real sugar when you bake it!
Allulose is considered a "rare sugar." It exists in small quantities in nature and naturally occurs in certain food items like maple syrup, raisins, and brown sugar. It can also be made using corn and fruits, like jackfruit or figs.
How Is Allulose Sweetener Different?
Aside from containing less calories than table sugar (approximately 1/10th the amount), and occurring naturally in fruits (meaning it's not artificial), allulose has little impact on blood sugar.
After it's absorbed, your body doesn't digest this sweetener or metabolize it for energy—as is the normal process for simple carbohydrates (i.e., turns carbs into energy).
Another key difference of allulose sweetener is that, though it's chemically classified as "sugar", it's not required by the FDA to be labeled as part of total (or added) sugars on nutrition facts and labels.
The reason? As you've probably guessed, allulose sweetener doesn't act like a normal sugar.
"About 90% of the allulose you consume gets absorbed through your small intestine and excreted through urine," (Splenda). That means it passes through your body without metabolising or raising your blood sugar.
Allulose is instead added to a product's total carbohydrates, as it is still a type of sugar.
"Allulose is a carbohydrate, but it does not provide calories or raise blood glucose compared with sucrose [in other words, sugar]…," (Medical News Today).
Is Allulose Keto Friendly?
Those pursuing a keto diet, or low-carb lifestyle generally gravitate toward allulose sweetener for the three reasons we mentioned earlier:
- It contains less calories than table sugar
- It contains only 4 grams of total carbohydrates
- It has little impact on blood sugar
- It has a sugar-like taste and texture
Allulose is also Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS), according to the FDA.
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