Agave Nectar - The Biggest Lie In “Health” Food Sugar is bad… yeah, yeah. High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) is even worse… yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ve heard all that and most of us are well programmed by now to look for “healthier” options. One such sweetener that’s been heavily promoted in recent years as a healthy option is Agave Nectar. Interestingly enough agave is actually the plant from which tequila is made. Agave nectar is the sweetener made from the agave plant and is known in Mexico as aguamiel, or “honey water.” In recent years agave nectar has become among the preferred sweetener of many health conscious consumers, weight loss advocates, doctors, and natural foods cooks alike-mostly because of it’s favorable glycemic profile.

To understand what that means and why it is so misinformed let’s briefly over view sugar and the glycemic index. Sugar is comprised of two basic parts: glucose and fructose. Glucose is absorbed directly into the bloodstream very quickly and is the foundation behind the glycemic index. The Glycemic Index (GI), ranks foods based on how much your blood glucose increases in the hours after eating certain foods. The faster they hit the bloodstream, the higher the GI load. Fructose is metabolized very differently than glucose. While every cell in the body can use glucose and it’s absorbed directly into the blood, fructose can only be metabolized by the liver which means when fructose is consumed it’s first transported to the liver where it must be converted to glucose in order to be put to use. All this extra processing time means fructose takes longer to hit the bloodstream and raise blood glucose levels giving it a relatively low glycemic index.

So basically, the more fructose in a sugar, the lower the GI load. The lower the GI load the more favorable the GI profile. But it’s not that simple. From a previous article I wrote on sugar regarding the lower GI index of fructose: “With all the hype surrounding the importance of the glycemic index of food, you may be tempted to think that’s a good thing. It’s not. Having blood sugars go up for a short time isn’t that bad, but having them chronically elevated (high all the time) is a recipe for disaster. The fructose content of a sugar is actually a much bigger problem than its glycemic index. Excess fructose in our bodies doesn’t sit around in our cells ready to be useful for anything in the way that glucose does (as glycogen). Rather when excess fructose is consumed cells begin getting damaged, the liver gets overloaded and immediately begins turning it into triglycerides which (as mentioned above) get stored as fat, both externally and internally-on and around our organs.

The excess triglycerides created when you eat fructose also increase insulin resistance, thereby boosting insulin production to very high levels which can contribute to the development of diabetes. As well, since insulin triggers the hormonal response that tells your brain you’re full and fructose doesn’t elicit this reaction so it’s easier to overeat when consuming too much fructose.” Dr. Robert Lustig, Professor of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco has been a pioneer in decoding sugar metabolism. His work has shown: After eating fructose, 100 percent of the metabolic burden rests on your liver. But with glucose, your liver has to break down only 20 percent. Every cell in your body, including your brain, utilizes glucose. Therefore, much of it is “burned up” immediately after you consume it and much gets stored in your muscles as glycogen, ready to be as energy when needed. By contrast, fructose is turned into free fatty acids (FFAs), VLDL (the damaging form of cholesterol), and triglycerides. These get immediately stored as fat. The fatty acids created during fructose metabolism accumulate as fat droplets in your liver and skeletal muscle tissues, causing insulin resistance and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Insulin resistance progresses to metabolic syndrome and type II diabetes.

Fructose is the most lipophilic carbohydrate. In other words, fructose converts to activated glycerol (g-3-p), which is directly used to turn FFAs into triglycerides. The more fructose you eat the more g-3-p you have, the more g-3-p you have, the more fat you store. Glucose does not do this. Consuming fructose is essentially consuming fat-and not the good healthy kind that makes us our hair and skin pretty, the kind that sits directly on our butts and jiggles! The metabolism of fructose by your liver creates a long list of waste products and toxins, including a large amount of uric acid, which drives up blood pressure and can cause gout. Glucose suppresses the hunger hormone ghrelin and stimulates leptin, which suppresses your appetite. Fructose has no effect on ghrelin and interferes with your brain’s communication with leptin, resulting in overeating.

The fact is there are major differences in how your body processes and responds to these two types of sugar but the bottom line is despite the lower GI index of products higher in fructose excess of this type leads to increased belly fat, insulin resistance, and metabolic syndrome — not to mention the long list of chronic diseases that directly result. What does all this have to do with agave nectar? Well, now that we know how bad excess fructose is let’s sum up: Table sugar is about 50% glucose and 50% fructose. HFCS, you know, the one that’s SO badly demonized and we’ve all been warned to stay far away from? That’s about 45% glucose and 55% fructose. The higher fructose content of high fructose corn syrup (see that, it’s right there in the name) is one the main reasons it’s considered so much unhealthier than regular sugar. -> Agave nectar is 70-90% fructose. ?It’s even worse than HFCS-by a long shot.