What Sweeteners are Safe for us with IBS

A little sweetness in our food is a necessity for most of us. But what sugars can we eat if we have irritable bowel syndrome and which shouldn’t we touch? You may be surprised at the simple answer to this.

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Transcription of “What Sweeteners are Safe for us with IBS”

Today I want to talk to you about sweeteners.

We can’t live without sweeteners; life would be very boring. We do have to try to get most of our sugar from fruit but we shouldn’t really have more than two, maybe three pieces of fruit a day because we are getting quite a bit of fructose. If you want to use sugar, then ordinary old table sugar is your best bet, because it’s 50/50 glucose and fructose. And the glucose helps the fructose to be absorbed. But if in any sugar at all, there is an excess of fructose, that’s where the problem exists. Because an excess goes on down into the bowel and gets fermented. And this is the case in things like honey, agave syrup, yacón syrup, and obviously high-fructose corn syrup. Those are sweeteners that we can’t go anywhere near because they have an excess of fructose. Ordinary table sugar includes caster sugar, granulated sugar, cane sugar, even brown sugar. Brown sugar is ordinary sugar that’s had a little bit of molasses added into it. And molasses is a by-product of making the white table sugar. Sometimes, the fructose content in molasses can vary a little bit, but on the whole, you should be safe with it. Just don’t have a lot of it. Once it’s in the brown sugar there’s not a lot there, so it should be fine.

You can also have syrups like maple syrup – which comes, of course, from the maple tree but just make sure that you’re actually getting the real deal, here. There are a lot of maple-flavored syrups in the supermarket. So do check them out. Also golden syrup, which is found in Australia and New Zealand is safe. It’s also made from just ordinary old cane sugar, and that’s absolutely fine. As is rice malt syrup, which is made from rice. And that’s got enough of the (fructose/glucose) balance for us to be safe as well.

So there you go, there’s actually quite a bit of variety in terms of sweeteners that we can have. But don’t turn to artificial sweeteners. Apart from the fact that we know they’re not very good for us, most of them are high FODMAP. They are polyols. The only one that doesn’t is aspartame but, of course, it is connected to cancer and other horrible things, so I would be staying away from that anyway.

So, it’s better to just use a teaspoon of normal sugar if you need something sweetened. I hope that has helped you clarify about the sweeteners we are allowed to have.