Sweet, Honestly: Why We Use Sugar in our Functional Mushroom Gummies
Does cane sugar have a bad rep right now? Yep. Our North American Standard Diet absolutely has too many simple carbohydrates in it, but cane sugar is not the only culprit.
Sugars, Carbohydrates and Blood Sugar Impact
The main ingredient in all gummies is carbohydrates, simple or complex. While protein and fat can be added to a gummy, they can never be made without the carbohydrates that bond together the ingredients and create the chewy texture.
We have exhaustedly researched and experimented with the many ‘low net carb’, ‘high fibre’, ‘low calorie’, and ‘sugar free’ sweeteners available to reduce the net carbohydrates in our gummies, with disappointing results.
Most of the ingredients companies are putting in their gummies to take 'sugar' off the label are carbohydrates and still metabolize down to simple sugars in your body. This label misrepresentation can make people believe that the gummies they are eating are not going to affect their blood sugar and insulin levels, when the actually are. How much an ingredient can increase your blood sugar levels is measured by its glycemic index. Cane sugar has a glycemic index of 60, so that was the benchmark we used in looking at other sweeteners.
We have chosen to stay with using organic cane sugar and tapioca syrup in our gummies because we believe it is more important to accurately inform people that the carbohydrates in our gummies will, like any carbohydrates, impact their blood sugar. Thankfully, with only 1.5 grams of sugar per gummy, the impact is minimal.
Digestive Health and FODMAP Foods
In order for us to benefit from the power of functional mushrooms when we consume them, our digestion needs to be working properly. High FODMAP foods are a category of ingredients that disrupt our digestion causing bloating, pain, and inflammation.
When we eat high FODMAP foods, we don't properly absorb the nutrients, including the compounds in functional mushrooms, in our digestive tract. We only use low FODMAP ingredients in our gummies to protect our digestive health for maximum mushroom absorption.
Vegan Ingredients
Many ingredients used in gummies are not vegan, surprisingly this includes flavours and sweeteners. We have researched our ingredients exhaustively, including documentation from our suppliers, to ensure all our ingredients are free of animal products in their processing and / or final composition.
Ingredients Tested
We tested the ingredients below in our formulations to evaluate if their:
- Glycemic Index is lower than Organic cane sugar (60),
- FODMAP status: are they low FODMAP, and
- vegan status: are they vegan.
| INGREDIENT | GLYCEMIC INDEX | FODMAP | VEGAN | NOTES |
| Organic cane sugar | 60 | Low | Yes | |
| Agave syrup | 11-19 | High |
Yes |
|
| Beet sugar | 64 | Low | Yes | |
| Brown rice syrup | 25 | High | Yes | |
| Cane sugar | 60 | Low | No | Processed with bone char filters. |
| Chicory root syrup | 55 | High | Yes | |
| Coconut sugar | 54 | Depends on serving size. | Yes | |
| Corn syrup | 75 | Low | Yes | |
| Date sugar | 31-60 | Low | Yes | Doesn't dissolve properly into a syrup form. |
| Erythritol | 0 | High | Yes | |
| Glucose syrup | 100 | Low | Yes | |
| High fiber syrup (oligosaccharides) | 1 | High | Yes | |
| High fructose corn syrup | 87 | High | Yes | |
| Honey | 59-61 | High | No | |
| Inulin | 1 | High | Yes | |
| Isomalt | 9 | High | Yes | |
| Maltitol | 35 | High | Yes | |
| Maltodextrin | 95 | Low | Yes | |
| Maple syrup | 54 | Low | Yes | Expensive. |
| Monk fruit | 0 | Low | Yes | Great sweetener but requires additional carbohydrates to be added to formulation, increasing net carbs. |
| Rice syrup | 100 | Low | Yes | |
| Stevia | 0 | Low | Yes | Great sweetener but requires additional carbohydrates to be added to formulation, increasing net carbs. |
| Tapioca syrup | 46 | Low | Yes | |
| Xylitol | 13 | High | Yes | |
| Yacon syrup | 1 | High | Yes |
While the ingredients may sound great on a label, they can wreak havoc in the gut, spike blood sugar levels, and metabolize as if they were good old sugar. The health risks of using these ingredients that are marketed as healthy are they mislead consumers and put them at risk for spiked blood-sugar levels, increased insulin production, and digestive agony.
We use organic cane sugar because we would rather be sweet, honestly. Our organic cane sugar is vegan, low FODMAP, and metabolizes predictably in our bodies.