If sugar is natural, can it really be bad for you?

The short answer is yes. Sugar can be bad for you. It wasn’t so bad for Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who could only eat sweet berries when they stumbled across them and could only eat natural honey when they found a hive, and didn’t get driven away by bees. But it’s bad for modern Americans who have easy access to sugar every hour of every day. 

In fact, we consume, on average, 150 pounds of sugar each year.

Yes, sugar is hazardous to your health. What we’re most interest in is high blood sugar. We’re talking obesity, diabetes, and heart disease on an epidemic scale. We’re also looking at a vicious cycle in which you consume sugar and then feel hungrier than you did before and sleepier than you did before, so you then eat more sugar to fill the void and drink more sugar to stay awake. And it doesn’t really matter if it’s table sugar (white, raw, brown) or liquid sugar (high-fructose corn syrup). It’s still sugar.

OK, but what about artificial sweeteners like aspartame, saccharin, sucralose, and Xylitol? They’re artificial. They come from a laboratory. No one knows if they’re really bad for you, but no one says that they’re good for you. And some artificial sweeteners are linked to weight gain.

But what about natural sweeteners such as honey and agave nectar? Now you’re getting warmer. On the glycemic index, agave nectar earns a 19 out of a possible 100. Honey places 55. White table sugar gets a 68. And high-fructose corn syrup gets a 90. The lower the glycemic number, the better. 

Motto is sweetened with honey and agave nectar: 13 grams total. Motto also contains apple cider vinegar, which reduces blood sugar. This means Motto contains just enough sugar to taste good but not enough to spike your blood sugar.