A long time ago, in some blogs far, far away, I talked about how the line between artificial and natural is more like a fog rather than a line.
I also talked about how natural ingredients aren't inherently any safer or better for us than artificial ingredients.
I also mentioned how natural ingredients can be used to disguise what's really in a product.
A recent experience I had shows this perfectly. I had a meeting with the CEO of a beverage company planning to come out with a new drink. The drink was sweetened with agave syrup, a sweetener that comes from the agave plant.
He made a big deal out of this, because agave syrup is a natural sweetener. This drink was going to be marketed towards health & fitness-conscious people as a post-workout recovery drink.
Agave syrup is big as a sweetener in health foods because of its "natural" label. Health-conscious people like this as an alternative to sweeteners such as high-fructose corn syrup, which they don't consider natural. Also, agave syrup is extremely sweet, much moreso than normal table sugar, meaning you don't need as much to get the same sweetness.
However, what makes agave syrup so sweet is exactly what makes it unhealthy for you, despite its "natural" label.
Agave syrup is almost 90% fructose. Sweetening something with agavey syrup is like using pure crystalline fructose as a sweetener. Fructose is almost 200% more sweet than regular table sugar. It's the fructose content of agave syrup that makes it so sweet.
But it's this high fructose content that makes agave syrup unhealthy. Too much fructose in the diet is associated with a lot of health problems, including insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, disruption of appetite regulation, fat formation in the liver, and high blood cholesterol and triglycerides. It's estimated that the American diet is much, much too high in fructose.
By comparison, high fructose corn syrup is only 55% fructose, and isn't much different from normal table sugar. Thus, high fructose corn syrup is actually a healthier choice of sweetener than agave syrup, despite the fact that agave syrup is "natural".
So, don't be fooled by "natural" labels. Agave syrup is probably one of the worst sweeteners out there, even though it's "natural."