After the end of the year holiday season and all of those deliciously festive and fun Christmas cookie exchanges with family, friends, and neighbors, sugar tends to be on our minds. You too? We believe balance in life is key and everyone should be able to have a sweet treat now and then. After all, isn’t the day way better when you can enjoy a scoop (or two) of dairy-free gelato?
The Comeback of More Mindful Ingredients
In recent years, brands, businesses, and companies have been leaning hard into creating more mindful renditions of consumers’ favorite indulgences and sweet treats in response to the vilification of sugar and the concerns about its impact on overall health and wellness. SuperMarket News reports, “Moving into 2022, we foresee brands and consumers embracing more of the real deal, albeit in more mindful amounts and with an emphasis on making ingredient lists cleaner, simpler, more carefully sourced, more responsible, and more sustainable.” By real deal they mean cane sugar.
We are proud to say we have done just that. At the start of the New Year, many of us are making new commitments and resolutions. It is common for some of those to include reducing sugar. Being that we carefully curate our ingredients and craft sweet treats, sugar is important to us, and we were incredibly intentional when we crafted both of our dairy-free gelato lines.
Keeping it Classic with Cane Sugar
When we launched in 2017 all of our flavors were classically sweetened with cane sugar. There are clearly many types of sugars and sweeteners available, so why did we decide to use cane sugar? Great question! Although other sugar options like agave or coconut sugar may sound more mindful, we found that the robust, toasted flavor of coconut sugar was overpowering in our products.
While agave is a natural sweetener, it is made up of a high amount of fructose, even more than high fructose corn syrup. Excessive amounts of fructose can damage the liver and contribute to obesity.
After evaluating all of our available sugar options, we felt confident in our choice of using cane sugar. With its clean, neutral flavor, it is perfect for creating deliciously creamy gelato. You’ll find a good balance of sweetness in all of our flavors because we stopped adding sugar when it was sweet enough. Our classically sweetened flavors have about 10-20% less sugar when compared to some of the top brands in the marketplace.
Looking for Less Sugar?
We realize that for some, cane sugar, even in moderation, still might not be an option, and we wanted you to be able to enjoy deliciously creamy gelato too! What we heard from some of our consumers was that they wanted to see a product with less sugar, so we got to work and created our Keto-friendly flavors which contain 1-2 grams of sugars per serving.
Crafted with the same premium ingredients, our Keto-friendly line is sweetened with allulose and monk fruit and stevia extracts. Allulose is a rare sugar found naturally in fruits like figs and raisins. Neutral in flavor, allulose adds a subtly sweet taste to our Keto-friendly, lower sugar, dairy-free gelato options. It really allows our main ingredients to shine. Plus, allulose does not impact blood sugar levels or insulin.
Monk fruit, on the other hand, is a sub-tropical melon that originates in Asia. Stevia is a plant native to South America. Monk fruit and stevia extracts are 200 to 300 times sweeter than classic cane sugar. Our blend of allulose and monk fruit and stevia extracts work well together and provide a delicious, naturally sweet flavor to our lower-sugar line.
Educate Yourself: Types of Sugars and Sweeteners
Although many of us are most familiar with the basic term, sugar, this sweet ingredient comes in many different forms. Here are some common names for sugar and commonly known sugar alternatives.
Sugars
- Sucrose- table sugar (derived from cane or beets)
- Fructose- fruit sugar
- Dextrose
- Allulose
- Agave
- Coconut Sugar
More Commonly Known Sugar Alternatives
Non-nutritive synthetic sweeteners
- Aspartame (ex. NutraSweet)
- Saccharin
- Sucralose (ex. Splenda)
Sugar Alcohols
- Erythritol
- Xylitol
- Maltitol
- Sorbitol
High Intensity Sweeteners
- Stevia
- Monk fruit
To learn more about sugar and sweeteners click here.
Stay Sweet
Sugar goes by many names, so don’t let it fool you when you are trying to reduce sugar in your diet. Take the time to familiarize yourself with all of the tricky terms used for sugar substitutes and sweeteners and select brands and products that use the ones that work best for you and your health goals. Like with most things in life, enjoy sugar mindfully and use it in moderation because you are sweet enough already.
Show us your favorite O’MY! Flavors by tagging us at @omydairyfree.
