Is agave nectar (agave syrup) healthy?
Short answer: not particularly. Certainly not any healthier than sugar or the vilified high-fructose corn syrup, which, incidentally is almost its equivalent with respect to its composition.
Agave Nectar (also more prosaically, and more correctly, called Agave Syrup) is made from the processed nectar of the agave plant, that wondrous Central American plant that gave us tequila, which is made of fermented agave nectar. Agave nectar has become enormously popular among vegans and, strangely (I’ll explain in a bit), raw foodists.
So why is agave touted as “good for you”, “healthier”, and “gentle on the body” (all taken from product labels I saw in my local natural grocer)? Because usually those making those claims have absolutely no understanding of science, and invent quackery on the fly. Remember, these are the same folks who told us that chocolate/cocoa was deadly, for decades, and that we should eat assy-tasting carob instead, when it turns out chocolate is actually quite good for you. There are plenty of reasons to be more than a little skeptical.
Let’s take a look at what agave nectar really is, before we think it’s healthy just because it came from a plant (as do sugar and HFCS.):
- agave nectar is primarily composed of inulin, a polysaccharide that acts like fiber in the system
- inulin is not really sweet so it must be processed (usually by heat) to convert it into fructose, primarily, which is sweet
- it must be boiled down, regardless of how the inulin is converted to fructose, in order to reduce a thin nectar into a thicker syrup (so it is most certainly not a “raw”/”live” food product)
- agave nectar is 56-92% fructose, with the rest mostly glucose
- HFCS, vilified as much as agave nectar is worshipped, is 55% fructose, the rest glucose. Yes, almost the same exact composition as some agave syrup.
But HFCS is processed! So is agave nectar. But agave nectar has a lower glycemic index than sugar! So does HFCS. I mean, they’re pretty much the exact same thing, except agave is made from a Mayan polysaccharide feedstock, and HFCS is made from an American one.
So, the biggest difference, except for the fact that agave nectar is imported from a much longer distance so as to incur a much larger carbon footprint, is that agave can have a higher percentage of fructose than glucose.
If you’re a diabetic, that’s good, because that means its glycemic index is lower.
If you’re not a diabetic, its lower glycemic index is not nearly as important, and there’s even greater cause for concern than with HFCS or table sugar. Fructose has a few problems over glucose:
- it doesn’t induce the same level of satiety as glucose, so people drink/eat more of foods that are sweetened with fructose
- fructose creates more than double the advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs), harmful chemical species that age (no pun intended) the human body, in the bloodstream than glucose
- fructose raises blood triglyceride levels, a marker for heart disease, higher than glucose does
- in mice, fructose induced obesity, and it has been suspected to do the same in humans, in addition to increasing the likelihood of metabolic syndrome
More here on the health effects of fructose.
What’s more, sucrose, rebranded recently as “evaporated cane juice” (to somehow hide the fact that it’s the same C&H stuff we’ve been consuming for decades), is almost identical to both the supposedly deadly HFCS and the purportedly salubrious agave nectar: it’s a disaccharide (made of two sugars), composed of 50% fructose and 50% glucose. Sound familiar?
What all this boils down to is that these 3 sugars - sucrose, HFCS, and agave - are almost identical from a health perspective. The fact that Mayans cultivate the agave does not make it a magically healthy alternative to table sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. In fact, it’s produced almost identically to the latter.
If you want something sweet, go ahead - just don’t try to delude yourself that Mexican processed sugar is any healthier than the American variety, regardless of whether that American sugar comes from cane or corn.
Posted on June 2nd, 2008 by JM
Hi JM,
My HFCS google alert picked up your article.
Interesting information about agave nectar. Sucrose
is different from HFCS. Sucrose, a disaccharide, is
one molecule of glucose linked to one molecule of
fructose. Sucrose requires sucrase to cleave the
sugars. HFCS is only a mixture of glucose and
fructose. Simply described, pure glucose is enzymatically isomerized to about 90% fructose and
then blended back with more glucose to yield the
desired ratio. All national brands of soft drinks contain
HFCS 55 = 55% fructose:45% glucose. The Corn
Refiners Assoc., preaches that a gram of sugar and HFCS contain 4 calories, and that the ratios of sugars are essentially similar. This is true, but the their metabolism is patently different. Because sucrose requires an enzyme for metabolism and absorption into the bood stream there is also catalytic regulation at the site of the reaction. In the case of HFCS, the free glucose and fructose are shunted directly into the blood stream, bypassing not only enzymatic control but hormonal controls as well.
I am on a personal campaign to alert everyone I know about the treachery of HFCS.
Take care.
Thank you Cynthia. Do you know how much sucrase rate-limits the reaction that yields glucose & sucrose? My impression was that there was enough in the body, and that it worked quickly enough, so that ingesting sucrose was effectively the same as ingesting equal parts glucose and fructose. Would love to see information about sucrose metabolism rates.
Basically, you are correct in that there is no appreciable difference between sucrose, glucose and fructose on satiety, uric acid, and food intake at a subsequent meal. I try and tell people this.For instance, in my product at Life by Chocolate, we use organic sugar, sucrose, to sweeten the chocolate and agave nectar or HFCS for other reasons. I have these conversations all the time. “We don’t eat sugar. We only use Agave Syrup.” And I try to explain to people that agave syrup IS sugar. Now, if people want to be smart about this here is the reason you should not eat HFCS. Most corn is genetically modified. This at least a semi-intelligent argument. However, since we’ve been breeding and genetically modifying our plants and animals for thousands of years, most plants are genetically modified.For vegans, here is the reason you need. Much of the non-organic cane sugar is whitened with bone char. That is a reasonable argument.Honey, HFCS and agave nectar are basically the same chemically. If you get a high-fructose honey, tupelo, and a high-fructose corn syrup it’s pretty much the same as agave nectar. So, whatever treachery the corn industry is pulling, so are the honey and the agave nectar people. Without sugar, you’re dead. And the only reason high fructose products are low on the glycemic index is because the glycemic index only measures glucose.