nosh magazine
SUGAR
SUBSTITUTES
FOR PEOPLE
WITH DIABETES
Diabetes Victoria’s dietitian Adele Mackie explains how people with diabetes can
have their cake and eat it too!
he idea that people with diabetes
need to avoid sugar and use
alternatives has been around for a long time
and is still one of the most frequently asked
questions. Sugar substitutes have been
around for many years and have traditionally
taken the form of what we call ‘non-nutritive’
or ‘artificial sweeteners’. Non-nutritive
sweeteners (such as aspartame, sucralose,
stevia) do not contain carbohydrate and have
very few calories.
T
Non-nutritive or artificial sweeteners are not
actually needed to help manage diabetes.
People with diabetes can still use regular
sugar to sweeten foods, as long as it is used in
small amounts and generally eaten as part of
a meal. An example might be one teaspoon
of sugar sprinkled over a hot bowl of plain
rolled oats or a thin spread of regular jam on
some grainy toast. This is the same advice
that would be given to someone who does
not have diabetes, as large amounts of added
sugar is not good for anyone, regardless of
whether or not we have diabetes.
In recent times, there have been a number
of other sugar substitutes gaining
popularity because they are thought to be
‘healthier’ than regular old table sugar.
So, why is this the case?
Many of these sugar substitutes are
claiming to be healthier than regular sugar
because they claim to have a lower
glycaemic index (GI) or contain more
nutrients, such as small amounts of
calcium, potassium and magnesium.
However, many of these claims are actually
irrelevant. For example, the GI of sugar
substitutes becomes irrelevant when they
are only used in small amounts. One
teaspoon of any sweetener is going to have
a similar impact on blood glucose levels, it
doesn’t m