What does unrefined sugar mean

It helps to have some basic knowledge of what these different sugars and sweeteners are made up of so that you can understand just how similar they really are. Stay with me here — I promise to make this section quick and painless! Maple syrup: From a sugar standpoint, much of maple syrup is identical to table sugar. The rest are free-floating, individual glucose and fructose molecules remember, these are the two sugars that, when linked together, form sucrose.

Instead of being bound together as sucrose , almost all of the sugar molecules in honey are individual, free-floating fructose and glucose. What does all of this mean? So, any sucrose is broken down into glucose and fructose during digestion. This means that all of these sugar sources ultimately end up as some combination of the same two simple sugars — glucose and fructose — before entering the bloodstream. Chemically speaking, sugar is sugar. Unrefined or less processed foods are generally associated with better nutritional value.

A refined sugar free cookie recipe could still yield 20 grams of sugar per cookie, just coming from coconut sugar instead of white sugar. Well, even good old table sugar came from a plant — a sugar beet or sugar cane plant. Take coconut sugar for example. It starts as coconut sap, which is then heated, sieved, dried, weighed, and packaged in granule form.

All processes. Is it true that unrefined sugars, like coconut sugar and honey, have a lower glycemic index than refined sugars like table sugar? Simply put, the glycemic index is a measure of how quickly a food causes blood sugar levels to rise. Honey has a glycemic index of around 58, whereas table sugar has a glycemic index of about This would lead you to believe that honey causes a much smaller spike in blood sugar levels than table sugar, which we do want.

For example, you may have heard watermelon has a very high glycemic index of around 72, which is as high as the glycemic index of a donut. That high number for watermelon is based on consuming 5 cups of watermelon in a sitting, which is nowhere near the typical serving size for watermelon. A better picture of how a food will affect your blood sugar levels is the glycemic load, which takes into account portion size. True, again. Unrefined sugars are a little less processed so they retain more minerals, antioxidants, and other good-for-you plant nutrients that are removed during more extensive refining processes.

The amounts retained are so small that to reap any health benefits would require excessive sugar and, therefore , calorie consumption. Take, for example, the mineral iron. A tablespoon of maple syrup provides around three times the iron of a tablespoon of table sugar. A tablespoon of honey provides 14 times that. Sure, that seems like a huge difference.

See synonyms for unrefined on Thesaurus. We could talk until we're blue in the face about this quiz on words for the color "blue," but we think you should take the quiz and find out if you're a whiz at these colorful terms. Words nearby unrefined unreconstructible , unrecorded , unredacted , unreel , unreeve , unrefined , unreflected , unreflecting , unreflective , unregenerate , unregistered.

Words related to unrefined crude , coarse , rude , uncouth , unpolished , barbaric , boorish , crass , earthy , gross , inelegant , primitive , raw , rough , uncivilized , uncultivated , uncultured , unsophisticated , vulgar , brutish. How to use unrefined in a sentence They say that sweet and unrefined drinks are the fastest way to get drunk. Ruth Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell. Sarah's School Friend May Baldwin. The Open Question Elizabeth Robins.