All There Is To Know About Coconut Sugar
All There Is To Know About Coconut Sugar
When it comes to booming industries, coconut sugar production is up there with its name in neon lights. There’s a greater call for it from a wider customer base. But what do you really know about coconut sugar? Is coconut sugar better than cane sugar?
How healthy is it? How it is made? Does greater demand mean sacrificing ethical principles of small scale farming that helps local communities? Read on to put yourself in the picture, so that you understand why it’s becoming increasingly popular and what you need to look out for when selecting which coconut sugar to buy.
Coconut sugar in a nutshell
When it comes to thinking about coconut sugar, people tend to think of the hairy coconut. However, coconut sugar is actually made from the sap of the coconut flower blossom.
A coconut tree, like other fruit bearing plants, is in an ongoing cycle of flowering and producing fruit. It’s possible to take advantage of this cycle to collect the naturally produced sap when a flower buds. This is done by making a cut in the flower blossom, placing a ‘tap’ in it, and then collecting the dripping sap.
Coconut tappers climb the trees twice a day to collect the sap, which is then used to create coconut sugar and coconut nectar.
When you think of sap, you may think of a sticky substance. However, with coconut trees, it is more liquid and a milky colour. It requires heating to turn it into coconut sugar.
The ethics of coconut sugar
Coconut trees, and the products we get from them, are largely farmed in Indonesia and The Philippines. The trees are found on multiple small holdings with individual coconut farmers and tappers. It’s therefore easy to both make a difference through positive, fair and ethical relationships with the local population, or, conversely, to do the opposite.
At The Coconut Company we are hugely concerned about the ethics of working with coconut products. That’s why we choose to work only with organic farmers who themselves collect the sap and make the sugar.
They then send this sugar to our carefully chosen partner factory where it is possible for all the necessary checks to take place, and for it to be packed and exported. The factories we work with help the farmers by not only paying fair prices, but also by offering training, equipment and access to healthcare.
How is the sap turned into sugar crystals?
After the sap has been collected, the individual farmer turns it into coconut sugar before delivering it to their factory. It’s a remarkably simple process, but it does take a little time. The farmer uses a large open pan to heat the coconut sap, stirring continuously, until the delicious crunchy sugar forms.
What does coconut sugar taste like?
Coconut sugar tastes and looks quite similar to regular brown sugar, although it isn’t quite as sweet. Its beautiful caramelised colour is on a par with its crunchy caramelised taste. Having been made using the blossom sap, not the coconut itself, it doesn’t taste of coconut. As such, it can be used as an alternative in recipes, simply swapping out the required amount of cane sugar.
However, it’s not the same as cane sugar.
Cane sugar vs coconut sugar
Cane sugar and coconut sugar are different products, even though they can be used similarly.
Unlike coconut sugar, which comes from the sap, cane sugar comes from the water inside the sugarcane plant. It is much more mass-produced and processed.
In the production of coconut sugar, the farmers only need to heat the sap enough to evaporate the moisture and create first nectar, and then sugar granules. With cane sugar, the liquid needs to be cooked at a much higher temperature for crystals to form. It is also then refined, adding chemicals, to make the white sugar we’re familiar with.
So is coconut sugar better than cane sugar? Well, let’s take a look at their nutrient profiles. Here we start to see some real differences.
Coconut sugar, due to its origins and its manufacturing process, retains some of the nutrients from the coconut palm itself. These nutrients include minerals like zinc, iron, calcium and potassium. It also retains some antioxidants and other short-chain fatty acids. Cane sugar on the other hand is nutrient deficient; it is the poster-boy of ‘empty calories’.
There is also a difference when it comes to glycaemic index (GI). Because coconut sugar retains some fibre in the form of inulin, it has a lower glycaemic index than cane sugar. Pure glucose has a GI rating of 100. Cane sugar has a GI of around 60, and coconut sugar’s GI is 35.
So, how healthy is coconut sugar?
It’s important to remember that coconut sugar is still a sugar. There’s no getting away from that. As such, it needs to be a sweet treat, like when used in our divine Double Chocolate Banana Loaf, rather than a diet staple! Like with all sugars, it will cause a rise in your blood sugar, but not as much as with cane sugar.
Which begs the question of whether diabetics can use coconut sugar? Unfortunately, sugar is sugar and diabetics should avoid coconut sugar in the same way they avoid any sugar.
However, to consider how healthy coconut sugar is, we need to consider more than nutrient profiles and glycaemic index alone. Our organic coconut sugar doesn’t use pesticides, growth regulators, fertilisers, irradiation or genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are more widely used in a lot of sugar production.
It’s also interesting because science has revealed that unrefined sugars, like our organic coconut sugar, are less addictive than their refined counterparts. As such, swapping out refined options, like most cane sugars, and replacing them with unrefined options like coconut sugar, should benefit us overall by reducing our sugar cravings.
Switching to coconut sugar
If after reading this, you like the sound of giving coconut sugar room in your life then it’s a pretty simple choice. Buy some organic coconut sugar and then use it in your coffee, your baking, and in any dish you like!