Too Sweet

Starting with a mention in E Magazine, I've gone down the trail of learning how agave nectar is bad for your health. I like agave as a sweetner. I like how similar it is to honey, how the agave plants are slow growing and without pesticides, harvested without fancy farming machinery, and I like how it ties me to home, to a plant that always grew in my yard.

But apparently it is just as bad for me as all other sugar. It's a bummer, I'd even pushed the idea of it and its low glycemic index on my pre-diabetic mom.
It shouldn't surprise me. Things (like fructose) that don't hurt you in their natural form (fruit) aren't so great once isolated, concentrated, and processed. But I want to believe. That's the trick—the stuff is so addictive that we all want to find the magic healthy sugar that will make our sweets obsession okay.

I'm trying to adjust my thinking. Can I get one bottle of the best agave nectar I can find and treat it the same way I do tequila? Buy the best I can afford and take a year or two to consume it, in tiny portions?

I don't know if I can shake this addiction just yet. Later this month I'm headed for Brazil, where I'll surely buy beautiful rapadura bricks wrapped in banana leaves, drink pure sugarcane juice fresh squeezed at the market, and visit our cousins and drink the cachaça they make. The cachaça is, of course, also made from sugarcane.

I'll consider this whole sugar-is-bad-for-you-in-all-forms thing. In the meantime, shoot me up.