You don’t have to add sugar to your cranberry sauce this holiday season – a food scientist explains how to cook with less sweeteners

Holidays are full of tasty and filling dishes and drinks. It’s challenging to resist dreams of cookies, special cakes, luxurious meats and exceptionally hot additions.

Many of the vigorous ingredients used in holiday dishes can be overshadowed by sugar and starch. While adding extra sugar may be tasty, it’s not necessarily good for your metabolism. Understanding the food and cuisine science behind what you cook means you can make a few changes to a recipe and still have a delicious dish that isn’t loaded with sugar.

Especially if you’re someone with type 1 diabetes, the holidays can come with an extra layer of stress and soaring blood glucose levels. However, this is not the time to despair – it is the holidays after all.

Cranberries are a seasonal, tasty fruit that can be tweaked in recipes to make them more Type 1 diabetic-friendly – or genial to anyone looking for a sweet dish without the added sugar.

I am a food scientist and type 1 diabetes. Understanding food composition, ingredient interactions, and metabolism literally saved my life.

Type 1 diabetes has been defined

Type 1 diabetes it lasts all day, without sleep breaks, without holidays and weekends, without remission and without cure. Type 1 diabetes do not produce insulin, a hormone crucial for life, which promote the absorption of glucose, i.e. sugar, into cells. Glucose in your cells then provides the body with energy at the molecular level.

Therefore, people with type 1 diabetes take insulin injections using an insulin pump attached to their bodies and hopefully it works well enough to stabilize our blood sugar levels and metabolism, minimize health complications over time, and keep us alive.

Type 1 diabetics take into account mainly type and amount of carbohydrates in food when determining how much insulin to take, but they also need to understand the interactions of proteins and fats in food to employ it, or bolusappropriately.

Apart from insulin, type 1 diabetics do not produce another hormone, amylin, which slows down gastric motility. This means food moves faster through our digestive tract and we often feel very hungry. Foods high in fat, protein and fiber can keep you from feeling hungry for a while.

Cranberries, a seasonal snack

Cranberries are native to North America and grow well in the northeastern and midwestern states, where they are in season from tardy September through December. They dominate holiday tables all over the country.

One cup of whole, raw cranberries contains 190 calories. They are composed of 87% water, trace amounts of protein and fat, 12 grams of carbohydrates and just over 4 grams of soluble fiber. Soluble fiber combines well with water, which benefits your digestive health and can leisurely down the rise in blood glucose levels.

Cranberries are tall IN potassiumwhich helps maintain electrolyte balance and cell signaling, as well as other vital nutrients such as antioxidants, beta-carotene AND vitamin C. They also contain vitamin Kwhich helps in vigorous blood clotting.

The taste and aroma of cranberries comes from compounds found in fruits such as cinnamates, which add a hint of cinnamon, vanillin for a vanilla note, benzoates AND Benzaldehydethat tastes like almonds.

Cranberries are high in pectin, a soluble starch that forms a gel and is used as a binding agent in making jams and jellies, so they thicken easily with minimal cooking. Their beautiful jewel tone red color belongs to a class of compounds called anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins with which they are associated treatment of certain types of infections.

They also contain phenols, which are protective compounds produced by the plant. These compounds, which look like rings at the molecular level, interact with proteins in the saliva, causing a dehydrated and tight feeling that causes the mouth to pucker. Similarly, the so-called benzoic acid naturally occurring in cranberries, it adds sourness to the fruit.

These chemical components make them extremely sour and bitter and challenging to eat raw. To moderate these flavors and effects, most cranberry recipes call for lots of sugar.

All this extra sugar can make cranberry dishes challenging for type 1 diabetics to consume because the sugars cause blood glucose levels to rise quickly.

Cranberries without sugar?

Type 1 diabetics – or anyone looking to limit their sugar intake – can try some cooking tactics to reduce their sugar intake while still enjoying this holiday treat.

Don’t cook the cranberries too long once they pop. You’ll still have a sticky cranberry liquid without having to add a lot of sugar, because cooking concentrates some of the bitter compounds, making them more observable in the dish.

The addition of cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and other warming spices gives the dish a depth of flavor. Adding heat with hot chili pepper it can make a cranberry dish more intricate while reducing sourness and astringency. Adding salt can reduce the bitterness of cranberries, so you won’t need a lot of sugar.

For a richer flavor and shiny quality, add butter. The butter also moisturizes the lips, which enhances the natural tartness of the dish. Other fats, such as cream or coconut oil, also work.

Adding chopped walnuts, almonds or hazelnuts may leisurely down the absorption of glucose, so your blood glucose levels may not rise as quickly. Some recent types of sweeteners, such as allulosethey taste sweet but do not raise blood sugar levels and require minimal or no insulin. Allulose has GRAS – Generally Regarded as Safe – status in the US but is not approved as an additive in Europe.

During the holiday season, you can easily reduce the amount of sugar added to cranberry dishes and enjoy the health benefits without spikes in blood glucose levels.