Claudia von Boeselager: Welcome today, so excited to have you on, particularly as someone who absolutely adores , chocolate, delicious chocolate, and things that are sweet.

Thank you so much for creating such beautiful beautiful food that's actually healthy for us, and I want to dive into all things. And why don't we kick off. I'd love for you to explain for people to understand, first of all, like why is sugar so addictive. Some people even say apparently it's like cocaine. Um, so what's happening? Why is sugar so addictive? Why do we crave it so much?  

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: There's a lot of famous discussion about how it's like cocaine, but actually on a molecular level makes sense actually.

People think it's just because of the sweet taste in the mouth, but that's actually not correct. And the latest research on taste is very fascinating and it shows that even if we lose our sense of taste, we still crave glucose , which makes sense because glucose is a very abundant energy source for our bodies that we've evolved with.

However, sucrose is sugar, sucrose is glucose and fructose bonded together. Um, and we really, as far as we can tell in our day and age, we don't really need fructose to survive. Fructose is quite particular in the fact that it's the only thing we eat that actually increases our ghrelin, our hunger hormone and actually suppresses the functioning of our fullness hormone , leptin. So, that combination of suppressing fullness, increasing hunger obviously just makes you eat more. And if you're eating the sugar, you'll probably eat more sugar. Right? And that makes you eat more and more. And so that's the reason for the eating more of sugar.

But I don't know if addiction is the best way to describe it. You could describe it that way, but it's a different, like mechanism basically. And then also the fact that our intestines sense, oh, there's glucose here. You know, we want it. So even if you lose your sense of taste, you still will want the sugar for survival reasons.

The problem now is that we're surrounded by sugar. Every single packaged food product nearly has added sugar to it and we really don't need it. And it's just fueling this hunger, increase and fullness, decrease vicious circle. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah, I think that's such a good point as well. 

But reading labels is so important. I mean, I'm so shocked. Also in the US they even put sugar in bread. Bread's supposed to be sweet. Right. And I think it's keeping an eye on that and also on the serving sizes as well, because people think, you know, it's, oh, there's only five grams of sugar in here per, but then they have to realize it's per 30 grams and not per a hundred.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Exactly.

Claudia von Boeselager: Always per a hundred grams. And ideally something under five grams. Can you discuss a little bit about the detrimental impact of sugar on health? What is actually going on there and how that then obviously plays on wellbeing and longevity?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes. To take a step back, just, I'll try to go through it really quickly.

The reason it's bad for us now actually is the same reason that it helped us, our species to survive at a certain time in our evolutionary history. You might think like, why would nature create such a thing that's so terrible for us? There was a time in our evolutionary history when we were mainly was eating fruit, basically. And there was fruit all year round. And then, our ancestor species, started suffering from the climate change that was happening at the time, which was reducing temperatures and thus making there not be fruit all year round.

And at that point in time, there was a genetic change in our genes that allowed us to store more fat from fructose, which is the sugar and fruit. So that key genetic change allowed us to survive the winter, and probably allowed our whole species to survive when it otherwise wouldn't have.

So that's great. But basically, remember what I just said there. Fructose- we can store more fat from fructose than other animals, and really effectively, so storing fat from fructose. Now we're surrounded by fructose and we're storing fat, you know? And it's not just fat that you see visibly, but it's this type of fat.

It promotes the type of fat that actually starts to surround your internal organs. And thus leads to organ dysfunction. And that's called visceral fat, for example. That is the real crux of the problem function, is dependent on form and when the form is changed by having much more fat in and around the actual pancreas, the liver, et cetera.

Those organs start to not function anymore. Also another key beginning of the detrimental effects is insulin resistance. You can first see it actually in the muscle cells, where you might have enough glucose circulating your blood, but it's not getting into the cells where it needs to get in.

So your body actually effectively thinks that you're starving in a way, because the glucose is not getting into the cells, but actually you have a lot of glucose, too much in the blood, and it's this vicious circle. Then it keeps going and getting worse as that metabolic dysfunction turns into a hormonal endocrine dysfunction.

And then it's very hard to go back. So yeah, I mean there's so many ways I can talk about the detriments, but that's just like one key core part of it. Then also it increases inflammation for example, the subcutaneous fat cells causing cellulite, for example. Many people don't really know that.

That it's really a key cause of cellulite and if you quit sugar dramatically, your skin overall would totally improve, including that for example. Yeah. So they're many low, almost, right? It's phenomenal 

Claudia von Boeselager: but I think what people are feel uncertain about is healthy sweetness, right? Yes. And there's a lot of artificial sugars and we hear then there's studies about people that some of them can be cancerous. So let's talk about what exactly is healthy sweetness and what is actually marketed as healthy but not actually very healthy for us.

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Okay. Yeah. So broadly speaking , I like to speak on a molecular level, a biochemistry level because that's what matters. Like the biochemistry of the thing you're putting in your mouth will go down and have a different impact on your whole system depending on what it is. And so for example, there are many different bitter foods, right? Bitter coffee is bitter, tea is bitter. Some dark leafy vegetables are bitter and so on. But, that doesn't mean that the bitterness comes from the same biochemistry, the same type of molecule. So it's the same with sweetness. So we have sweet taste. in nature and artificially produced that.

Some of the ones in nature are forms of sucrose, fructose, glucose. Those are the main and what makes sucrose table sugar Sweet or cane sugar? Bee sugar. Sweet is the fructose part. And this fructose and many different things. A lot. And mostly in fruit. But there are also ingredients found in nature that activate the sweet taste receptors, but are not sucrose, are not fructose, are not glucose.

So examples of these, they might have other flavors within them. Licorice, for example. has no fructose in it, but it tastes sweet. It has a licorice taste as well as tasting sweet. So you can't necessarily use it in a cake recipe and come out with the same result as then you have this tea we drink in Japan called amatcha, which the leaves are very sweet they're also a type of molecule called the Glycoside that is a sugar and it tastes sweet and it actually has no calories. It's not metabolized into energy. It just taste activates your cell taste receptor goes through you done? And so that is the same with. I'll just list quickly what I feel based on all of the research I've done over many, many years, and performed ourselves.

The healthy sweeteners that are available commercially are stevia, erythritol, xylitol, monkfruit extract. Monkfruit extract, by the way, is a very similar molecule to the stevia leaf molecule. Okay. , so they both activate the solid tooth taste receptor. Now, all these things I'm saying, essentially have no calories and are not metabolized into energy except xylitol.

I still think xylitol is fine because some of it is metabolized into glucose, but no fructose and fructose is the thing I'm trying to avoid.

And then there's Allulose, which is kind of a new kid on new-ish, not that new. But, I am still not 100% comfortable. I'm not saying it's bad at all, it's just that, it has this blood glucose lowering effect, which sounds fantastic, you know.

At least as far as all the work I've done to try and find any studies, there's no study that demonstrates mechanistically how that is happening. I'm a bit like worried like, wow, that's quite a big effect that it has. Why is it doing that?
How is it doing that? What is the cellular metabolic pathway? So that's why I'm a bit like, but I would definitely cautious. I would still take the risk of having that over having sugar for sure. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Of course. Yeah. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: In terms of the healthiest, so all the ones I listed are at least health neutral, no negative consequences. But there are a couple that have added health benefits, particularly STE Stevia. Stevia is fascinating. It's an adaptogen, it actually has been used an indigenous populations to treat people with high blood pressure and high blood sugar.

I don't know how they figured this out, but they did and now all the scientific research. Unlike with the alls mechanistically described and studied and explained exactly mechanistically how it works to lower blood glucose. So if you have someone with insulin resistance having a, like a bowl of white rice. You'll see their blood glucose and their insulin area under the curve be very high. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: If you give that sort of, this is not exactly the experiment that was done, but just to make it easier to understand. If you give a high carb meal like that with the Stevia, they will have a 30% lower blood glucose area under the curve which is a fantastic thing for them to manage both.

And then stevia has also many interesting studies on its anti-inflammatory effects, antioxidant effects, et cetera. And then of course it matters in how much dosage there is and so on. But, so that's why I think study is particularly fascinating because it's really has medicinal properties.

Claudia von Boeselager: And just a question that I'd love for you to share as well around Stevia. So not all created equal and obviously go-to for a lot of people is what's in the supermarket and what's available. So what is key to finding the most, you know, quality stevia if you're using that as a sweetener. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Okay. There's a certain percentage of stevia on the market that is not even taken from the leaves.

It's like created in the lab enzymatically and so on, so that it'll never be organic. So it'll be a non-organic study. There's another type. 99% of what's on the market is chemically extracted stevia. But so many plant extracts are chemically extracted cuz it's the easiest kind of known way to do things, but the actual end result of what you end up with is like the core of the Stevia molecule. So from a health perspective, I don't see a big problem with chemically extracted stevia. Okay. It doesn't sound nice that it's chemically extracted.

So many things that we eat actually are chemically extracted. We don't even know, like vegetables or sometimes they use hexane to extract. So, you know, it's like a typical commercial process, but from a taste perspective, it does change the molecular structure and the way it reacts with your cells.

Taste receptors. So the Stevia that we use, and there's only one company in the world that sells this B2B, and it's growing. And soon we're gonna come out with a one-to-one sugar replacement that everyone can use that is based on this. Stevia is a hundred percent water pure. So it's a physical extraction from the organic leaves using very high tech filters and membranes.

So it's like a physical water only extraction, no chemicals and that maintains the natural structure of the sweet molecules and has a natural reaction with your cells taste receptors. But before we come up with that sweet mix and wherever everyone's living in the world, I would still encourage you to feel completely fine taking any sort of Stevia product.

Just check on the back that it's not one of the artificial sweeteners, which I'm sure will come to for example, sucrolose, or sometimes they'll have a big sign on the front saying Stevia. And then on the back it's like the main ingredient is sucrolose because it's cheaper, you know? Yeah. So, preferably organic, you know?

Yeah. And when it's organic in a pack, you won't often find Stevia on its own because it's 300 times as sweet as sugar. So you need to blend. Something else to to be able to have something that you can put in a recipe that's like sugar and what it's often blended with in America is Allulose because that's less sweet. And then erythritol is naturally occurring in mushrooms and fermented foods. It's a natural byproduct of fermentation. It has a funny sounding name if you haven't heard it before, but it's totally natural.

So erythritol totally is fine, and that is less sweet than sugar. So combined with stevia, often found together like that. I would feel totally comfortable buying kind of any study product as long as it doesn't have one of the artificial sweeteners in it and it's not because they're artificial that I have a problem with artificial sweetners.
 It's because I went through each one and read every single paper published on each one. Not all of them cause cancer or anything, but each one has issues from a health perspective. Maybe that's not a coincidence being artificial or synthetically created, you know? I wasn't like against it simply because it's created by a human.

I was open-minded, but I concluded. And you can see on our website, nomosu.com, a whole section on artificial sweeteners. You can see all the summaries and all the references to the published papers on them.

Claudia von Boeselager: It's so, so helpful. And thank you so much for walking through because just the detriment of sugar and where it's hidden. So we don't like to look at the problem, but figure out what are great solutions? And NoMoSu who's been doing amazing and producing also delicious products around it.

If you haven't tried them yet, do check them out. Can you explain, or can you share like what are the falsely marketed healthy sugars where people should really look out for? 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yes. So. basically you can just look at the back and see the sugars per hundred grams, hopefully. That's regulation. It has to show there. If it has 99 grams per hundred grams like coconut sugar does.

It's sugar meaning sucrose, meaning it has fructose. So people have really milked this idea of natural as being good. There are so many plants and things in nature that would kill us like immediately if we ate them, you know? So simply because something is natural does not mean at all that it's necessarily good for you.

And cane sugar is natural. Beet sugar is natural. Yeah. Coconut sugar is natural. People argue that coconut sugar has a lower glycemic response. That is a terrible argument because actually if you look at the composition of coconut sugar, it actually has more fructose than glucose.

And while we focus sometimes a lot on glycemic index, which is relevant, fructose gives no, like hardly any glycemic response. Fructose. And fructose is the most damaging part of sugar, but it doesn't spike your blood. On its own immediately, but over time it does elevate your blood because, cuz it makes you insulin sense insensitive.

The idea that coconut sugar is low GI is actually the reason why it's even maybe worse than table sugar because it's high fructose. Agave syrup, very high fructose, more fructose than high fructose corn syrup. Agave syrup has been more fructose than high fructose corn syrup, but it has a leaf on or plant on the front, a picture, and you're like, oh, this looks nice.

Claudia von Boeselager: People are like, oh, this is the healthy sweetener. And it's so unfair because it's so misconceiving, I think so many people want to eat the right sugar, eat right sweetness. I myself, back before I knew, I thought, oh, coconut sugar, like it's derived from coconut must be healthy. No, yeah, not the case at all as well. So what's great is that there are alternatives. Stevie is amazing for sort of day to day people put it in their coffee and things as well for baking, I think, monk fruit extract is great.

Xylitol erythrol is good. Just xylitol careful because apparently it's toxic for dogs. Olivia told me once and her neighbor's dog ate a birthday cake that was filled with xylitol and sadly died. So just to be really, really careful of that. And I haven't looked into the research around that as well why? But for humans it's perfectly fine, perfectly healthy as well. And then just what we were just a little recap saying with the Stevia, ideally if you can find organic stevia, it's produced in a better way. But any stevia is much better than any sort of pure sugar. And then for people just be very cautious of fructose as well.

And you were talking about the metabolic pathways and what's really happening. Around that as well. 

Sakiko, if people are looking to quit sugar. What are some of the ways to get out of harm's way in terms of sugar exposure? What would you recommend ?

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: A few things. Firstly, when you have a sweet tooth, which I did before and I still do to certain an extent, I was so afraid of quitting sugar and I wanted to do it for two weeks I was gonna quit sugar and I used to have a very sweet breakfast. Not necessarily unhealthy, I thought, but very, low fat yogurt that is sweetened with sugar, obviously with fruits and so on, loads of like high fructose fruit. You can tell how much fructose is in the fruit, just taste it, you know?

So if it's a very ripe pear, it's gonna have a lot of fructose in it. If it's a green banana, it's like hardly any fructose. So you can really tell. I used to have a very high fructose practice and I just couldn't imagine having eggs or something. I was just so used to that and it took three days and I couldn't imagine having sweet for breakfast, something sweet for breakfast after three days only.

It was so easy. It was so much easier than I thought and now I understand that actually our cells taste receptors reform all the time. So your level of what you appreciate and enjoy of sweetness will sync immediately. But I believe instead of taking it easy, slowly tapering down, I think you should go to cold Turkey.

Zero sweetness. Like even the healthy sweeteners I mentioned just to experiment with your taste. Just zero sweetness for three days. Pretty much anyone can do that and just add more like, delicious, savory like avocados, healthy fats, some protein and butter and whatever works for you, but like more protein and fats.

Healthy protein and fiber from vegetables and stuff, and you will find it much easier than you think. So that's step one is don't worry about it, just try it and it might be super easy. And then your level of sweetness, what you enjoy will change. There's certain desserts I can't have anymore because I just find them way too sweet and really almost disgusting, you know?

But I still appreciate a nice flavorful dessert. You're doing yourself a huge favor to just taper down your taste for sweetness. Yeah. And that happens automatically by having no sweetness for three days and the whole food industry, and especially in certain countries, there's been sweetness inflation over years and years and years.

So like what we can tolerate in terms of the level of sweetness is crazy actually and once you quit for just three days, you'll notice that you don't want that level of sweetness anymore. So that's step one. 

Claudia von Boeselager: I really like the idea of a three day test. And I think you know, the best way to succeed in a three day test is actually to set yourself up to win in terms of preparation. Because if you haven't been reading food labels and stuff as well, you might actually realize that, you know, maybe the bread that you are eating for breakfast is actually containing sugar and things like that as well.

So if you're gonna do the three day sugar detox, right? To just make sure that you've got so the pantry's full, you've got the healthy fats, the protein, the fibers, and things like that as well. So that you set yourself up to win what you're going to be eating. So you're not sitting there going, okay, actually I really want ice cream right now because I'm starving, or whatever the case may be.
I think I really like the idea of the three day test. So that was step number one. Step number two. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: If you want to be a bit more like ambitious, you could do for two weeks, you know? So see how it goes after three days, if you're like dying or for a sweetness, then you know, you can try again another time, but imagine doing it for two, two weeks and just tell yourself like, after two weeks, I can go back to exactly how I was eating before, like no one's forcing me to do this.

So when you say to people like, oh, I think you should quit sugar for life, it's like terrify. It's just not No, not possible. It's not realistic. Yeah. It's not necessary either, but after two weeks you start to see so many other benefits, you know? So not only does your taste change in a good way, your skin improves, your energy levels, your sleep, you have sustained energy throughout the day. You don't get brain fog, you don't fall asleep after lunch. It's just such, so many benefits that you notice. You actually feel like more joy. And so that's why I recommend like the three day is a key marker, and then two weeks is also like a key marker.

So fruit is also, we have to try to think more on a molecular level, kind of on a biochemistry level.

As I mentioned, some fruit is very high in fructose and very low in fiber. You want to choose fruit that is high in fiber and low in fructose instead. Your taste for sweetness doing this three day zero fruit, for example, is I mean zero fruit as well when I say zero sweetness, will help change your taste. And then after that, choose fruits based on your taste that are low in fructose and high in fiber. For example, grapes. Very high in fructose, very low in fiber. So grapes, almost no fiber soup, full of fructose. Then the ripeness of the fruit. Try to go for more unripe fruit. So green bananas are amazing. Resistant starch. Really good. So just, you can tell by your taste if something is high in fructose. And so I would recommend no fruit for two weeks.

That's what I did. No fruit, no sweetness. Bringing fruit back in, but trying to choose the ones that are lower in sweetness and higher in five, also high in polyphenol. Berries are amazing. Berries are great. Yeah, they're polyphenals, but you have to watch out. In the states when I was there recently, they have these super sweet blackberries and they're just like they've bred them to become higher in fructose obviously, that's why they're more sweet. So yeah. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Were they organic as well? Out of interest? The super sweets blackberries that you found in the states? 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: No, they were not organic actually. 

Claudia von Boeselager: If people, obviously it's a more expensive label, but I think to think of an investment in your health long term, there's so much pesticides sprayed on non-organic fruits, especially if you're like the ones that you're eating the peel.

Obviously if you're taking off a peel, that doesn't really matter. But if you're looking at berries and things like that. If you can try to go for the organic ones that you know are not, shouldn't in most countries do not have pesticides sprayed on it. We were talking about the different steps for getting off of sugar.

So doing the three day detox, setting yourself up to win, making sure you've got the healthy fats, the proteins, the fibers in. If you can stretch it to two weeks and then really dinner sell. Put yourself into the challenge of two weeks and really seeing where benchmarking, where you were before, where are you feeling after?

How's the brain fog? How is your health? How's your skin, et cetera. So we got to the two weeks Sakiko, what would you recommend for further. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Okay. So the other things are, we talked about labels and as you mentioned, just to repeat, look at the per hundred grams.

Yeah. You can compare products by per hundred grams and just look at the sugars and if it's, Five grams and under. I think it's okay to eat this product that you're have in your hand if it's 10 grams per hundred grams, maybe once in a while or a little , but if it's more than 10 grams per hundred grams I would just not buy that product.
Better to avoid if you want to avoid sugar and then also check the ingredients, and see if there are added sugars and so on. But really the nutritional table tells you a lot. Another thing. And then in terms of like meals, we've been talking a lot about fructose. The thing that I want to avoid the most glucose is found in everything like broccoli and many healthy products or food.

We mentioned briefly glycemic index, glycemic load, like white rice, potatoes those are free. They don't have fructose in them, that's why they're not sweet, but they're mainly glucose. And so they will spike your blood glucose and you don't wanna do that too often and too much. And so what really helps, and it's quite easy to think about is just have fiber at the beginning of your meal have a salad first. Not last. Have salad first, and then have, if you can I'm half Japanese, so I'm a bit obsessed with this product called Shirataki Noodles, which is made of this fiber, which is the best fiber in the world for your gut microbiome.

They sell them now, just like they do in Japan. They're transparent or they sell them with a bit of gluten-free oat flour, so to make them look white, to make you feel like, oh, I'm having pasta, but it doesn't have the same exact texture as pasta.

I think most people enjoy pasta because of the sauces that you put on top. So if you just make these noodles and you just dry fry them after boiling them for two minutes and you have them with whatever sauces you enjoy. Such a good fiber for your gut microbiome.

It's a prebiotic fiber, and then also it has I don't know, eight calories per hundred, 200 grams, or not much at all. That's not the main point. The main point is that it's not gonna spike your blood sugar. It'll lower your blood sugar. If you're having other carbs with your meal, you know?

Because of it being pure fiber almost. So have that maybe once in a while. But, in Japan we eat it sometimes even in blocks actually. There are many, if you like search slim noodles or like on Amazon, you'll find all these different types. They come in different shapes.

They're either a block or they're like the shape of fettuccini or they're the shape of spaghetti. They make them in different ways for people to enjoy.
 So protein and fiber really helped to lower blood sugar responses. Yeah. And make you feel full and when you feel full, you don't eat as much of the dessert . So that really makes a big difference. It sounds like trivial, but over time it makes a huge difference. So don't have ice cream on an empty stomach.

The other key points to quitting sugar, if you really wanna minimize the damage of sugar, please just try not to have liquid sugar. So that means even smoothies that are high in fruit. So when you've got liquid sugar it actually physically has a different pathway in your body because the wall of our intestine has ways to absorb and deal with the fructose and actually avoid it going to the liver if it's a reasonable amount and not in a liquid form and so on.

If it's in liquid form, a bunch of that fructose is going straight to the liver and causing all the damage we spoke about causing visceral fat and metabolic dysfunction, et cetera. Also there are studies now directly causally linking liquid fructose to colon cancer because it reaches the colon actually.
 So don't have liquid sugar, soft drinks, juice. Smoothies that are mostly fruit.

Claudia von Boeselager: And fruit juices as well. Yeah, I'd say maybe one caveat to that is probably putting like fresh lemon or fresh lime in your water to not think of that as a fruit juice as well, cause some people ask me that as well. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: They don't taste sweet, that means they don't have fructose in them, right? And that's comes to the next tip is flavors. I think taste science is super fascinating and it's very complex.

Our system of taste it depends on our nose as well and there are certain flavors that make something feel sweet. Even without fructose being in it. One is vanilla extract. So if you add vanilla extract to a recipe, you're gonna need less sugar to enjoy the same sweetness or even I don't recommend using sugar at all.

I recommend one of the healthy sweeteners we listed before, but even those healthy sweeteners you might not need to use as much. So there are certain things in nature that have a feeling of sweetness. Also, apple cider vinegar. If you put that in a salad dressing, it somehow gives you a feeling of sweetness, but it's not really, it's not really sweet itself.

Claudia von Boeselager: Yeah. And it's your gut health. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Got bacteria as well. 
So we have here lemon and lime and water. Bad for your teeth though. Fruit and convos teeth. So one hack. If you are drinking a lot of lemon and lime water, which I actually do, you can have a glass straw. So I have a glass straw to try to avoid your teeth and obviously, ideally brush your teeth after I dunno how good people are brushing their teeth every time they drink. But it can erode the teeth obviously over time, but a glass straw will help to mitigate some of that. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: And actually, there are some studies showing that erythritol in particular, and I think xylitol as well to a certain extent deters pathogenic bacteria in the mouth, in the oral cavity.
So actually that's why Erythritol and uh, xyletol are found in chewing gums a lot and so you know, it's actually beneficial for your oral health, which is the opposite of sugar. 

Claudia von Boeselager: So thank you so much for coming on today.
Do you have any last tip or piece of advice that you'd like to share with my audience? 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Yeah. Okay. Just last tip is there is like these rumors or ideas the logic behind the old idea that, oh, if we eat fat, we'll be, become fat. This kind of sounds like it makes sense, but actually scientific is not true, and that is the idea that sweetness, having something sweet is going to spike your blood sugar or trick your body or it's just not true. It's not true. 

Claudia von Boeselager: Depends on the compound, right? Yeah, yeah. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: Exactly. So there are sweet molecules, the healthy ones we mentioned that do not spike your blood sugar and they do not trick your body or anything.
There is healthy sweetness. And don't let the big food companies who really don't want you to understand this fool you or spread these rumors. 

Claudia von Boeselager: So for everyone listening, just to recap on the healthy sugars, right, Sakiko, maybe you can just list them off again the five healthy ones to focus on and to really try to avoid all the other ones, if you're doing the sugar detox or just to use it as a special treat.

So can you recap the five key healthy sugar? 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: But just to note that they are not sugar, they're not sucrose, they're not...

Claudia von Boeselager: Sorry. Sweeteners. Excuse me. 

Sakiko Reuterskiöld: It's erythritol, xylitol, which a little bit breaks down into glucose. So it has some calories.
It has some glucose, but no big deal, erythritol, xylitol, mink fruit extract. Stevia leaf extract and allulose we think is okay, but we would like to understand how it works more carefully. 

Claudia von Boeselager: A little bit more as well. Amazing. Well, thank you so much Sakiko for being on today. Feel free to reach out to Sakiko and myself if you have any further questions. Of course, and wishing you all a wonderful day.