To start with, the artificial sweeteners should be avoided like the plague. They are many times sweeter than sugar and have had very bad effects on people including making people fatter. They are not foods and are more like drugs. Now the sugar cane is not really bad for health. It is what they do to it.

This is similar to what they do with wheat and rice. They take the nutritious part of the sugar cane out. It is a thick black liquid called blackstrap molasses. It is sweet and sold in the health food store. It is very nutritious with lots of iron and chromium. The part that is left is called sugar and has calories but no nutrition.

They advertise for people to buy chromium supplements since it is needed to metabolize sugar. The sugar robs your body of the chromium and other things. If blackstrap molasses is sold in the health food store, where is the sugar sold? You can say that it is sold in the sick and fat food store.

Health food stores now have Succanat or dried cane juice. This is the sugar cane without taking out the good stuff. Many health foods have this as an ingredient. It is not brown sugar. Brown sugar is regular sugar with a little molasses added. It is not healthy. Large manufacturers try to use the cheapest ingredients they can find to save money no matter how bad it is for you. So they like using artificial (chemical) sweeteners and corn syrup which is slightly worse than sugar.

Health food stores have healthy alternatives and they are ingredients in some health foods. You will find some products containing sugar cane or invert cane sugar. The former is regular even if it says organic sugar cane. The latter is no different than corn syrup.

The healthy sweeteners are raw honey, pure maple syrup, agave (from a cactus), barley malt, stevia ( a healthy herb that is sweeter than sugar) and rice syrup. The dried cane juice may not be the healthiest sweetener but it is fine as an ingredient in something. The blackstrap molasses is healthy.

The sugar that is already in foods, like in fruit, are the healthiest sweet things. This information is applied to when you are preparing something or reading the ingredients in a product. It is much healthier to eat sweet fruit on an empty stomach like strawberries, avocados, blueberries, kiwi fruit, watermelon, peaches, grapes, apples, oranges, mangoes and pineapple. Try to get organically grown fruit when it is possible.