Keto people are always looking for the next plausible artificial sweetener, something that doesn't spike the blood sugar (and therefore insulin), and that preferably doesn't have the spearmint-like "cooling" effect of erythritol. Is BochaSweet the answer? The bocha part of the brand name comes from the kabocha squash (called dan-hobak/단호박, i.e., "sweet squash," in Korean) which, according to legend, is my buddy Charles's absolute favorite fruit. The sweetener is derived from the plant, and it supposedly has a long history in Japan (or at least, so the marketing says).
I bought two packs of the stuff—expensive when you buy it via Coupang—at the recommendation of Steve from the Serious Keto channel on YouTube. Steve pronounces the brand name as "boca sweet" despite its being derived from the /kəˈboʊ.tʃə/ squash. A commercial for the product, though, confirms it's pronounced "BOH-chuh-sweet."
Why am I going on and on about this sugar substitute? I have a lot of artificial sweeteners in my cabinet: erythritol, allulose, a recently purchased Korean "slow digestion" faux sugar, and monkfruit (or "monk fruit," if you will). But today's blood-sugar reading confirms that BochaSweet might be the new sweetener for me. I tried it in a cup of tisane last night after I'd done my walk (I didn't make it as far as Jamshil Bridge, alas). I was coming off a weekend of dietary misbehavior: on Saturday, when I'd been with the older couple, I'd eaten plenty of rice at lunch as part of my meal, and I'd also downed all of the hike's leftover snacks, not to mention the orange (fruits are carby) that the Missus had snuck into my backpack in that sneaky-ajumma way of hers. The misbehavior continued on Sunday as I made myself a soup from my remaining potatoes as a way to use them up before they rotted. So my blood sugar was well over 200 when I took my readings on Sunday and Monday morning, and still over 200 yesterday. I'd been back on the dietary discipline since Monday, but it wasn't until yesterday, it seems, that my blood sugar really began to plummet back down to about where it ought to be. I did my walk, took my meds, and despite having had another snack* just before last night's walk, the blood sugar kept going down. After my meds, I had my sweetened tea, and this morning, when I checked my blood sugar, I was down to 169. The snack and the sweetened tea had had no effect as my BS went down.
What's amazing about this is that my other artificial sweeteners, especially my beloved Splenda, all tend to spike my blood sugar in a "cephalic effect" that every expert I watch has warned about: your brain doesn't really care whether the sweetness it's experiencing comes from real sugar or not: if it's sweet, the brain reacts by commanding the body to produce insulin in response, and insulin spikes are the very thing we fatties need to avoid. But with BochaSweet, that apparently didn't happen. I'm bowled over.
Now, I detected a "cooling" effect with the BochaSweet I have, but when I went online, I saw that a lot of people were claiming that one of the sweetener's virtues was its lack of a cooling effect. I beg to differ. But at the same time, I found the effect to be far less unpleasant than erythritol's effect on the tongue, and I might want to try making a batch of low-carb chocolate-chip cookies with BochaSweet as a result.
In my mug of tisane last night, I dumped in four large spoonfuls of BochaSweet, and I now think that that's too much. The sugary sweetness of BochaSweet comes through with no problem. It's definitely a Kevin-friendly sweetener, and even though it's neither perfect nor cheap, it's probably going to be my go-to sweetener from here on in.
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| what the front of the package looks like |
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| the crafted narrative for marketing purposes |
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| So, it apparently comes with a lot of natural xylitol, another sugar alcohol, normally derived from wood. |
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*When I was shopping for Diet Dr. Pepper at my building's grocery, I saw a new, Oreo-like snack sold in tiny packages on offer. Temptation overcame me, and I bought one along with the diet soda. The self-checkout machine chirped that the snack was a "1 + 1" deal—i.e., buy one, get one free—so I grabbed another one and ate both when I got home, a few minutes before I stepped out for my walk. I'm sure the walk itself had a lot to do with reducing my blood sugar, but I was still surprised to see how much the BS had fallen this morning. I think we're back to normal again.
2 comments:
I am impressed that you remember how much I despise 단호박. HJ loves it, though, and sometimes makes me eat it.
What struck me, when I first learned of this, was that anyone could possibly hate something so innocuous. But that's my mistake: assuming 단호박 is innocuous.
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