Jaggery Sugar: Is this Natural Sweetener Better for Your Health?
Key Takeaways:
Jaggery sugar is an unrefined sugar made from evaporating the water from the juice or sap of sugar cane and palm trees.
While jaggery sugar contains more nutrients than table or brown sugar on a per-100-gram basis, the difference is insignificant given the limited amount of added sugar an individual should eat daily.
The supposed health benefits of jaggery sugar — e.g., its ability to lower cholesterol levels — are severely lacking in evidence.
Jaggery sugar offers a beautiful butterscotch flavor but should still be used in moderation.
Image Source: Wikipedia
Empty calories. 99.8% sucrose — all blood-sugar-spiking simple sugar, and nothing else. The bringer of oxidative stress and, horror of all horrors, premature aging. With table (i.e., granulated) sugar painted in such an unflattering light, it’s only natural that you’d start looking for alternatives.
And this time, jaggery sugar has caught your eye.
Understandably so. It seems to tick all the right boxes. Unrefined? Check. A lower sucrose concentration? Check. More protein, micronutrients, and antioxidants? Check, check, check.
Before you hit the “Check Out” button for 15 kg of jaggery sugar, it is worth probing whether those are reliable signals that it’s indeed a healthier choice. Spoiler alert: they’re not. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, so let’s start from the beginning.
What is jaggery sugar?
Jaggery sugar is a sugar product obtained from the juices of various plants, primarily:
Sugarcane
Palms, including date palm, palmyra palm, sago palm, and coconut palm
Jaggery sugar can have different names depending on its plant source and the country it’s found:
Sugar cane
Gur: India
Panela: Colombia
Piloncillo: Mexico
Tapa dulce: Costa Rica
Kokuto: Japan
Any variety of palm trees
Gula melaka: Singapore and Malaysia
So, how’s jaggery sugar made? It’s a three-step process:
Extraction: The sugar canes or palms are pressed to extract the sweet juice or sap.
Clarification: The juice or sap is filtered to remove impurities.
Concentration: There are usually three forms of jaggery sugar: solid, liquid, and granular. To make:
Liquid jaggery: The clarified juice or sap is boiled and then mixed with citric acid.
Granular jaggery: The clarified juice or sap is heated to a higher temperature to evaporate more water, forming a thick, concentrated slurry.
Solid jaggery: The slurry is further heated to get a semi-solid product that’s poured into molds for the desired shapes (e.g., cylindrical and cube).
Why is jaggery sugar thought to be “better”?
“Better” is a relative term, so let’s clarify what we’re comparing jaggery sugar to. That’ll be granulated sugar and brown sugar.
Jaggery sugar is thought to be healthier because, unlike those two sugars above, it doesn’t undergo centrifugation to remove its molasses content. As outlined earlier, it’s obtained through the evaporation of water from sugarcane juice or palm sap.
“Um, but,” you may be thinking, “so what? What’s the big deal with molasses?”
Molasses is the thick, dark brown, viscous liquid left behind when sugar is removed from sugar cane, sugar beets, or palm sap (to produce granulated sugar and brown sugar).
Here’s the molasses content of:
Table sugar: 0% (that’s why it’s white)
Brown sugar: 3% to 10% (that’s why it’s brown)
So, the “big deal” with molasses is that it’s a source of antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals. Following that thought, since jaggery sugar contains more molasses, it must be better than table and brown sugar … right?
Let’s look at their respective nutritional profiles* (we selected key nutrients to compare for brevity’s sake; otherwise, you’d spend a full minute just scrolling through this table).
| Jaggery sugar/100 g# | Table sugar/100 g$ | Brown sugar/100 g+ | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories/cal | 383 | 387 | 380 |
| Total sugars/g | 77 to 95^ | 99.8 | 97 |
| Protein/g | 0.4 | 0 | 0.12 |
| Iron/mg | 11 | 0.05 | 0.71 |
| Magnesium/mg | 70 to 90 | 0 | 9 |
| Potassium/mg | 1,050 | 2 | 133 |
| Manganese/mg | 0.2 to 0.5 | 0.0004 | 0.064 |
*Exact numbers can vary according to factors such as plant source, processing method, and country of origin.
$https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/169655/nutrients
+https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168833/nutrients
^https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8314846/
Jaggery sugar: more nutrient-dense?
Image Source: Wikipedia
Although jaggery sugar is pretty much comparable to table and brown sugar calorie-wise, you may still be getting a sense that it’s healthier than the latter two because of its:
Lower total sugar content
Higher nutrient content (case in point: ~8 times the potassium content of brown sugar, and — get this! — 525 times that of white sugar’s)
But here’s the thing. Jaggery sugar is still an added sugar.
And eating too much added sugar could increase your risk of obesity, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and a whole slew of chronic health conditions.
The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends limiting your added sugar intake to less than 10% of total energy intake and, ideally, reducing it further to 5% for additional health benefits.
Based on an average 2,000-calorie diet that applies to most adults (note: your calorie requirements may differ), here’s how those limits translate:
10% limit: 200 calories or 50 grams or 10 teaspoons of added sugar daily
5% limit (for additional health benefits): 100 calories or 25 grams or 5 teaspoons of added sugar daily
So, scaling the nutrient content of jaggery sugar accordingly:
| Jaggery sugar/25 g | % DV (based on a 2,000-calorie diet) | |
|---|---|---|
| Calories/cal | 95.75 | N/A |
| Total sugars/g | 19.25 to 23.75 | N/A |
| Protein/g | 0.1 | N/A |
| Iron/mg | 2.75 | 15.3 |
| Magnesium/mg | 17.5 to 22.5 | 4.2% to 5.4% |
| Potassium/mg | 262.5 | 5.6% |
| Manganese/mg | 0.05 to 0.125 | 2.2% to 5.4% |
With a quarter of the selected micronutrients barely scraping the > 5% mark, calling jaggery sugar “nutritious” is a bit of a stretch. What about iron? Two things:
15.3% isn’t considered “high”, according to the FDA’s definition (20% DV or more of a nutrient per serving is considered high)
Due to jaggery sugar’s plant-based nature, the iron it contains is non-heme iron. Unlike animal-derived iron, which is heme iron, your body doesn’t absorb non-heme iron very well. The absorption rate for the former is 25% to 30%, in contrast to the poor 1% to 10% for non-heme iron. Meaning? Please don’t treat jaggery sugar as a dietary source of iron.
Health benefits of jaggery sugar
But just because jaggery sugar isn’t a good source of macro- and micronutrients doesn’t mean it falls completely flat on the health benefits side of things, right? Because the manufacturing process retained all those plant-based bioactive compounds (phenolic acids, phenols, and aromatic compounds) known for their antioxidant activity?
Once again, given the tiny amounts of jaggery sugar that you should and would be consuming, any antioxidant effect you’d get wouldn’t be meaningful.
In fact, let’s examine the research relevant to the following questions: is jaggery sugar good for:
Blood glucose levels? Despite its unrefined nature, jaggery sugar still has a high glycemic index (GI) value of 84.4. The GI uses a scale from one to 100 to rank carbohydrates based on how quickly and how much they raise blood glucose after eating. In other words, consuming jaggery sugar is likely to cause a dramatic spike in blood glucose levels — which, to put it mildly, is not a good thing.
Cholesterol? Jaggery sugar is often said to have hypolipidemic properties. But the problem is that this hasn’t been shown in human studies, only in animal ones — namely, rats and quails. Findings from animal studies are not always directly applicable to humans. So, until we have research involving human subjects linking jaggery sugar to improved cholesterol levels, you shouldn’t use jaggery sugar as a form of cholesterol control.
Cognitive functions? A handful of animal studies suggest that jaggery sugar may prevent or slow the progression of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's. But, once again, whether those conclusions are transferable to humans remains a big question mark.
Uses for jaggery sugar
Although jaggery sugar isn’t nutritionally superior to white or brown sugar, it does offer something unique: a beautiful, mellow, butterscotch flavor and caramel color that complements nearly all dishes.
In general, you can use jaggery sugar instead whenever a recipe calls for white or brown sugar. You could:
Sweeten your coffee or tea with it
Use it in your stir-fries
Incorporate it into the filling for sticky buns, coffee cakes, and pull-apart breads
Bake with it (note: because jaggery contains more moisture, bakes that are usually crispy and crunchy may come out softer or cakier — you may need to do a little experimentation and tweaking to get your desired texture)
Keep an eye on your total added sugar intake
As delicious as jaggery sugar is, remember to stay within your daily added sugar intake limit for your metabolic health. Here are a few tips that’ll help you eat less sugar:
Sweeten overnight oats with fresh fruits (e.g., mashed bananas) instead of honey or maple syrup.
Cut down on your consumption of sugary drinks. Swap to water, sugar-free, or no-added sugar drinks.
Make food from scratch whenever possible. For example, a homemade pasta sauce is likely to have less sugar than a ready-made one.
Read nutritional labels. Pick products with the lowest added sugar content. HPB defines low sugar as
≤ 5 g sugars per 100 g, or
≤ 2.5 g sugars per 100 ml, or
≤ 2 g sugars per serving
Of course, while limiting your total added sugar intake is helpful for your metabolic health, it isn’t the only thing you can do to balance your blood glucose levels.
There are still other aspects of your nutrition (e.g., avoiding ultra-processed foods) and lifestyle (e.g., staying physically active and managing your stress levels) you could improve to achieve not just healthy but optimal blood glucose levels.
NOVI’s Glucose Optimization Program provides the guidance and knowledge needed to change all those other things to achieve your best health possible.