Specific type of mushrooms has sufficient amount of healthy sugars also called as trehalose. This sugar is naturally present in desert plants, algae, lobster, honey and brewer’s yeast too. It is known to be efficient in balancing the levels of blood sugar, as its sweetness is less than 45% of the normal sugar.
Beneficial Qualities of Trehalose
- Resembles the normal sugar and flows like it too.
- It’s a natural source, not chemically produced.
- Nil taste after use
- Beneficial in conditions such as diabetes and hypoglycemia
- Reduces cravings for sweets and a great substitute to normal sugar in any food or drink
- It is an excellent antioxidant
- It also acts as a preservative
- You can use trehalose instead of table sugar to make cakes, pies, brownies and cookies.
Naturally present trehalose found in some desert plants help the plant survive the scorching heat and keeps them alive. Due to this quality, it is used an active ingredient in cosmetics to help retain moisture in the skin keeping it supple. Another advantage is that it is not digested in the stomach, but the small intestine. This facilitates delayed entry into the blood.
Trehalose helps in preventing the bundling of proteins that are malformed in the brain. This helps in treating neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and Parkinson’s. It contains an enzyme called trehalase, which facilitates the sugar transportation to areas that needs sugar in the body and helps break the sugar into two molecules of glucose. Studies are still being conducted in understanding the sync between the metabolism, energy and the performance of this sugar.
Other Benefits
- It is a great antioxidant and its quality of being a preservative helps in preserving the moisture, flavor and texture in food.
- To protect organs during the surgeries where transplants are required, trehalose can be used in the solution.
- It prevents the degeneration of fatty acids, carbohydrates and proteins in food. Hence, it restricts the bacteria development, which causes bad smell in the body. Hence, cosmetic companies find this sugar to be quite useful.
- People suffering from dry eyes can be benefited by this sugar present in eye drops.
The market share of this sugar is really small globally, as of now, but is likely to grow in future, as this disaccharide is useful and is slowly getting noticed by people. The other side is that it is relatively expensive compared to the regular refined sugar.
Trehalose benefits seem to be an advantage for many, as it can be used in cooking various sweet dishes without having to worry about the sugar levels. It might not taste as sweet as the normal refined sugar and the positive side is that it helps in regulating the blood sugar levels.
Research is still being done on this sugar and you do not need an approval to use it. Trehalose is safe and has loads of applications that are under extensive study as of now.