This is an excerpt from the January/February issue of Tea Magazine
We are a country of sweet lovers, each of us consuming 100+ pounds of sugar annually. That’s up from 6.3 pounds per capita in 1822, according to researcher Stephan Guyenet, Ph.D. who blogs at Whole Health Source.
We like our tea on the sweet side, but we also have other priorities. With increased consumption has also come a desire for quality, novelty and health. Yes, we want sweet, but we want it with a healthy twist.
The market has responded with a broad array of sweet choices designed to meet the consumers’ finicky palates and shifting nutritional caprice.
Sugar as Accessory
At first glance the mini hearts, roses, pyramids and gift boxes appear to be candy or petite pastries. Instead, they are Chambre de Sucre’s answer to the sugar cube – handcrafted pure sugar sculptures meant to delicately sweeten your coffee or tea. These diminutive delights are often used as decor, considered too pretty to eat.
Honey To Go
Those looking for a healthy dose of sucrose reach for the sticky honey receptacle. Honey, long loved for its smooth texture, just-the-right sweetness, and health- promoting properties has it all — except convenience. Decanting into jars or offering single serving packets didn’t solve the problem. Honey to go just hasn’t worked. Then Honibe (pronounced honey-bee) came along with dehydrated honey drops – disks of pure clover honey individually wrapped and delivering a just-right portion of bees’ handiwork to tea, coffee or hot water.
Nature’s Sweet Surprises
Nature abounds with naturally-occurring sweet substances from the sturdy sugar cane stalk to the industrious beehive. Further afield are botanicals that yield sugar-like substances with some nutritional gravitas.
