How Sweet it Is: Agave Nectar Benefits as a Whole Food Sweetener

The picture shows wild Agave growing in Mexico.

The Agave plant that is grown for harvesting resembles a cactus or yucca with its spiky, succulent leaves. In the midst of all of the leaves sits the core known as the pina. A full grown “pina” contains the sap of the plant, and typically weighs over fifty pounds.

Harvesters remove the Agave sap from the plant in order to produce the popular sweetening agent. The native people of the central Mexican region traditionally used the Agave plant for a number of different purposes including food, skin salves, and even the liquor known as tequila.

The Agave’s extraction process closely resembles that of the maple tree for syrup. In fact, the Agave nectar’s nutritional properties, texture, and even taste closely coincide with those of pure maple syrup.

The extracted raw Agave juice embarks upon a filtration process undertaken at a very low heat which keeps its beneficial properties alive. Throughout the procedure, the carbohydrates naturally occurring in the sap convert to sugar, and the sap begins to take on the texture of a syrup.

Differentiating Between Types of Agave

When shopping for Agave, be prepared to encounter a few different types of Agave products. Though more than one hundred varieties of the Agave plant grow throughout the Mexican desert, the Blue Agave remains the most popular for the production of the sweet syrup.

Companies often characterize their Agave offerings by labeling them as either light or dark. However some companies use the term Amber Agave in place of dark. Generally speaking, the differences in these varieties occur through the filtering.

Dark and Light Agave Nectar

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