A reader sent me a question last week that I suspect a lot of you have been wondering about.

She wrote that she runs a whole-foods home. She's been following along with the processing framework. And she's noticed something: she can't keep coconut sugar, honey, or maple syrup in the house. She goes overboard. So does her 3-year-old.

But a few drops of monk fruit sweetener (the kind blended with allulose)? No problem. Her hunger stays quiet. She can keep a bottle in the pantry and forget about it.

Her question: Monk fruit and stevia are highly processed. So why do I do so much better with them? And where do they fit?

Here's what I told her, and then a bit more.

Trust what your body is telling you

My short answer was this: I'm a big fan of trusting your body. The answers are right there.

If something compels you to overeat, that's the effect it's having on you. If it doesn't, your hunger stays calm, and that's information too.

I use the same test for everything. Does this food make me want to eat beyond satiation? Do I feel hungry an hour later? Am I standing at the counter going back for "just one more"?

Honey and maple syrup are heritage foods 💛. They're processed but have long been part of human diets. Remember, context matters. Those sweeteners were hard to come by and weren't available in quantity. That's no longer true. 

Because of mechanization, we buy huge bottles of syrup and honey, something our ancestors couldn't do. IOW, they weren't tempted by their own stores.

So, I believe her when she says she can't keep them in the house. Quantity and availability are part of consumption triggers.

Processing isn't a dirty word

If you cut an apple, you've processed it. Cooking is processing. So is fermenting, drying, and grinding. 

What I care about is how much a food has been changed, and what that change does once it's inside you. More processing usually means faster absorption, bigger swings in hunger, and more cravings. That's the bioavailability piece we talk about so often here.

So how is monk fruit sweetener made? The fruit (luo han guo) is crushed, the juice is extracted and filtered, and the sweet compounds are concentrated into an extract. That extract is so intensely sweet (well over 100 times sweeter than sugar) that brands blend it with something bulkier, like erythritol or allulose, so you can actually measure it.

Here's a video that walks through it: how it's made.

Stevia follows a similar path. Leaves are steeped in water, and the sweet part is pulled out and purified.

Is that more processed than a jar of honey? Yes. Is it a problem? I don't see anything alarming in that process. And for someone like our reader, where honey leads to a free-for-all and monk fruit doesn't, monk fruit is the better tool.

Where it gets tricky: your palate is always learning

Now for the part that matters more than processing: whether you use monk fruit, stevia, honey, or plain old sugar, reducing your overall sweetness is important. Reduce, not eliminate.

Your taste buds adjust to what you give them. When you eat sweet things regularly, your palate recalibrates around that level of sweetness. Foods start to taste "normal" only when they're sweet. Plain yogurt tastes sour. A carrot tastes like nothing. Coffee without something in it feels impossible.

And a zero-calorie sweetener still delivers sweetness. Your palate registers sweet either way and files it away as the new baseline.

The good news is that this works in both directions. In one study, people who cut back on sugar for a few months started rating the same foods as tasting sweeter than before. Their palates reset. (Wise et al., American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2016.)

This is how you're built

If you've ever felt ashamed about wanting more sweetness, please hear this: nothing is wrong with you.

Humans are wired to seek out sweet. For most of history, sweetness signaled safe, energy-rich food: ripe fruit, a bit of honey if you were lucky. Our brains reward it. Our palates adjust to whatever level of it we're surrounded by.

Food companies know this very well. That's why sweeteners show up in bread, sauces, crackers, and "savory" snacks.

So when you notice you're reaching for more sweetness, that's biology doing its job. The fix is to change the environment and let your palate catch up, and willpower has very little to do with it.

What I'd suggest

• Keep what keeps you calm. If monk fruit or stevia lets you have something sweet without a spiral, use it.
• Use less of it over time. Try half a drop less this week. Then a little less next month. Let your palate come down gradually.
• Leave some things unsweetened on purpose. Plain yogurt with fruit. Black coffee a couple of days a week. Tea on its own. These are your palate's reset buttons.
• Watch the little ones. Kids' palates are forming right now. What tastes "normal" to them at 3 is what they'll reach for at 13.
• Keep checking in. Your body will tell you when something stops working.

Want to go deeper on sweetness?

This is exactly what I cover in How To Have Sugar Without Cravings & Weight Gain. It's a practical guide to keeping sweet things in your life without the cravings and the creep on the scale.

And if you want the full processing framework (whole, heritage, moderately processed, and beyond), that lives in (You're Fine) It's The Food.

Got a question you'd like me to answer here? Hit reply. I read every one.

Yours in joyful eating and living,

Rebecca

PS. Your taste buds renew about every 10 days, which is part of why a palate can reset. The American Heart Association has a short, readable piece on it: How to make eating healthy easier? The answer may be on the tip of your tongue.