Choosing sweeteners not only depend the quality of the sugar but also how it balances with our diet and what we are eating in a meal!
If we are a vegan type macrobiotic, maybe rice syrup, barley malt, or maple syrup is an appropriate sweetener to use in our desserts and snacks.
If we eat fish on occasion, especially eating out, desserts that are made with the more yang sweeteners like rice syrup, barley malt, or maple syrup might be less attractive and also more difficult to find.
More yin sweeteners like honey, fructose, agave, and evaporated cane juice (sugar) based desserts are an easier balance for fish and other more yin animal foods (animal foods, of course, are more yang than whole grains, beans, and vegetables) and often easy to find ready made to eat.
Persons who like non-dairy frozen desserts for instance can now find soy or coconut milk based frozen desserts made with evaporated cane sugar or agave, like the ones made by
Purely Decadent!
Another coconut milk based frozen dessert is made by a
macrobiotic cooking school graduate and distriibuted mostly in Austin, Texas by
NadaMoo and maybe you can get it at your local natural foods store.
Sucanat might work for a friend whose diet balances with it but sucanat is non-organic evaporated cane juice (sugar) and non organic is less nutritious and less tasty that organic evaporated cane juice (sugar) like Rapudura.
Agan, evaporated cane juice sugar is more nutritious (natural) than refined cane sugar because it has more minerals and other nutrients but again organic is always better than natural.
Regarding vegan macrobiotics, it is a relatively new phenomena and is usually based on some political, spiritual or other belief system and is not the same as what the originators of macrobiotics envisioned!
While it is true that most macrobiotic people eat a vegan macrobiotic diet most of the time (I for instance, a guy who either washes windows all year around or drives a taxi in Boston and therefore need a slight more yang diet and therefore eat fish one to three times a week depending on the circumstances but am a vegan macrobiotic the rest of the time) the fewer of them eat vegan macrobiotic all the time, so please don't think that because you have found a few vegan macrobiotics, here, that this is a vegan macrobiotic haven!
Otherwise feel free to express your experience and beliefs appropriately and enjoy your visit here!
Thank you, very much.
Bruce Paine