Is Coconut Sugar Really Healthier?

There seems to be a health halo on coconut anything these days, and coconut sugar is no exception. The Internet is riddled with dessert recipes tagged as healthy — with the main “improvement” being the swap of regular sugar for coconut sugar. But is it really any better for you?

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What is Coconut Sugar?

Coconut sugar, which is sometimes called coconut palm sugar, doesn’t come from coconuts --it comes from the sap of the coconut palm tree, similar to the way maple syrup is derived from the sap of maple trees. The coconut palm sap is boiled down into a syrup which is bottled and sold as well, but it is commonly crystallized to form a scoop-able sugar.

Because it is unrefined, it retains its brown color and the minerals present in the original sap. It looks, tastes and behaves in recipes a lot like regular brown sugar, making it an easy one-for-one swap for refined sugar in many recipes. It has a subtly distinct flavor but doesn’t taste like coconut, per se.

Is it More Nutritious?

A 2023 research article, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, notes that coconut sugar contains iron, zinc, potassium, antioxidants and other nutrients. Don’t bust into a happy dance just yet though, because it’s not much when you really break it down. Its mineral content is about the same, calorie for calorie, as maple syrup, which means there is some nutritional value, but it’s far from nutrient-rich.

To put it in perspective, you’d need to eat about 33 teaspoons worth of coconut sugar (roughly 2/3 of a cup) to get about 2 mg each of iron and zinc. That’s the same amount of iron and zinc in a typical portion (six ounces) of roasted chicken. Besides, 33 teaspoons of regular brown sugar (which is white sugar with some molasses added back in) has a little more than 1 mg iron and some zinc as well. The math is similar for the other vitamins and minerals mentioned.

Clearly, nutrient content alone doesn’t justify switching to coconut sugar, especially considering it has roughly the same amount of calories as regular sugar and costs more than $5 a pound compared with about $1 a pound for regular sugar.

One Real Benefit

The real benefit of coconut sugar is that it doesn’t cause your blood sugar to spike as much as most other sugars do.