Is Coconut Sugar Better Than Cane Sugar? An Honest Comparison
On the measurements anyone has actually published, coconut sugar is not meaningfully different from cane sugar, and the famous number behind the claim does not survive contact with a laboratory. The figure that sells coconut sugar is a glycaemic index of 35. When the Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service tested a widely available brand using the international standardised procedure, it came out at 54.
That is the whole argument in two sentences, and it is worth sitting with before reading further. One number travelled from a product sheet into thousands of articles. The other came from a testing service that publishes its method. Both are quoted as if they were the same kind of thing.
Where the 35 comes from, and what it is attached to
The figure appears in the peer-reviewed literature as a citation rather than as a measurement. Asghar and colleagues, writing in Food Science and Nutrition in 2019, list coconut sugar at a glycaemic index of 35, palm sugar at 42 and sugarcane at 58 to 82, attributing all of those to earlier studies rather than measuring them. Their own laboratory work was on the sap, not on the glycaemic response of the finished sugar.
That matters because of how a citation chain behaves. Each repetition drops a little more of the method, until the figure is reported as settled fact with no way back to a protocol or a population. If you cannot say how many people ate how much of what, you do not have a glycaemic index. You have a number.
What a testing service measured instead
The Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service, the group that runs standardised GI testing, reported testing one of the most popular and widely available brands of coconut sugar in Australia using the international standardised GI procedure, and published a result of 54. The post does not state how many subjects were tested, which is a real limitation and should be said out loud rather than buried.
Fifty-four is not a scandal. It is simply much closer to the sugars the category positions itself against than the marketing suggests. A measured 54 and a cited 35 are not a rounding difference. They are different claims about the same product.
What is actually in the sap
The composition work is more solid than the glycaemic work. Asghar, Yusof, Mokhtar, Ya'acob, Ghazali, Chang and Manaf analysed coconut sap by HPLC and detected three sugars: fructose at 3.48%, glucose at 2.53% and sucrose at 6.91%, giving total sugars of 12.92%. Their comparison with sugar palm juice and sugarcane juice concluded that coconut sap carries less sucrose and more glucose and fructose.
Note what was measured. That is fresh sap, not the granulated product, and the step from one to the other is evaporation, which concentrates everything and changes the proportions through heat. Treating a sap profile as the composition of the sugar in a bag is an inference, and the paper is clearer about that than the pages quoting it.
Is coconut sugar better than cane sugar? It depends which column you read
| Basis of comparison | How they differ |
|---|---|
| Taste | Coconut sugar carries a caramel and molasses note; refined cane sugar is close to flavourless. In a dark chocolate recipe this is a real formulation decision |
| Processing | Coconut sugar is sap boiled down and granulated. Refined cane sugar is extracted, clarified and crystallised to near-pure sucrose |
| Measured glycaemic index | 54 for the brand tested by SUGiRS; the widely quoted 35 appears in the literature as a citation rather than a measurement |
| Label | Both are declared as sugars in the nutrition panel and both count as free sugars under the NHS definition |
So the honest version of "better" is narrow. Better tasting in some recipes, yes, and that is a defensible reason to choose it. Less processed in the sense of fewer refining steps, yes. Dramatically different on the one measurement people buy it for, no, not on the evidence that exists.
What the NHS calls both of them
The NHS page on sugar in the diet, last reviewed on 19 May 2023, defines free sugars as any sugars added to food or drinks, plus the sugars in honey, syrups such as maple, agave and golden, nectars, and unsweetened fruit juices, vegetable juices and smoothies. Sugars naturally present in milk, whole fruit and vegetables are excluded. The page says the sugars in those added products "occur naturally but still count as free sugars", and gives a maximum of 30g of free sugars a day for adults, with lower figures for children.
That definition is the quiet answer to the whole question. Whatever the plant of origin, a sugar added to a recipe lands in the same category and is counted the same way.
What is in a Chaski tube
Chaski Cacao is a 600g tube of 77% dark chocolate buttons, with a daily dose of four buttons on the pack. The sweetener is coconut sugar and there is no added cane sugar. We are not going to pretend that makes it anything other than a sweetened chocolate: coconut sugar is sugar, it is declared as sugar on the panel, and the comparison above applies to our tube exactly as it applies to anyone else's. The rest of the formulation is single-origin Peruvian and Ecuadorian cacao, ground at low temperature, with Lion's Mane fruiting body extract and Cordyceps sinensis mycelium, no emulsifiers, no seed oils and no palm oil. Every batch is tested for lead, cadmium and pesticides.
If you want to go further into the sweetener question, see how coconut sugar behaves in a chocolate recipe and how to read a nutrition panel properly. Everything else sits at our guides hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the glycaemic index of coconut sugar?
Two different figures circulate. The Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service tested one of the most popular and widely available brands of coconut sugar in Australia using the international standardised procedure and reported a result of 54; that post does not state how many subjects were used. The widely quoted figure of 35 appears in the peer-reviewed literature as a citation to earlier work rather than as a fresh measurement, including in a 2019 paper in Food Science and Nutrition that lists it alongside 42 for palm sugar and 58 to 82 for sugarcane.
Is coconut sugar less processed than cane sugar?
In the narrow sense of having fewer refining steps, yes. Coconut sugar is made by collecting sap from the flower of the coconut palm, boiling it down and granulating what remains. Refined cane sugar is extracted, clarified and crystallised until it is close to pure sucrose, which is why it tastes of almost nothing. Fewer steps is a statement about the process rather than about anything else, and it is the comparison that stands up best. The caramel note in coconut sugar is what survives the shorter process.
What is coconut sugar made of?
It is the dried-down sap of the coconut palm flower. A 2019 analysis in Food Science and Nutrition by Asghar and colleagues used HPLC on coconut sap and found fructose at 3.48%, glucose at 2.53% and sucrose at 6.91%, with total sugars of 12.92%. The authors compared this with sugar palm and sugarcane juices and concluded that coconut sap carries less sucrose and more glucose and fructose. The important limitation is that this is the fresh sap, not the granulated sugar, which is produced by evaporating the sap down.
Does coconut sugar count as a free sugar?
Yes, on the NHS definition. The NHS page on sugar in the diet, last reviewed on 19 May 2023, counts as free sugars any sugars added to food or drinks, together with the sugars in honey, syrups such as maple, agave and golden, nectars, and unsweetened fruit juices, vegetable juices and smoothies. It states that the sugars in those foods occur naturally but still count as free sugars. Sugars naturally present in milk, whole fruit and vegetables are excluded. The adult maximum given is 30g a day.
Why does Chaski use coconut sugar?
It is the sweetener in the recipe, and the tube contains no added cane sugar. Coconut sugar carries a caramel and molasses note that refined cane sugar does not, which changes how a 77% dark button tastes. That is a formulation and flavour decision rather than a claim of any other kind, and the comparison on this page applies to our tube as much as to any other product using it. The nutrition panel declares it as sugar, because that is what it is.
Sources
- Asghar M T, Yusof Y A, Mokhtar M N, Ya'acob M E, Ghazali H M, Chang L S, Manaf Y N, Food Science and Nutrition, 2019;8(4):1777-1787
- Sydney University Glycemic Index Research Service, glycemicindex.com, 2014
- NHS, Sugar in our diet, last reviewed 19 May 2023