Why Bivo is without added sweeteners and sugars

Bivo has been developed according to some firm nutritional principles. We wanted to develop a complete nutritional product, able to provide the body, in the right proportions and quantities, with everything it needs.

We wanted in Bivo the proportion between proteins, carbohydrates and lipids to recreate that typical of the Mediterranean diet and which contained the right amount of dietary fiber, all the vitamins and mineral salts. We made sure that omega 3 and omega 6 were present, balanced with a correct ratio. Furthermore, the balance between fast and slow-absorbing carbohydrates, proteins and lipids makes the product supply energy both immediately and over time, without glycemic peaks.

However, there is a further fixed point, which distinguishes Bivo: the absence of both added sugars and synthetic sweeteners.

There are several reasons why we made this choice, highly appreciated by our consumers. On the one hand, we keep the promise of a truly natural product. The very taste of Bivo Naturale comes from the sum of the flavors of the individual natural ingredients. The flavor of the flavored versions is built on the same identical base, with light and non-invasive flavoring. The addition of sugars or sweeteners would have substantially modified the taste of the product.

Being devoid of sugar and sweeteners allows Bivo to be very “flexible“. If, like many, the taste of the product is like this, there is no need to do anything. If, on the other hand, a person loves a sweet taste, he can always add sugar, a sweetener or other inside Bivo. Some consumers have told us that, preferring more decisive tastes, they add honey, cocoa, barley or other.

Then there are some health-related reasons, so we made the decision not to include sugars or sweeteners in the Bivo mixture.

Simple sugars, glucose, fructose (the most used in supplements and substitute meals), galactose, sucrose, lactose and maltose have in fact several contraindications. Sugars in fact, if taken in large quantities increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer, speed up aging, create liver problems and can even cause depression. Moreover, very trivially, they make you fat. Given that in common food products there are already simple sugars in considerable quantities, we have decided not to include them in the formulation of Bivo, a food designed to be healthy for real. Inserting sugars or sweeteners would have been a contradiction.

There is also a reason related to the immediate effect of simple sugars: they create the so-called “glycemic peak”, and a consequent drowsiness and loss of energy.
Compared to simple sugars, synthetic sweeteners, widely used in complete foreign food, are chosen by the food industries because they do not supply calories and are therefore connected to the communication of light or slimming products (think of Cola zero and similar products). However, these ingredients also have obvious problems. Besides not being natural, they create an undesired indirect effect. Our brain is accustomed not to associate the sweet taste of calorie foods. This leads to more consumption of foods with synthetic sweeteners, and to accustom our taste buds to tastes that are too sweet. Furthermore, the sweetening power of these ingredients is very high. In the USA, where it is used excessively, the effect is already evident: many people no longer appreciate the tastes full of “real food”, tastes that are often more delicate (think of vegetables). In countries where sweeteners are very common, on average people find not only unpleasant the natural taste of vegetables, but also that of fruit. We are talking about a problem that is not small: fruit and vegetables should be the basis of our diet!

Finally, there are no proven scientific studies demonstrating the healthiness of high consumption of chemical sweeteners. A complete food that can potentially be used daily, including synthetic sweeteners such as sucralose in the formulation of a complete food, we believe is a significant problem.