Introduction to Living Nectar
Living Nectar™ is a nutrient-rich, low-glycemic sweetener derived from the sap of the Palmyra palm tree, native to Southern India. Harvested using sustainable tapping methods, the sap is naturally fermented, resulting in a unique iminosugar profile that promotes gut health and blood sugar regulation.
A traditional nutrient-packed sugar, also known as neera or palm gur, Living Nectar boasts a rich history in Ayurveda, where it is celebrated for its numerous natural health properties, including its ability to balance doshas, treat physical weakness, and support postpartum recovery. Unlike refined cane sugar, which is linked to various health problems,
Living Nectar offers a natural, wholesome alternative that aligns with the principles of a healthy lifestyle.
Living Nectar stands out for its unique iminosugar content, a result of natural fermentation by wild yeasts and bacteria found in the unique biome of Southern India. This special class of sugars is not found in other sweeteners, and is linked to numerous health benefits, including supporting healthy blood sugar levels, calming inflammation, and promoting gut health. In addition, the iminosugars in Living Nectar are stable at high temperatures, making them suitable for use in cooking and baking.
South India's Pristine Biome
Few regions on the planet today have been untouched by irrigation with chlorinated municipal waters, pesticide residue, and other consequences of our post-modern industrialized world. In South India, cultivated farmlands are small, with over 78% of India’s farmers tending to less than 2 hectares of farmland each.1
Most of the population lives in cooperative villages. Pesticide use is the lowest in all of India,2 and irrigation data is non-existent, suggesting that the majority of crops and trees are fed by rainwater, with Kerala averaging over 100 inches of rainfall annually. , The balmy climate, 3 4
seasonal rainfall, and mineral rich soil of southern India are fertile ground for a unique species of Palmyra trees that pepper the landscape, towering over 30 feet tall. Thousands of years before the arrival of cane sugar, villagers in India had already perfected a process of collecting its nutrient-rich nectar.
The Palymyra Tree is commonly referred to as the “Tree of Life,” and the “Celestial Tree with 801 Uses.”
The Most Eco-Friendly Sweetener on the Market Today
Moreover, the Palmyra palm trees serve as wildlife habitat for dozens of animal species, from baya weaver birds, sunbirds and peacocks to snakes and monitor lizards.7 The tree’s fibrous roots are both deep and wide, binding the soil and preventing erosion.
According to Prabhu T., of Agricultural College and Research Institute, Killikulam, “The root structure is such that it stabilises the soil, and conserves soil moisture.”8 Living Nectar’s low environmental impact makes it a more eco-friendly choice compared to agricultural sweeteners like cane sugar, coconut sugar, and date palm sugar.
How Living Nectar Is Collected
The native Palmyra trees sprout “phallic-like” floral blossoms that secrete a nectar naturally teeming with beneficial microbes, the heroes of our Living Nectar story. The Palmyra tree begins to release nectar after the mature tree reaches 15 years of age, continuing to flow for up to 80 years thereafter, living for up to 120 years.
To reach the Palmyra blossoms, traditional tappers climb as high as 50 feet to reach the blossoms. Using sustainable harvesting practices, they make an incision in the tip of the blossom and hang a traditional clay bucket to collect the nectar. Tappers climb up and down an average of 50 trees daily collecting nectar, which flows continuously during the post-monsoon peak growing season. Once the nectar begins to flow, tappers must re-open the incision daily, otherwise the flow will stop for up to two weeks.
Wild Fermented, Living Nectar is Packed with B Vitamins
Living Nectar’s first alchemist is nature herself. Suspended 30 feet in the air in a bucket, Living Nectar is transformed by the moist sun drenched air, wild yeasts, and probiotics. Packed with fast fermenting glucose (not fructose), nectar is an ideal fuel for beneficial microbes. And here in south India’s pristine microbiome, microscopic alchemists make short work of fermenting the nectar into alcohol within hours. And while sipping on the resulting alcohol-infused “toddy” may help tappers forget just how sore their leg muscles are from climbing those trees, India’s ancient culture discovered that slowly heating the nectar in a drum over an open fire stopped fermentation, giving way to a rich, delicious, healing sugar.
Through this well-timed, ancient method, these traditional “jaggeristas,” Living Nectar’s second alchemists, slowly transform it into an ‘ancient sugar with superpowers,’ by stirring the slurry for hours, gently caramelizing it into a thick moist granular sweetener with flavor notes of malted caramel and cocoa, while unlocking its unique and diverse healing properties. What safely emerges from the fire is a wild fermented nectar, now packed with B vitamins, including vitamin B12, and a unique iminosugar now recognized for its capacity to support healthy blood glucose levels and the body’s ability to modulate inflammation.
Living Nectar - Anabolic Sugar That Supports Endurance
For thousands of years, this delicious Living Nectar was celebrated as a nourishing anabolic elixir, with antimicrobial and anti-parasitic properties. Traditional tree tappers are the living proof. They climb 50 trees a day, twice daily, climbing each tree to a height of up to 50 feet. During the height of the growing season, tappers must make the climb every day to prevent the tree tap from sealing up. It’s no surprise that they attribute their seeming super human strength and endurance to a diet rich in Living Nectar.
Unique Iminosugars May Be Key to Living Nectar Superpowers
patented in Europe and the U.S. for its ability to support healthy blood glucose levels and reduce inflammation.
Iminosugar levels are often measured in soil to determine the microbial biodiversity of the soil. Here’s why. It is generally thought that plants do not produce iminosugars, although they benefit from iminosugar rich living soil. Iminosugars are the natural byproduct of fermentation and microbial reproduction.9 Iminosugars are mostly produced by fungi and bacteria, and are found in living rainwater. Spring water has been shown to contain simple iminosugars, likely due to microbial activity.10
At a fundamental level, iminosugars are a class of sugars bonded to a nitrogen atom. This one small change transforms “sugar” into an intelligent healing agent. The iminosugar “alphabet” is vastly more complex and adaptive than the amino acid “alphabet,” which means “… the coding capacity of the sugar language is orders of magnitude higher than for nucleic acids and proteins.”11
A form of biological poetry, iminosugars compose “sugar words” that activate and guide the body’s ability to do things like repair connective tissue, control inflammation, and regulate blood glucose levels. Iminosugars make up oligosaccharides, glycoproteins, glucosaminoglycans (GAGs), and glycolipids. If you are over the age of 40 and your limbs do not bend as easily as they once did, you have likely considered taking a common iminosugar, glucosamine sulfate.
Scientists are just now beginning to understand why traditional practices of tapping and slowly cooking Living Nectar are so effective at concentrating Palmyra blossom nectar into an iminosugar superfood. Turns out, not only do iminosugars survive cooking, they seem to be activated and concentrated during a pre-caramelization process called the Maillard reaction.12
Which leads us back to the story of our Living Necta. Traditionally, tappers collected Living Nectar from Palmyra trees in order to nourish themselves, their family, and their village – not for income. The king crop for income generation was cane sugar, thanks to the world’s growing addiction. Hundreds of years ago when the western world came knocking at India’s door for warm moist arable land suitable for cultivating sugar cane, it was cultivated for money, leaving Living Nectar an untouched secret, until now.
Why Did Sugar Emerge as the Dominant Sweet in India?
Palmyra trees grow wild in Southern India, taking 15 years to mature – too long for
capitalists to consider it a suitable crop for large scale cultivation. This meant Palmyra blossom nectar, as a commodity, could not compete with sugar cane as a viable export.
Conversely, from planting to harvesting, sugar cane matures in about a year, making it ideal for clear cutting and planting sugar cane farms. A perennial crop, sugar cane is relatively easy to grow in the warm moist climate of India. Combined with the speed of cultivation, sugar cane (“cane jaggery”) became one of India’s most valued exports.
Well adapted to the seasonal monsoon rains, Living Nectar, called neera or palm gur, was celebrated by Mahatma Gandhi as a symbol for Indian Independence.
Sugar Cane Fuels the New World
Modern history is defined, in large part, by sugar trade. According to World Wildlife Fund, “sugarcane covers 65 million acres of land worldwide, and a dozen countries use at least 25% of their farmland to grow it.” Today, millions of acres of sugar cane grow throughout 13 India and India is one of the largest consumers and exporters of white sugar globally. At over 34 million tonnes grown annually, India is the world’s largest producer of sugar cane.
Originally domesticated 10,000 years ago on the island of New Guinea, sugar cane was grown and celebrated as an elixir of health, with ceremonial priests drinking electrolyte-rich sugar water. For thousands of years, cane sugar remains isolated, eventually being introduced to Asia around 1,000 B.C. By 500 C.E., sugar cane trees were being cultivated in India, where it began to be processed into a powder – celebrated by Ayurvedic practitioners for its ability to treat headaches, stomach issues, and even impotence. The method for transforming raw sugar cane into this sweet medicine was kept secret, passed from practitioner to apprentice.
By 600 C.E., taste for sugar (“gur”) grew and trade with Persia inspired an explosion of sweet treats. The rest is history. The holy wars ensured a sufficient number of prisoners of war, which served as field hands to keep up with humanity’s growing addiction to sugar cane. The motivation for Columbus’s explorations was primarily driven by the need to conquer rainforest-like biomes favorable to the cultivation of sugar cane.
When England colonized India, it focused on controlling the production and trade of sugar, setting up a system of indentured servitude. During India’s late colonial period leading up to its independence in 1947, under British rule, sugar cane quickly became a symbol of economic oppression within India, while Living Nectar became its cure. The nectar flows out of the Palmyra tree is called neera. This is the pure unfermented nectar. When neera is left out for too long it quickly ferments into an intoxicating alcoholic beverage called a toddy, a traditional alcoholic beverage, which competed with foreign alcohol imports.