Do you use stevia?
 

I've read a lot about stevia lately (mainly because I've been reading "natural living" books from the library), and actually tried some the other day. It made my iced tea taste fabulous :)

Before I go out and buy a box of the stuff, I thought I'd ask around. All the online research I've done support the use of stevia, but then again, it would be nice to hear from actual people, not just a pro-stevia site.

So, what's your experience with the stuff? Is it really as awesome as it appears to be?

I've used it for a few months now in my breakfast (oatmeal, brown rice) and it's good. I haven't used it for anything else, so I can't help you there.

A good friend of mine works for a supplement company, and any thing they have that they put stevia in tastes like cough medicine. Now sucralose or aces-k, those are damn tasty.

I have tried it and don't care for the taste. We use honey, agave syrup, maple syrup - things like that to sweaten and organic sugar when you really need sugar. They are all better for your glysemic levels.

You just can't beat the taste of locally produced honey in your tea. It helps with allergies as well since local honey is made from local pollen that usually has an impact on allergies.

I try to avoid sucralose, though... is aces-k a chemical substitute? I haven't heard of that one.



mmmm, honey. I'm definitely a fan :) What do you use agave syrup for? I've seen a bottle at the store, but I'm clueless... can you use it like sugar?

I have a bottle of stevia extract seems to have a slight peppery note that's not pleasant in certain drinks or dishes. Works really well in something like chai or hot/sweet styles of cooking.

I also have some stevia plants growing in my herb garden, but they're not big enough yet for harvesting. At some point I plan on growing tea, as well, and then figuring out some mixture of fresh leaves from both plants.

Steve Vai?

heh...I don't think Mr. Vai would appreciate being used to sweeten my cereal & drinks.

Although, if you have some inside info that would suggest otherwise... :suave:

CBC Marketplace: Stevia

I'm sure it's okay when used in moderation.

I use it for anything that requires sweetness and I don't want the sweetener to influence the taste. It also disolves easily. For example, I'll use it to bump up the sweetness level of cereal or perhaps when fruit like blueberries or strawberries aren't quite at their peak. And again, it is one of the sweeteners that don't have an impact on glucose levels.

Whatever you do, stay away from refined sugar. You can get the same taste from organic brown sugar - it just isn't an pretty and doesn't flow as smoothly. And the one thing worse than refined sugar is high fructose corn syrup. I think Kayro (spelling?) white corn syrup is basically that chemical but their dark stuff is not. But check the label!!

Other good alternatives to refined sugar are honey, real maple syrup, and molasses. Full of antioxidants and some nutrients, especially the molasses. I think molasses are delicious. I even put it in my coffee.

But remember, sugar is sugar. The calories are pretty close to one another, it's the stuff that isn't removed that's different.

That sounds delicious.

I avoid HFCS like the plague. I try to stay away from refined sugar as well, but that one's a bit tougher.


I definitely want to try the agave syrup, too. Is agave syrup the same as agave nectar, or no?

you must be hungry most of the time....that shit is in EVERY-FUCKING-THING

I don't think it's in apples.

Only processed foods! That and partially hydrogonated oils. They are both cheap and extend the shelf life of products. And they both kill you over time. In fact, HFCS actually makes you hungry and crave carbs, and more HFCS products.

Most things in a box are crap!

its true that HFCS is found only in processed food, but sometimes, if you look close, you'll find something that you THOUGHT was a raw food product is, in fact, processed with stuff like HFCS.

example: the little packets of honey that KFC gives you to put on your biscuits and/or chicken is only 10% honey...most of the rest of it is HFCS

That's an extraordinary claim. Got any evidence to back it up?

Yeah, it sounds like it.

If HFCS were switched out with honey, we'd have similar health problems related to the consumption of sugar. Either sugar-based product is relatively low in nutritional value. Stop drinking 200 calories of it each time you're thirsty.

I think this claim is related to insulin response and cravings. But this relates to many foods, not just HFCS.

More broadly, that relates to sugars in general.

I've seen a lot of wild claims regarding HFCS, but I have seen no compelling evidence that it's more harmful than any other type of sugar, despite having asked for it in the past. If you want to argue that it's damaging on an economic level, then go right ahead. But health-wise? I'm just not buying it without some proof.

It strikes me as being very similar to the FUD that surrounds the organic food movement in general.

EDIT - Also, it's worth noting that if you're eating at KFC the last thing you need to worry about health-wise are the sauce packets.

I'm not going to waste time looking up crap to prove a point. I don't save what I learn about in case I need to prove a point to someone. Do what you want. As others have said, you don't have the glycemic issues with honey, pure maple syrup, agave and molassis, to name a few sugars

And by the way, honey in a plastic wrapper at KFC is a processed food. And don't get me started on plastics - what they do to your body and the amount of oil they require to produce.

Eat all of that stuff you want. As for me I'll stick with organic which isn't loaded with pesticides, antibiotics and other choice ingredients big business adds to cut costs and make money. You might as well spray Raid over your grill when you are cooking out to keep flys away if you dump on organic foods.

Survival of the fitest. Quality of life. Are you willing to take chances?

With HFCS, it's more that I just don't like the idea of it. My body knows what to do with sugar.... a severally-times-processed sugar like substance? Meh. I'd rather just have some self control. And I don't like things that are that sweet, anyway.

I definitely do note a greater tendency towards migraines when I eat food with HFCS, it that matters to you.

The GI of HFCS is comparable to honey and table sugar (sucrose). Honey is around 55, while sucrose and HFCS is around 60 - 65, and molasses is 85.

The GI of watermelon is 72; oats are around 58. Confused yet?

GI alone isn't a good indicator as to whether you should eat something. You need to look at total calories expressed as a percentage of your overall intake.

It's quite confusing. Even to scientists.

Nope... I eat a lot of organic stuff, and fresh fruits & veggies. I only drink soda once a week, and I try to make it Jones... no HFCS.

It's mostly in processed foods, which as thingstodo pointed out, also have hydrogenated oils...something else I avoid as much as possible.

I Googled and ran across this:

But there's another reason to avoid HFCS. Consumers may think that because it contains fructose--which they associate with fruit, which is a natural food--that it is healthier than sugar. A team of investigators at the USDA, led by Dr. Meira Field, has discovered that this just ain't so.

Sucrose is composed of glucose and fructose. When sugar is given to rats in high amounts, the rats develop multiple health problems, especially when the rats were deficient in certain nutrients, such as copper. The researchers wanted to know whether it was the fructose or the glucose moiety that was causing the problems. So they repeated their studies with two groups of rats, one given high amounts of glucose and one given high amounts of fructose. The glucose group was unaffected but the fructose group had disastrous results. The male rats did not reach adulthood. They had anemia, high cholesterol and heart hypertrophy--that means that their hearts enlarged until they exploded. They also had delayed testicular development. Dr. Field explains that fructose in combination with copper deficiency in the growing animal interferes with collagen production. (Copper deficiency, by the way, is widespread in America.) In a nutshell, the little bodies of the rats just fell apart. The females were not so affected, but they were unable to produce live young.

"The medical profession thinks fructose is better for diabetics than sugar," says Dr. Field, "but every cell in the body can metabolize glucose. However, all fructose must be metabolized in the liver. The livers of the rats on the high fructose diet looked like the livers of alcoholics, plugged with fat and cirrhotic."

HFCS contains more fructose than sugar and this fructose is more immediately available because it is not bound up in sucrose. Since the effects of fructose are most severe in the growing organism, we need to think carefully about what kind of sweeteners we give to our children. Fruit juices should be strictly avoided--they are very high in fructose--but so should anything with HFCS.

Interestingly, although HFCS is used in many products aimed at children, it is not used in baby formula, even though it would probably save the manufactueres a few pennies for each can. Do the formula makers know something they aren't telling us? Pretty murky!

I was unaware of the liver connection.

Much of the HFCS in soft drinks is 55% fructose. Honey is 39%. And almost all of apples' sweetness comes from fructose...which burns slower than other sugars, by the way.

I wouldn't worry about HFCS and your liver enough to avoid it like the plague. But I wouldn't fill over 10% of my daily calories with it either.

Sorry, aces-k is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acesulfame_potassium. We tend to shorten the name on some of the products, and I forget that some aren't as well known as the others.

thingstodo - Got a link for that?

This is unsourced, and therefore meaningless. Anecdotal evidence is no evidence at all; assuming the reporter didn't make the whole thing up for shock value, they may be misrepresenting or misinterpreting the results.

Further investigation of Dr. Meira Field indicates that she was associated with the Society For experimental Biology and Medicine. A check of their back catalogue on their website has turned up a lot of work by M Fields (note the s). Apparently Dr. Fields did some work in the eighties relating to copper deficiencient diets in infantile rats in relation to specific carbohydrates. The most relevant abstract is below:

Emphasis mine. Because we don't know the sample size, the 30% mortality rate isn't really significant. Those may have been the unlucky three, and their being fed a diet that's extremely high in fructose may not be the least bit noteworthy. The highlighted text is more relevant.

Dr. Fields' work was only tangentially related to the harmful effects of fructose and doesn't seem to be even slightly related to high fructose corn syrup. Judging by the extracts available, she was studying the effects of copper-deficient diets and the carbohydrates were a mechanism rather than the subject of study.

The first part of this is true, but qualified. The amount of fructose in high fructose corn syrup varies by product, and in most is on the order of 5 to 10% higher than sucrose. The second part is an outright lie; sucrose is very rapidly metabolized. Unless high fructose corn syrup is being linked to mouth disease, there is no functional difference between the two apart from the slight difference in the glucose:fructose ratio.

The 'won't somebody think of the children' clause is pure sensationalism.

This has absolutely no merit whatsoever.

Perhaps I was unclear. Long unsourced quotes are not compelling evidence. Find me a peer-reviewed or otherwise reputable study stating that high fructose corn syrup is more dangerous than glucose and I'll believe you. Until then, it's so much FUD, in my opinion.

I'm not arguing that high fructose corn syrup is healthy. It's certainly not. My stance is that it's no more harmful than any other sugar. There's no intuitive reason to think it is and so far as I'm aware there is no actual scientific data to the contrary.

Like I said, I just dropped in the first thing I ran across when I Googled the subject. I'm sure you'll run across the same link if you Google.

Dude...perhaps I was unclear. I'm not wasting any additional time on this for you. You obviously don't care what you put in your body and just want to debate. On the other hand, I care more about the former and none about the latter.

Eat, drink and be unhealthy! Cheers!

On the contrary, I care very much about what I put in my body and my diet is a lot healthier than most. I don't really have a choice in the matter. On the other hand, I keep encountering all of this hype about how bad high fructose corn syrup is. Economically there may be an argument there; frankly, I'm not really a student of economics and wouldn't know. Medically? There's no evidence.

I'm not a fan of misinformation and I don't believe anything because random people tell me to. If there's a real scientific basis behind the notion of something being unhealthy, I'll listen. There is nothing that I've seen to suggest that high fructose corn syrup is any more unhealthy than any other type of sugar.

All sugar is bad for you. It's empty calories and can cause a lot of different health problems if taken in excessive amounts. If your shortcut for reducing sugar intake is to cut high fructose corn syrup out of your diet, then I have no problem with that. But keep in mind that the organic food people don't really care about you. It doesn't matter to them if you live longer or are healthier. They want your money, and that's it; their favourite tactic for getting it is to spread the FUD around regarding non-organic foods.

It's worth noting that high fructose corn syrup is almost never used in Canada. I have yet to see it on a single ingredient list; manufacturers up here use plain old sucrose instead. I have no vested interest in the high fructose corn syrup discussion because I am not consuming any and it'd be easy for me to jump on the bandwagon. Unfortunately for me, I prefer correct over easy; it's lead to all manner of hardship in the past.

HFCS in-and-of itself bad for you. It's quantity that matters. Contrary to the anecdotal experiences of a few websites you might've visited, there are hundreds upon hundreds of cited, verifiable research studies on HFCS and the process involved in making it. It's not this this dangerous "unnatural" chemical that organic food nuts seem to believe it is.

Eat up! Enjoy!! Make sure the chemical and pharmaceutical companies marketing this crap in order to line their pockets make tons of cash and line the pockets of the politicians. Sign up for their great marketing efforts. Buy the story.

While you're at it, buy some (non-organic) antibiotic laden milk or hormone infested chicken. Perhaps some beef grown on a farm with both ingredients, all of which were trucked miles and miles to reach you from the industrialized meet factories. Sustainability at its finest based on slight reinvestments of the money your offer them like tithes at a church.

Our food system is so corrupt because of money (thank you, Wall Street) it isn't even funny. I've been around long enough to have experienced the subtle changes and don't need studies to see what is obvious.

Make room for the intelligent survivors of the world.

So by your own admission you're not willing to 'waste time' actually researching your outrageous claims, but you're quite willing to mock and denounce anyone who doesn't believe them out of hand?

Get real. You're embarrassing yourself.

I have used it to flavor/sweeten lip balms that I made. In large amounts, it tasted terrible. In very small amounts, it tasted good. So much so that I kept catching myself licking my lips, actually causing my lips to become chapped when they were not in the first place. I stopped using it.

I have not tried it in food.

heh...that mde me laugh. I've stopped using certain types of lip gloss for the same reason :)



I went ahead and bought a box of the stuff, and it's not bad at all. Granted, I've only used it in iced tea and to make my own version of limeade (yummy!), but there isn't much else I sweeten at the moment.

I said I'm not willing to waste time researching this subject for you! And now you're trying to goad me by saying I make outrageous claims. That's not what TFP is about and not very polite. :shakehead:

Mock and denounce? Only in your mind, not in mine and certainly not my intention. Any mockery I make is mockery of our industrialized food system. The very food system that created iceberg lettuce because it ships effectively, even though it has no nutritional value. But it is sad that you thought it was about and directed at you! Now, if you represent that industrialized food system then I suppose you would be at least partially correct. :thumbsup:

And I dare say there's no embarressment on this side; I'm quite content but I cannot speak for you. But thank you for your concern. :eek:

You'll always be my favorite Martian.

Actually, TFP is all about providing evidence and links. You should know that the rest of the membership is going to call you on an outrageous claim if you fail to follow it up with peer-reviewed research and links to said research.

That said, I turned up a great study on Medline (via EBSCOhost, the article database, via my university's library) that will clarify some things said here (keep in mind, this is just the abstract, I don't have access to the full study without hunting down the actual journal in the library):

Basically, when you cut through all the scientific gobbeldygook, it concludes that bodies react the same to sucrose and HCFS. In men, the reactions to sucrose and HCFS were similar to reactions to fructose consumption.

You can view a different abstract of the same study here: http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/87/5/1194

As Jinn said--it's all about moderation. Personally, I don't eat products containing HCFS. But that's because I prefer the flavor of sucrose, given the choice.

Steve Vai is actually an avid beekeeper.

Come on - "outrageous" claim? That's a pretty strong word! If so many health concious people didn't agree I would say the position may be a little unusual but in fact it is quite common.

Main Entry: out·ra·geous
Pronunciation: \(ˌ)au̇t-ˈrā-jəs\
Function: adjective
Date: 14th century
1 a: exceeding the limits of what is usual b: not conventional or matter-of-fact : fantastic
2: violent, unrestrained
3 a: going beyond all standards of what is right or decent <an outrageous disregard of human rights> b: deficient in propriety or good taste <outrageous language> <outrageous manners>

And here's the link since it's so important to you: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/outrageous

Also, I see many, many opinions bandied about on TFP. They don't support these opinions with peer reviewed research and links. In fact, most of what I see on TFP is opinion backed up by other opinion. This isn't some college class, it's a board. Hell, even the supposed peer reviewed links, etc., are internet links and we all know how trustworthy the internet can be. You can even fabricate links to publications like the Journal of Medicine and other publications.

I would have to say lighten up a little.

This is true, but if the opinion being expressed is on a topic that could change the way someone does something in life, it's not unreasonable to ask if there is supportive evidence. And if such a request is made, it's not unreasonable to be slightly suspicious if evidence is not provided. It's not personal, simply a way to avoid rumours and old-wives-tales from being distributed here. And I'm sure you'll agree that avoiding misinformation is a good thing. :)

I agree with you about 50%. I also think people should take personal responsibility.

Mocking me for an opinion that is unsupported doesn't change where the ultimate responsibility rests if the reader is considering changing the way they do things. If I was suspicious in the first place I would hardly rely only on support provided by the one person I questioned - especially on an internet forum where the members are not vetted. That's like taking blogging as real news.

Sorry, but personal responsibility (response-able as Stephen Covey would say in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, an actual published book) trumps everything - in my "opinion" - with no supporting peer reviews for my opinion other than his book.