Sweeteners are a staple food in my diet. However, since Christmas rolled around, I'm now rolling around. I've signed up for the Pound for Pound Challenge (see my blog post, Pound for Pound) and am trying to shave off the damage done by an eggnog - sugar cookie double punch combo. Ergo, sugar is out.
An alternative is to forgo sweets. Right. But the other options are looking just as dismal. Saccharin has been determined to cause cancer, and I'm allergic to it's popular replacement, NutraSweet (aspartame). Splenda (sucralose) seems all right, but I'm wary now of chemical or engineered substitutes. So when I saw an ad for Truvia, apparently all-natural as it's made from the stevia plant, I had to ask around.
It turns out I'm way behind the curve. Stevia, a plant in the sunflower family, has naturally sweet leaves- much sweeter than sugar. People have been using stevia leaves to sweeten food for centuries. Due to some FDA regulation or other, stevia is legal in the US as long as it's not referred to as a sweetener. (I'm guessing that marketing it under a different name, Truvia, was a way to work past this politicking). It's found in teas and other drinks, and is officially labeled a "dietary supplement".
The active sweetening agent in stevia is stevioside. Over the years, studies have been conducted as to it's adverse effects in mammals. One study reported that stevioside does not cause cancer, while another study determined no significant difference in growth or fertility regardless of the dosage taken. So far, so good.
But what does it taste like? Fortunately for me, a friend had a bottle of the syrup lying around. A few drops in a cup of tea were plenty to sweeten it up- a much lower dosage than my usual heaping piles of sugar (as I said, it's a staple).
While not yet found on many grocery store shelves, health food stores, co-ops and nutrition stores usually carry it. The brand name Truvia, in granule form, can be found at Whole Foods or ordered on-line from their website: www.truvia.com.
Did I mention it has zero calories?

Read more about stevia, including the above-mentioned studies, at www.stevia.net.

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