What’s natural about a completely fake artificial sweetener, just because it started as a plant?
So did Vincristine and Vinblastine, both deadly chemo agents. They come from the periwinkle plan (Vinca major). Opium started as a plant… So did Belladonna (Deadly Nightshade). I could go on!
Isn’t it odd that the plant Stevia is dangerous according to the FDA but as soon as some big shot corporation with dollars to bribe the FDA officials comes along, suddenly adulterated Stevia is fine!
The FDA has spent decades attacking Stevia, impounding it, harassing importers and trying to put them out of business, generally being bullying and heavy-handed, as the FDA likes to. Stevia isn’t new. It’s been used for centuries as a sweetener in South America and is used Japan. But in the US Stevia may only be sold as a dietary supplement — not as a sweetener or a food additive — due to the FDA’s safety concerns. Actually the FDAs “concern” was keeping it’s cronies at Monsanto happy, by stamping down the competition for their deadly sweetener aspartame.
Then along comes “Truvia”, a bastardized form of Stevia, and suddenly the FDA is stevia-friendly: GRAS “generally recognized as safe”.
Truvia, a new Stevia product developed by Cargill and Coca-Cola, isn’t settling for supplement status. It’s set to debut later this year as a tabletop sweetener and ingredient in certain Coca-Cola products. Now the Big Dollars are in the game, the rules will change quickly. You watch.
Truvia will have competition. Pepsi has its own Stevia product in the works.
My opinion: A very stupid idea. These sweeteners are more intense than sugar and keep your sweet tooth craving tuned up. That’s what manufacturers want. Give up sugar and sweeteners of all kinds, feel great, have more energy and beat cancer before it starts (cancer relies on sugar).
Synthetic sweetener junk to look out for (and avoid like poison) are:
* Aspartame: Brand names include NutraSweet and Equal.
* Sucralose: Brand name is Splenda. This I call “the pesticide sweetener”
* Saccharin: Brand names include Sweet’N Low, Sweet Twin, and Necta Sweet.
* Acesulfame-K: Brand names include Sunett and Sweet One.
* Neotame: Approved for use as an ingredient in a wide variety of foods
I am curious though what the differences are if lets say you use the leaf to sweeten things like yogi tea which I know includes stevia in almost all of their varieties as compared to the powder that they are making from the leaf. Not that all things in their natural form are harmless, but how bad can the natural sugars the plant itself uses to feed on be for us? Do you have any thoughts on this? Also a side note not related to Stevia, you mention the periwinkle plant, and as a personal trainer I come across so many of these patented filler formulas that these companies are allowed to put in lets say their before workout blend or their protein meal replacements.. Whatever it is and I keep on seeing periwinkle plant and I was sure that this meant bad news bears but there is very little information about it out there. What do you know?