STEVIA - TRUVIA WHAT ARE THEY? ARE THEY SAFE?

Ok, so there has been a lot of press regarding these sweeteners but do we actually know what they are? what are Stevia and Truvia?

The stevia plant is part of the Asteraceae family, related to the daisy and ragweed. Several stevia species called "candyleaf" are native to New Mexico, Arizona and Texas, so is Stevia safe? The FDA has allowed companies to use an isolated chemical from stevia as food additive, calling the chemical "generally recognized as safe." Now, products such as Truvia and others have the legal go-ahead to use Rebaudioside A, which is also found in stevia, in their no-calorie sweeteners.

But there are some health concerns surrounding the stevia plant. Stevia may cause low blood pressure, which would be of concern to some taking blood pressure medications.

"Caution is advised when using medications that may also lower blood sugar. People taking insulin or drugs for diabetes by mouth should be monitored closely by a qualified health care professional, including a pharmacist," Ulbricht said.

Our bodies are not designed or evolved to handle calorie-free sweeteners–be it natural or artificial. Experiencing a sweet taste from a food that is not going to provide glucose confounds our body’s sugar-handling process.

Stevia is “sweet” on the palate, so the body assumes it is receiving sugar and primes itself to do so. Glucose is cleared from the bloodstream and blood sugars drop, but no real sugar/glucose is provided to the body to compensate. When this happens, adrenaline and cortisol surge to mobilize sugar from other sources (liver and muscle glycogen, or protein, or body tissue) to bring blood glucose back up.

Stevia often contains other ingrediants - Natural flavors: a.k.a “this could be anything.” , Xylitol–Truvia is a popular sweetener made with stevia and xylitol. Although proponents bestow the title “natural” to this sweetener, I’ve never eaten Truvia because I’m not a fan of this uber-processed ingredient.while i was doing some research i found an artical regarding Xylitol here is an extract -

Xylitol


Xylitol is, after all, a naturally occurring substance. Manufacturers of xylitol market it as derived from xylan, which is found in the fibers of many plants including berries, oats, beets, sugar cane and birch. Sounds pretty harmless.The FDA has even granted xylitol GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status. You can’t get any safer than that, right?

How Xylitol is Manufactured

While it is true that xylitol is a naturally occurring substance, manufactured xylitol is another matter entirely. Commercially available xylitol is produced by the industrialized process of sugar hydrogenation.   
In order to hydrogenate anything, a catalyst is needed, and in the case of xylitol, Raney nickel is used which is a powdered nickel-aluminum alloy.

Can we say heavy metal residue? 

Xylitol doesn’t seem quite so warm and fuzzy anymore, does it?
While there is currently no literature on any detrimental health effects of consuming hydrogenated sugar, it is important to note that hydrogenated fats and oils were used for many years before the very damaging effects to health became widely known.Given the violent industrialized process that is required to produce a hydrogenated sugar like xylitol, it would seem wise to avoid it based on the very poor track record of hydrogenated foods in general!

Truvia and Stevia were only licenced as a ingredient in the UK in 2011, do we really know enough about these sweeteners to say they are safe? you decide.

Happy Eating!

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All comments in this blog are of my own opinion.