I need to know the truth about stevia!

I don't know why stevia would have been on the list to avoid???

It is just a plant. No processing needed. Pick a leaf and float it in your coffee or tea............Dry the leaves and crush them then sprinkle as needed.

Invest in one of these.

I don't use the powdered stuff that is extract with dextrose added in.

I got plants from my local farmers market.

I asked my nutritionist about it last week & she said it has been linked to liver damage .

Not all stevia is created equal. I have found 3 brands that are okay. Stevia in the Raw, Sweet leaf, and Pure Via. These all contain stevia and destrose or just stevia. Dextrose is added to fill out the product and make it more usable especially in baking.

Brands to avoid for sure: Truvia and Purvia. These are manufactured by Coca-Cola and Pepsi co respectively. They both have sugar alcahols in them which can cause intestinal destress. The store brands of Kroger and Western family also have sugar alcahols.

Usully to find stevia plants you have to go to an actual nursury. You can over winter your stevia by cutting it off at the stem and keeping it in a dark environment. Best harvest is at the end of the season, that is when it is the sweetest.

Stevia can actually help drive down/stabalize blood sugar. I avoid everything else.

this article has pretty much everything I've ever read regarding stevia. I started using it before it was commercially available other than a supplement in the health food section of grocery stores; along with some stuff I hadn't read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia

The only thing I can think of is they may have been refering to Stevia extract (liquid with a dropper). I bought one that had 10% alcohol and my sister found one with no alcohol. 10% alcohol is like sucking down Nyquil. That could be it.

I don't see how a few drops of something with 10% alcohol would be like "sucking down" anything.

Does anyone have an opinion on Stevita, http://stevitastevia.com/. I just invested in a container of the powdered form ($20!! but you do save money this way) to reduce waste from all of the little packets, but it says they use natural products from plant to crystalize the product:

From their website:
**To make it possible to package the powder in small individual servings and to make it easier to measure for cooking purposes, we add in erythritol ,a bulking agent naturally extracted from fruits, vegetables and grains . Unlike other fillers in the market such as lactose, maltodextrine, F.O.S., etc, , erythritol has a very high digestive tolerance and is very safe for diabetics.**

I know this product is heavily processed, which I am not super thrilled about...I'm going to experiment with growing the plant and using the leaves directly but for now it is soooo helpful to me, it tastes so good in plain yogurt.

Until you get your own plant going and harvested, there are other brands of stevia that are purely stevia, with no additives, and even organic ones. They are not that expensive either. Read back through the thread -- I think 3 or 4 brands were mentioned.

Just LIFT and keep calories low. /end

i actually found my stevia packets in the vitamin aisle

I found this article to be very interesting. Again, there doesn't seem to be any extensive studies or material from the American Journal Of Medicine, so people seem to be taking a common sense approach about how it is created.

http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2013/04/25/stevia-food-babe-investigates/

I have one question. Is Stevia better than the other artificial sweeteners? If you feel that you can answer yes to that question, then use it. We are all going to die one day anyway. My point of view may be bleak, but I have grown up during the cold war, when Nuclear War was a real threat, and everything has been identified as a killer. Let's face it, without years of research, no one really knows. Only now is the medical community coming out and saying that low fat diets are in fact very bad for you. Live the best you can, stay as informed as possible and live in moderation.

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/stevia/AN01733

http://www.livescience.com/39601-stevia-facts-safety.html

http://www.everstevia.com/steviastudy.html

Coffee is only bitter when you brew it at too high a temperature or you use cheap grounds. If you put the energy into finding a good coffee and brew it at the right temperature, I promise you it will only taste slightly acidic but not bitter. A good cup of black coffee has so many flavor notes that you will never notice with sweeteners and dairy.

Hi All,

I actually make my own natural low calorie (close to 0) sweeteners as I couldn't find anything on the market that I liked, and to save some cash on insanely priced sweeteners...

With Stevia there are two main components :
1. Stevioside which is about 2-300x sweeter from sugar but has a bitter after-taste (the liquorice type taste)
2. Rebaudioside which is about 4-500x sweeter from sugar - is a very clean sweetness with no after-taste.

I purchased 99% pure rebaudioside-a from a manufacture online (very expensive stuff) - and imported it myself. A little bit goes a LONG way.

I mix it with other sweeteners because as Stevia has a slow sweet sensation onset time compared to sugar, its use in coffee, baking etc didn't replace the sensation of sugar:

Mogroside-V produced from (Monk Fruit / Luo Han Guo) a melon type fruit from China - it is approximately 250-300x sweeter than sugar and has a very fast sweet onset time - but does not linger.

Thaumatin is acutally a sweet protein found in the Katamfe fruit in Africa - it is approximately 5000x times sweeter than sugar and acts in a way to combine the sweet sensation in the other sweeteners together while reducing bitterness - very potent stuff.

Because these sweeteners in their purest form are very intense, I have used organic Erythritol as a filler, it is approximately 60% as sweet as table sugar, and is actually produced from by yeast strain fermenting common sugar! I chose this sugar alcohol as it is the least likely to cause digestion issues (I don't have any problems with it) compared to other more common sugar alcohols.

Since the erythritol is in small crystals, and the other sweeteners are powdered, I mix them up in a food processor for an even mix in the following approximate proportions:
1kg Erythritol
1tbs Stevia - Reb-A
1.5tbs Mogroside-V
1/8tsp Thaumatin

Once mixed up - lasts me quite a while...

Great for my morning coffee - I use about half a teaspoon, not sickly sweet or nasty after-taste - I have also used this in baking and making my own organic sugarfree dark chocolate... This is the closest thing I have come across that is not artificial and the sensation is very similar to table sugar - without the calories.