{"id":15704,"date":"2009-09-03T11:41:36","date_gmt":"2009-09-03T17:41:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/?p=15704"},"modified":"2009-09-03T11:41:47","modified_gmt":"2009-09-03T17:41:47","slug":"sweets-for-the-sweet-what-the-heck-is-stevia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/03\/sweets-for-the-sweet-what-the-heck-is-stevia.html","title":{"rendered":"Sweets for the Sweet – what the heck is Stevia?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’m not going to go into huge detail on this, but it’s worth throwing a bit of semi-digested information out there to inspire folks to look up more.<\/p>\n

While recently drinking a SoBe beverage<\/a>, I noted on the side that it was sweetened with “PureVia(TM) – All Natural Zero Calorie Sweetener.”<\/p>\n

Poking around a bit more, I found the PureVia fluff site<\/a>, which explained about “the zero calorie,
all natural sweetener. Made from the sweetest part of the stevia leaf.”<\/p>\n

Immediately suspicious, that got me looking up Stevia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Stevia<\/b><\/i> is a genus of about 240 species of herbs and shrubs in the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to subtropical and tropical South America and Central America. The species Stevia rebaudiana<\/i>, commonly known as sweetleaf<\/b>, sweet leaf<\/b>, sugarleaf<\/b>, or simply stevia<\/b>, is widely grown for its sweet leaves. As a sweetener and sugar substitute, stevia’s taste has a slower onset and longer duration than that of sugar<\/a> although some of its extracts may have a bitter or licorice-like aftertaste at high concentrations.<\/p>\n

With its extracts having up to 300 times the sweetness of sugar, stevia has garnered attention with the rise in demand for low-carbohydrate, low-sugar food alternatives. Medical research has also shown possible benefits of stevia in treating obesity and high blood pressure. Because stevia has a negligible effect on blood glucose it is attractive as a natural sweetener to people on carbohydrate-controlled diets. However, health and political controversies have limited stevia’s availability in many countries; for example, the United States banned it in the early 1990s unless labeled as a supplement. Stevia is widely used as a sweetener in Japan, and it is now available in Canada as a dietary supplement.<\/p>\n

Rebiana<\/b> is a trade name for a zero-calorie sweetener containing mainly the steviol glycoside rebaudioside A (Reb-A), which is extracted from stevia. Truvia<\/b> is the consumer brand for a sweetener made of erythritol, Rebiana and natural flavors marketed by Cargill and developed jointly with The Coca-Cola Company. In December 2008, the United States Food and Drug Administration permitted Reb A based sweeteners as food additives. PureVia<\/b> is the PepsiCo and Merisant brand of Reb A.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Evidently for years Stevia was touted in Natural Food circles as the greatest thing since sliced whole-grain bread made from unbleached barley flour and twigs. It was touted as an all-natural sweetener, perfect for diabetics and people who love their bodies and the planet. There were some studies that indicated some possible problems, but no serious smoking guns and plenty of conspiracy theorists maintaining that the FDA was blocking Stevia from the US solely as a big favor to the Sugar and Artificial Sweetener industries.<\/p>\n

Though now that the FDA has let it in<\/a>, surely the rhetoric … no, wait, the FDA hasn’t (the conspiracy theorists maintain) let in Stevia, but are only approving Rebiana<\/em><\/a>, the processed version of Stevia, which is, of course, an evil conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids<\/a> and get us to drink more carbonated soft drinks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(Sorry — Natural Food Conspiricists get my dander up — though, of course, I don’t particularly trust Big Food and Big Pharma much, either.)<\/p>\n

So, anyway, expect to see Truvia and PureVia showing up on Coke and Pepsi products in the near future, until someone determines that it actually grows extra eyeballs or something, or the patent begins to expire and they have to “discover” something new and exciting and rebranded that they can own.<\/p>\n

(For the record, the SoBe drink tasted great, even if the ingredient list read like a chemistry set; Erythritol was listed as the second ingredient, after filtered water.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Okay, I’m not going to go into huge detail on this, but it’s worth throwing a bit of semi-digested information out there to inspire folks to look up more. While recently drinking a SoBe beverage, I noted on the side that it was sweetened with “PureVia(TM) – All Natural Zero Calorie Sweetener.” Poking around a bit … Continue reading “Sweets for the Sweet – what the heck is Stevia?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[38,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-drink","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":15707,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/09\/03\/tweets-from-2009-09-03.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":0},"title":"Tweets from 2009-09-03","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 3-Sep-09 11:30pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Stevia: a solution to the sugar vs. artificial sweetener debate http:\/\/bit.ly\/14iOk0 - Pushed by Pepsi. Heard anything (bad) about this? # Up and at 'em and scrambling around the house just ahead of the cleaning people to, er, clean. Parents are arriving this afternoon ... # Off to pick up\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~Tweets"","block_context":{"text":"~Tweets","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/tweets"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8213,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2005\/04\/25\/pepsi_one_point.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":1},"title":"Pepsi One-point-one","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Apr-05 8:23am","format":false,"excerpt":"New, improved taste! Or not. Pepsi One -- Pepsi's one-calorie cola -- has been reformulated, inside and out. It now sports a blackish can, instead of a silver can. It...","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15013,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2009\/06\/13\/more-on-the-coke-zero-story.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":2},"title":"More on the Coke Zero story","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 13-Jun-09 10:56am","format":false,"excerpt":"As speculated earlier, the Venezuela ban kerfuffle is (on the surface, at least) about the artificial sweeteners used in Coke Zero.\u00a0 Venezuela's Health Ministry said Friday it banned sales of Coca-Cola Zero because the company failed to declare that the no-calorie soft drink uses an artificial sweetener allegedly harmful to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Food & Drink"","block_context":{"text":"Food & Drink","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/food-drink"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6157,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/05\/same_song_forty.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":3},"title":"Same song, forty-seventh verse","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 5-May-04 7:03am","format":false,"excerpt":"Coke and Pepsi are rejiggering their soda lines again with new semi-diet drinks. The new drinks contain the standard high-fructose corn syrup that sweetens regular soda but in smaller amounts....","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32630,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/25\/artificially-sweetened-milk-is-not-really-milk.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":4},"title":"Artificially sweetened milk is not really milk","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 25-Feb-13 9:40pm","format":false,"excerpt":"But if the dairy industry has its way, you'll never know if that's what you're getting. \u00a0Unless, of course, you're one of those people allergic to aspertame, or you the aftertaste of such things distinctively bad. But you won't be able to tell by the label because ... well, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":132204,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/12\/10\/so-maybe-its-time-to-switch-back-to-regular-soda.html","url_meta":{"origin":15704,"position":5},"title":"So maybe it's time to switch back to Regular Soda","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 10-Dec-16 11:37am","format":false,"excerpt":"Yeah, people have been kvetching about Aspartame (the only artificial sweetener that I can stand) since it was first introduced, but I've always thought, \"It's better than the calories. It's better than the calories. It's better than the ...\"Turns out, just from a weight loss\/gain perspective ... it's not. Various\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}