Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You? Everything You Need to Know
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After cutting back on sugar and carbs for a while, you understandably start to miss sweets. A common misconception is that you have to skip sweets to meet your goals, which isn't the case at all. There are plenty of sugar alternatives that fit within the Primal and keto lifestyles, and stevia is one of them.
Stevia is widely used in the low carb community to satisfy sugar cravings or simply add a touch of sweetness to a hot beverage or dessert, but should it be? What is stevia? Is it safe? Let's investigate.
What Is Stevia?A lot of people categorize stevia as an artificial sweetener, but it's important to note that stevia is not an artificial sweetener at all - it's a plant-derived natural alternative to sugar.Stevia is an herbaceous family of plants, 240 species strong, that grows in sub-tropical and tropical America (mostly South and Central, but some North). Stevia the sweetener refers to stevia rebaudiana, the plant and its leaves, which you can grow and use as or with tea (it was traditionally paired with yerba mate in South America) or, dried and powdered, as a sugar substitute that you sprinkle on. It's apparently quite easy to grow, according to the stevia seller who tries to get me to buy a plant or two whenever I'm at the Santa Monica farmers' market, and the raw leaf is very sweet.
The Sweet Compounds in Stevia: Stevioside and RebaudiosideMost stevia you'll come across isn't in its raw, unprocessed form, but in powdered or liquid extract form. The "sweet" lies in the steviol glycosides - stevioside and rebaudioside - which are the natural compounds isolated in these extracts. Some products use just one, while others use both stevioside and rebaudioside. Stevioside is the most prevalent glycoside in stevia, and some say it provides the bitter aftertaste that people sometimes complain about; rebaudioside is said to be the better tasting steviol glycoside, with far less bitterness.Most of the "raw or natural" stevia products use the full range of glycosides, but the more processed brands will most likely isolate one or more of the steviol glycosides. The popular Truvia brand of stevia products uses only rebaudioside, as do both PureVia and Enliten. Different brands provide different conversion rates, but compared to sucrose, stevioside is generally about 250-300 times as sweet and rebaudioside is about 350-450 times as sweet.Is Stevia Safe, or Bad for You?
