Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I’ve talked about Stevia before:

• Starling Fitness » Stevia: Is It Safe?

I have a kind of love/hate relationship with it. I like the way it sweetens food. It doesn’t taste too sweet the way Nutrasweet and sacchrine can. I don’t like that it hasn’t gone through the process of becoming a food additive and has slipped in the back door by calling itself a dietary supplement. Most importantly, it’s fake food, but I still like the taste of it.

I have been using Torani syrups to sweeten and flavor my milk, making my own steamer in the microwave. I talked about that here:

• Starling Fitness » Steamer: A Pleasant Way to Drink Milk

Last week, while I was in my local health food store, I noticed a large selection of flavored liquid stevia from Sweet Leaf. I bought the vanilla creme and tried it. I loved it so much, I went back and tried all the flavors they had available. Now, instead of having huge bottles of flavored syrups on my countertop, I have small bottles of liquid stevia in my fridge.

Now, I find myself recommending them to you after going on a tirade about fake food and Z Trim yesterday. What’s the difference? Why didn’t the liquid stevia set off my paranoia again like it did with the Flavor Diet Sprays and Z Trim?

It seems like a double-standard in my mind. Maybe it’s because the package didn’t scream, “Use Stevia! It will make you skinny!” When I went to their website, however, it was everything that makes me angry. Here’s just a glimpse of what it was like:

“Send us your artificial sweeteners, loaded with harmful chemicals and toxins. And in return we’ll send you a safe and even sweeter alternative with absolutely zero calories or chemicals. Hmmm…toxically artificial or naturally superior? You make the choice.”

I think the biggest turning point for Stevia for me was this stevia article in Wikipedia:

• Stevia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia articles can be edited by anyone, but if you look at the bottom of the article, they have included all the links to the studies that back up the claims. This phrase was the kicker for me:

“Indeed, millions of Japanese people have been using stevia for over thirty years with no reported or known harmful effects. Similarly, stevia leaves have been used for centuries in South America spanning multiple generations in ethnomedical tradition as a treatment of type II diabetes.”

I read that article a couple of months after writing Stevia: Is It Safe? Since then, I have gone back to using stevia. Is it safe? I don’t know for sure. Is it fake food? Yeah, it is. Do I like it anyway? Yeah, I do.

What do you think?