I'm always looking to Mother Nature for some alternatives to mainstream food ingredients to help consumers and clients stay healthier and feel their best. It's thought that one such ingredient may be stevia, or more correctly, stevia-derived sweeteners. Stevia sweeteners are gaining popularity because of two main factors: they contain zero calories and they're supposedly more "natural" compared to artificial sweeteners. As obesity continues to top news stories and consumers become more conscious about the source of our food, these two ideas seem to be a marketing dream scenario -- a miracle ingredient!
But just how "natural" is it really?
Stevia is a shrub-like plant native to South and Central America, known for its sweet leaves. Its extracts can be nearly 300 times the sweetness of sucrose (table sugar), and its negligible effect on blood glucose. Although its leaves have been eaten fresh and used in teas for centuries in Paraguay and Brazil, it's not legal to use whole stevia as a food additive in the United States.
But a tiny, naturally-occurring steviol glycoside constituent (about two to four percent of a whole leaf) of the plant, called rebaudioside A (also known as reb A, rebiana, stevia extract), was passed into Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) status by the FDA in 2008. It's now allowed as an ingredient in diet sodas, energy drinks, cold cereals, fruit juices, oatmeal, yogurts, candies, syrups, chewing gum and countless other packaged and baked goods. In 2009, the market intelligence firm Mintel proclaimed stevia was poised to become the "holy grail" of sweeteners, estimating the stevia market could exceed two billion dollars by the end of 2011. It's quite possible that this highly purified extract could soon be ingested by hundreds of millions of people on a daily basis.
How it's made
So we already know that this sweet substitute is not a whole food, since it's an isolated portion of the natural whole leaf. But what's really behind the process of making rebaudioside A into a legal food additive?
This is where things get complex. In order for a stevia plant to be converted into the final, GRAS approved product, milling, extracting, combining, chemical refining, filtrating, desorption, sterilization, recrystallization and purifying may have to occur depending on the procedure(s) used.
According to public FDA filings on behalf of Cargill: "Rebiana is obtained by hot water-extraction of leaves from the S. rebaudiana plant. The process can be divided into two phases, with the first phase involving the extraction of the leaves and preliminary purification to yield the steviol glycoside primary extract, followed by a second phase which involves re-crystallization of the steviol glycoside primary extract from a water/alcohol mixture to obtain a final product with a high rebaudioside A content."
Obviously this chain of events is quite lengthy, each step taking rebaudioside A further from its natural origins. And if we compare rebaudioside A to another, newly popular, "natural" sweetener, namely agave syrup, it gets even more apparent that although we may start with something from nature, by the time we reach the end of the processing chain, the finished product is a lot different. Instead of the ingredient coming from the whole agave plant/juice or the whole stevia leaf, it's just a highly modified derivative -- probably not so "natural." And in the case of agave nectar processing, there's already a bit of backlash brewing over what could be an excessively high ratio of fructose to glucose content in the final syrup.
The take-aways
We may not know enough about rebaudioside A or its healthy intake levels to make any conclusions about whether or not it's the new zero calorie sweetener "miracle." Only time and more research will tell -- as is the case for most food ingredients, additives and products in our history of eating. I applaud food scientists' desire to find and launch more natural alternatives. While they're listening to the changing desires of a more educated and health-conscious customer base, we also need to continue our education and be mindful in our food choices.
Processing, however, usually leads to "un-whole" foods. The concept of health-promoting "synergies" within whole foods discussed by Annemarie Colbin and Michael Pollan is crucial. There may be benefits that come from the combination of compounds in a carrot, or any other natural, whole food that science has yet to discover. Rather than relying on the latest processed food additive or supplement, it probably makes more sense to seek out, zone in on, and embrace whole foods in order to maximize great taste and optimal health. These are concepts that Western medical sciences, nutrition science, modern chemistry, etc. may not understand better than Mother Nature herself.
There's no silver bullet; no quick fixes. We can't depend on the next zero calorie sensation to bail us out of our obsession with sweetness nor our war with obesity. The bottom line is that we're a nation addicted to quick, super sweet, highly-processed foods and have created palates that are unhealthily skewed toward sugar. We don't need zero calorie sweetness, we just need less sweetness!
So instead of settling for highly processed nectar, syrups or extracts, I want to leave you with a few simple alternatives to solving a sweet tooth obsession.
Do you have a favorite sweetener? What have your experiences been with natural sweetener alternatives like agave and stevia? Please leave your thoughts below!
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I often think that the problem with obesity in this country is a reflection of the way we, as a country, act in the world. We gobble up the worlds resources and then decide that we have to go to war to solve our problems.
I have an exceptional sweet tooth, so I go through it fairly rapidly. When I was first researching it I found they have been eating refined stevia in Asian countries for decades without any major health issues arising.
It's that simple....
I laugh at people who go to McDonalds and order a Big Mac and have a "Diet Coke" which comes in a 32 ounce cup.
I laugh at people who buy Stevia, blue, pink, or yellow packet. All of these sweetners are CANCEROUS!
It says so on the packet!
Use real sugar whether white, brown, or "tan" OR cane, spanish, or unbleached sugar.
1 tablespoon of sugar is less than 30 calories and 2 grams of fat.
-Processing simply alters food, period. For better or worse is virtually unknown.
-Research on the negative or positive affects of altered food using various methodologies and chemical treatments, are currently always in hindsight, only after generations of people in countries like the USA fail to thrive is it recognized that there were food processing issues.
-All food processing is not created equal. Check out the agave processing here:
www.volcanicnectar.com compared to other more unhealthy processing techniques.
-Stick to whole foods, eliminate bar code products and pick processed foods much less often or very wisely! ;)
-At the very least buy unsprayed, non-GM, non-soy, non-corn, fair trade, and local. Join CSA's and buying clubs to get lower prices than stores charge on local organic, grass fed food choices. This also eliminates tons of packaging being produced and dumped in the environment.
www.sustainablebudget.com will get you started if you live in Oregon or Washington
and/or this cookbook below called "Nourishing Traditions" by Sally Fallon, helps process thoughts to shift ones mind set into whole food choices with tons of recipes to experiment with.
https://www.discountbooksale.com/store/productView.aspx?idProduct=69289&ec=1&ProdId=112&AWTrck=1038713935&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=nourishing%20traditions&utm_campaign=acc001-0008&b=GGL_DBS_112_acc001_0008_69289_00_*GeoUSCA*__nourishing%20traditions
I found Coca-Cola imported from Mexico in my Kroger's and it's made with real sugar, no HFCS! It costs more but tastes like the "real thing"!
Also many soda's produced in Mexico use sugar instead of HFCS.
Though really I usually stick with carbonated waters. That's what I grew up on and that is what I consider "soda".
Cargill and Coca-Cola, however have expressed interest in getting stevia approved and into products, which is likely the reason we are talking about it today. The 2008 partial lift and this media coverage are all steps towards more open information on stevia which my wife has been cooking with for over a decade.
Sadly, this is yet another example of the crushing influence of corporate cash in electoral politics. The wars, the financial meltdown, environmental disasters, loss of lobs overseas, healthcare, pharmaceutical approvals and even food approvals are all major problems affecting Americans that stem from the lack of basic election finance reform favoring a wealthy elite.
Before we see stevia as a widely-used healthy alternative to highly processed artificial sweeteners and genetically altered products that take up more than two-thirds of the shelves in every supermarket today, a stevia lobby will have to be formed to buy influence in the FDA, Congress and Brazil and also strike deals with the major food manufacturer/distributors who decide behind closed doors what foods Americans can buy.
http://www.naturalnews.com/023728_stevia_DNA_the_FDA.html
Ethanol was also attacked way back in the 30s when small farmers were producing it from compost as a cheaper alternative to petroleum. Ethanol is a great zero carbon fuel source if it's made from other plant sources aside from corn. Producing ethanol from corn is a little like watching Tom Hanks drink water from coconuts in Castaway. Surprisingly, hemp actually produces something like 14x the amount of ethanol that corn would from the same biomass.
Like Big Oil, the corn growers lobby is so almighty they convinced the government to grant them subsidies (which come right from our tax dollars) so we pay them to grow corn and sell it at artificially low and unsustainable prices to America's schools. We also flood overseas markets like Haiti and Mexico with our less-than-cost corn to force local sustainable farms out of business. Then we give away corn as overseas aid to get poor countries "hooked" on US generosity. Overseas farmers are being blackmailed into buying GMO seed from us and one Clinton-era Monsanto flack responsible for this arm-twisting extortion was just reappointed by Obama.
Back home, the corn lobby is also airing commercials that ridicule moms for wondering whether HFCS is harmful, but still offer no scientific data to dispel the questions about weight gain, juvenile diabetes, organ damage, etc., deferring to the rulings by an FDA panel we know was heavily lobbied and infiltrated by Big Ag.
Again, campaign finance reform is the one underlying cure...get the money out of elections.
Informative article and lovely name, Pooja.
Thanks for bringing up the issue.
Catherine