Stevia as the devil?

(Erin Macfarland ) #1

I just listened to the Ketovangelist podcast on stevia and am pretty sad to hear that the takeaway is that stevia is harmful and raises insulin. Say it isn’t so!!

(Allie) #2

I always thought it was the least likely sweetener to mess with insulin? Only way to check if it affects will be testing, but if you’re using it without trouble, don’t stress.

(Erin Macfarland ) #3

I don’t use a ton of artificial sweeteners and when I do it’s stevia (like Zevia soda) or Swerve. But this struck terror in the heart of my sweet tooth. Liver damage! Kidney damage! Weight gain! Headaches! Maybe rip the band aid off and try to go without for a while? I am wondering about things like coconut or coconut butter which have a naturally sweet like flavor. Do they unlesh an insulin sh*t storm when we eat them too? It seems like nothing is safe!

(Allie) #4

Honestly I wouldn’t worry. If what you’re doing is working for you, keep doing it. I haven’t heard the podcast but will look it out later - can you tell me which episode please?

(Teresa Driver) #5

When I wanted to figure out if I was producing insulin in response to my favorite artificial sweeteners, this is what I did.

Day One Took a blood sugar reading (T). Drank a diet Coke, 30 minutes after I started the diet Coke I took another reading (T+30). When you ingest food, your blood sugar is supposed to be rising at T+30. Mine had dropped 20 points. Sweet taste triggered an insulin response even though I wasn’t taking in any calories. An hour out my blood sugar had risen to 40 points above T. Then at T+120 (2 hours out) I was 10 points down from T and STARVING.

Day Two Mourned the loss of diet Coke in my life and ran the same experiment on bulletproof coffee sweetened with liquid saccharine. Same methodology, same results. Damn.

Day Three Nervously ran the same experiment on black coffee. Same methodology, but not the same response. I did drop a little at T+30, but only 5 points. Ran it again that afternoon with a little heavy cream in the coffee and no insulin response at all. Thank heavens, because I’m not giving up both coffee and diet Coke.

At that point I decided I didn’t want to buy any stevia to test because I don’t like cooking with it and I have already established that Swerve triggers insulin response and the munchies. I just gave it up entirely and it’s not been so bad.

(Erin Macfarland ) #6

Episode 114!

(Allie) #7

Thanks :slight_smile:

(Erin Macfarland ) #8

That’s really helpful and interesting! Thank you! I also wonder about nuts too because they have that same sweet, pleasurable flavor like coconut. I do find I’m hungrier when I have stevia or swerve sweetened things. Guess I’ll give it a shot cold turkey :cry:

(Teresa Driver) #9

I found out that nuts did trigger, but coconut oil did not :):grinning:

(Allie) #10

The podcast doesn’t seem to be against stevia in its natural form, but more against the processed type and the chemicals it’s subjected to during processing… which could be a fair point, as one of the aims of keto is to avoid ALL processed foods. But, that said, we are also taught that studies based on animal tests aren’t worth the paper they’re written on as the rodents used are so different to humans, and every single study referenced in the podcast is an animal study so really irrelevant.

Brian Williamson (ketovangelist) is very knowledgable and I follow a fair amount of his shows etc., but he’s also well known for being totally anti ALL sweeteners so this will obviously have influenced his choice of topic.

I stick with what I said originally on this topic. If you’re using it without problems, don’t stress.

(Erin Macfarland ) #11

I know he’s a bit more strict and all of this is worth thinking about, I also found it interesting that things like erythritol are kind of bypassed as categorically raising insulin and are therefore bad. My understanding is Swerve is pretty benign, but he doesn’t address it much. And I don’t think avoiding ALL insulin spikes is beneficial. Insulin does have positive effects on certain systems in our bodies. And men cannot possibly understand how important chocolate can be at certain times of the month!

#12

Yes!

ALSO, the doctor on that episode, Dr. Bruce Fife, kinda fits my definition of a little nutty. On his website, coconut oil seems to be the cure for everything, cancer can be treated with sodium bicarbonate, and he’s very anti-vaccine (not that I want to open that can of worms!).

I’m not convinced about his science, but that’s just my two cents.

(Erin Macfarland ) #13

I kind of got that feeling too, he was a little wacky sounding. I’m not sure why he seemed like a good person to discuss the topic of sweeteners. I’ll take it with a grain of salt (and not stevia hehehehe)

(Allie) #14

Swerve is erythritol and stevia together x

(Allie) #15

Maybe he was the only doctor who was willing to speak out against stevia? I don’t want to assume or judge, but it did come across as Brian Williamson trying to get backing for his opinion of all sweeteners being bad.

(Bacon, Not Stirred) #16

FYI: My doctor says it’s okay as long as my body tolerates it and I continue to lose while using it. I don’t know if it’s true (the sciency stuff you were talking about), but I like my doc’s answer. She is a nutritionist and an MD.

(Erin Macfarland ) #17

Ah yes, many of us are guilty of being myopic about our beliefs. I try to look at it from all sides. There may be some truth in what he’s saying. But he does seem a bit extreme.

(Erin Macfarland ) #18

My first time doing keto (beginning 2015) I was using some stevia, mostly in a BCAA powder before or after workouts. Maybe some here and there in treats. I lost too much weight. Even my second time beginning last fall I ate quite a lot of keto “treats” made with Swerve or stevia and even, gasp! peanut butter, and I still lost weight and had a hard time keeping from loosing too much again. So this tells me that even if “sweet” tastes raise insulin levels it doesn’t necessarily preclude weight loss. This is the hedonistic argument against sweet or pleasurable foods, that they automatically prevent weight loss or promote weight gain. But I have found this isn’t necessarily true. I know the blogger It’s The Woo talks about this as well. For those with severe metabolic issues it might certainly be however. So individual variables are obviously important!

(Sjur Gjøstein Karevoll) #19

When I listened to that episode there were a few things that stuck out to me.

  1. He said you can’t produce ketone and glucose at the same time. Ketogenesis is a byproduct of gluconeogenesis (gluconeogenesis depletes oxaloacetate, which prevents acetyl-coa from entering the citric acid cycle and causes it to build up, and it’s the high levels of acetyl-coa that causes ketogenesis). It’s an easy mistake to make, and not something I would fault anyone for making, even people who should know better. That is, unless your further arguments depend on the details of the mistake being correct, which iirc some of them did.

  2. His hypothesis depends on the sweet taste of sweeteners triggering an insulin response by itself, but there is plenty of (anecdotal but unambiguous and easily reproducible) data showing different sweeteners having different insulin responses in different people. They’ve talked about this on the 2 keto dudes podcast. If it is the taste that is triggering the response then you would expect all sweeteners to have the same response in each individual.

  3. Insulin spikes don’t concern me as much as insulin resistance and chronic elevated insulin. There’s a lot to say about this which I’ll leave out, but the question of if an insulin response without a corresponding increase in blood sugar is unhealthy in the long run (leaving out the effects of the short-term variation of blood glucose) is very much up in the air as far as I know. Insulin resistance isn’t just caused by elevated insulin levels, but also by metabolites that don’t increase blood glucose or insulin at all like fructose and alcohol, as well as just having lots of fat (aka. being chock full of stored energy already and not wanting to store more). I would be very interesting in seeing a study or even anecdotal experiment where someone with insulin resistance compared the insulin response pattern of glucose and a response-inducing zero-calorie sweetener. If the lack of an accompanying blood glucose increase caused the insulin spike to be minor and short lived despite the individual’s insulin resistance then that’s an indication that it’s not really negatively impacting them despite the temporarily elevated insulin. There’s still the question of what if you continued sipping a sweetened drink through the day, would that do anything and would that be harmful? Again, we don’t know yet, and I feel we can’t yet say insulin spikes by themselves are causative of insulin resistance and we need to be careful declaring them harmful when part of the mechanism through which insulin resistance is increased (in this case increased blood glucose) is absent.

There were some more minor things that aren’t really worth mentioning. Suffice to say I wasn’t very convinced, and when I was looking into the claims made a bit closer the episode felt more and more like ascetic moralizing. I don’t really use sweeteners much either, I did keto for almost two years without any the first time around and only got some stevia two months ago because I was curious how it would work. The thought of giving them up doesn’t cause me any mental anguish either, but I guess I’ve developed a sort of stubborn attachment towards my carbonated caffeine drinks (good luck finding non-sweet versions of those) after people have been telling me for years sweetener is bad (even compared to sugar) without anything to back up their claims. I know some people have poor reactions to some sweeteners but I personally haven’t experienced any negative effects with any, nor have I seen any studies suggesting they’re bad (other than observational studies with some obvious confounders).

I guess the bottom line is; there’s a lot that’s been said about sweeteners already and this podcast doesn’t really add anything to the conversation if you’ve been paying attention. (I do like the ketovangelist podcast on balance however, just feet like I should point that out).

(Erin Macfarland ) #20

WOW this is so impressive. You are a genius! I feel like I should be billed for that response! Very helpful. Now I’m gonna go have a Zevia :joy: