Stevia sweet

(Luke) #1

Tv Hi everyone. Does anyone know if stevia is not the greatest thing to put in your body? I bought some hydration salts online to have daily , magnesium, sodium , potassium. Less than 1 gram carbs less than 1 gram sugar. They are overly sweet to drink I mix it to my liking , and after reading the packet they have achieved this taste with Stevia. Thoughts anyone. TIA.

#2

I researched sweeteners a bit, I consider stevia okay health wise, it’s even natural. That is for the leaves and the pure powder, I suppose, not the products where many others are mixed in, I don’t know them.
(Taste wise, I hate stevia with a passion so I never use it.)

(Robin) #3

I have used stevia drops for a long time. But pay attention to additives. Get as pure as possible.
Some hate the taste, I like a couple drops in my AM coffee.

(B Creighton) #4

Stevia has been tested fairly thoroughly, and no one has found any problem with it yet. I used to have a stevia plant, and it was very sweet, but had a noticeable aftertaste which comes from the steviosides. Sometimes now they extract the rebaudiosides to obtain the sweetness as they have no aftertaste. I don’t know if this process adds anything undesirable. Stevia is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar. I would say enjoy, unless you don’t like the taste. It is completely keto friendly.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will not allow a non-sugar sweetener to be sold in the U.S., unless the manufacturer can supply proof that it does not raise serum glucose levels. However, the FDA cares nothing about insulin, so the effects of such sweeteners on insulin are not known.

Many forum members feel that one or another of the non-sugar sweeteners may have an effect on their insulin. Given that there is no home test for serum insulin, this has to be inferred from the pattern of glucose levels after ingestion, and this is complicated to test, so who knows if they are right. But no sweetener seems to have the same effect on everybody, so anyone who appears to have a problem with one sweetener can probably switch to another one and be fine.

On the other hand, I have heard some researchers suggest that there is a “cephalic” insulin response that can be triggered by sweet tastes, regardless of source (and can even result from merely thinking about a sweet taste, apparently), so that might be a general problem with all sweeteners, not just sugar.

Dr. Phinney says that, whatever the drawbacks of such sweeteners over the long term, if they help us stop eating sugar, that is a good thing. Myself, I have found that these days I neither need nor enjoy sweet tastes nearly as much as I did right after starting keto. For whatever reason, my big carb cravings now are about bread and pasta.

(Joey) #6

This^^ - read the ingredients carefully. Pure Stevia plant extract is one thing … many “stevia” products include other ingredients you might care to avoid.

I once did an n=1 blood glucose panel on myself with a hefty dose of stevia+water to see if any glucose reaction occurred. Short answer: Nope. YMMV.

Here’s a graph…

SteviaTimeSeries
SteviaTimeSeries.png1446Ă—1406 271 KB

Fun with science.

(B Creighton) #7

Well, you are apparently right here. The sweet taste itself apparently can cause an insulin response. I’m not sure if this happens in fully fat adapted people. But yes, there have been studies which show the sweet taste causes insulin to rise and blood sugar to fall, and this tends to make people hungry and eat more. But in the keto diet, all you should be eating is proteins and fats, so there would be little to no weight consequences. I use stevia in a morning lemonade. and don’t seem to notice much or any effect on my hunger… maybe because insulin is going up anyway to digest my meal. If someone notices that stevia makes them more hungry, I guess it may be advisable to stop consuming it. I myself generally only consume it with a meal, and don’t notice any difference. In any case it doesn’t appear that it is going to be any different than any other sweetener in this regard. It is certainly far, far better than sugar.

#8

I personally never got hungry from something sweet alone (as long as they barely contained calories). It’s individual. I don’t know what my insulin and BS do.
Bigger hunger can be quite bad even on keto, even regarding our weight (I don’t gain if I overeat but I definitely don’t lose either) but wasteful eating isn’t what I like either, I only want to get the food I can use well. Besides it can be very inconvenient to get hungry and need to eat a big meal when we just wanted to chew a gum or drink a coffee or something and go to do our non-food business at the moment.

I am sure we all agree with that. Many people say we should just skip sweeteners and sweet things BUT if it keeps us from eating sugar (or carbs, I had situations where I needed my keto sweets to avoid eating non-sweet carbs), it may be a good idea.

#9

There’s nothing wrong with any of them. Stevia isn’t an artificial sweetener to begin with, and even the ones that are are fine for most people. It’s just popular to hate on them. A small population seems to have an issue with some of them, most don’t. Within that small population, it’s probably pretty likely many of those are blaming the wrong thing.

I thought I was lactose intolerant, maybe because two different doctors told me I was, maybe because every time I ate dairy I felt like death, would bloat, have some quality time in the bathroom, and even crap blood, pretty open and shut right? WRONG! Out of whack gut bacteria! Dealt with that for YEARS!

Only reason I know that now is listening to countless podcasts of docs saying how often that happens back when the whole microbiome fad started. Had a bunch of testing done started on a repair protocol. I consume dairy daily now.

(Joey) #10

My (limited) understanding of lactose intolerance is that it is, indeed, a gut biome thing. So I would imagine that yes, you were lactose intolerant at one point - and now, no, you’re not - as you’re walking around with a different population of gut critters.

BTW, my daughter suffered from it terribly as a child … but as an adult, not at all. It would seem she’s another example of just what you’ve experienced.

What the doctors told us (and it sounds like you heard the same thing), was “well, if you can’t tolerate lactose, you’re lactose intolerant.” (I.e., until you’re not.)

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #11

It’s actually genetic. The mammalian default, shared by human beings, is to stop producing the enzyme lactase (which cleaves the lactose molecule) at some point between weaning and adulthood. There are at least two separate mutations in human beings, which allow the body to continue producing lactase into adulthood: one in the Maasai of Africa, the other in the peoples of Northern Europe.

In lactose-intolerant individuals, the lactase does not get digested, but passes through to the large intestine, where bacteria can break it down. The by-products of that process are the gas that plagues the lactose-intolerant when they consume dairy products containing lactose.

Another issue with cow’s milk is intolerance to the proteins it contains. But that is not the same as lactose-intolerance. People who are sensitive to bovine dairy proteins are often all right with goat’s or sheep’s milk. Sensitivity to the proteins in mother’s milk has, for obvious reasons, been bred out of the human race. Most commercial baby formulas contain no milk at all; they are usually soy-based.

(Joey) #12

Huh, didn’t know this … but I think we’re talking about having an intolerance when younger and losing the intolerance sometime later in adulthood.

Would the inability to produce the digestive enzyme “cure” itself later in life?

Perhaps we’re talking about different forms of one’s inability to tolerate certain milk sugars?

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #13

No, we’re probably talking about a sensitivity to some protein in cow’s milk. A baby sensitive to the proteins in its mother’s milk would be in a very dangerous position. A baby without the ability to digest lactose would probably survive, though probably not thrive as well. It is highly unlikely that one would be born without the ability to create lactase and then gain that ability later on. Our genetics are designed to allow us to produce lactase early in life, and then to shut that ability off after weaning. (Unless, of course, one has either of the two mutations I mentioned above.)

As with any allergy, it is possible to have a protein sensitivity and then lose it, though it is fairly rare.