Thursday, May 3, 2007

Stevia

Stevia is a plant that is many times sweeter than sugar. Stevia will not raise your glycemic index like sugar and has no calories! Other countries have been using it for hundreds of years but the FDA has gone out of its way to keep it out our country. Its very safe but who knows with them. Its ok to put chemicals and poison in our food but not to use a plant extract that is proven safe.

It is now legal to sell Stevia but only as a "dietary supplment". You can find it online, at your health food store, and here even our Kroger has it. Its about $12 for 2oz here but it lasts forever and you can get it for about buy-one-get-one-free on Amazon.com!

You cant use it to replace sugar in baking since it has way less mass but it is great for drinks, cereal, sauces, etc. or to replace part of the sugar in a recipe.

Anyways, Ive been using stevia for a couple of years. I buy it in liquid form and add it to my water to sweeten it. Since I have kidney stones I have to drink large amounts of water, especially when pregnant. Plain water made my nausea worse so lemon juice and stevia in my water saved the day!


They have new products that include natural flavorings like Raspberry and English Toffee. I just bought the Vanilla Creme and I LOVE it - it is fantastic in coffee (my new bad habit)! and if you add it to water it tastes like ginger ale. I also use it to sweeten the boys plain cereal and they love it too!

Stevia is a great way to cut out sugar without compromising your health like Aspartme and Splenda do. Ive converted my coffe-drinking mother - who's next? ;)

Learn more at Stevia.com

3 comments:

Alli said...

I looked for it at our Kroger, but I'm guessing since it's a dietary supplement I was looking in the wrong place. What section do you find it in?

Rachel said...

Our Kroger has a health food section in the front of the store, by the registers. I found it there. Does your Kroger have that?

Alli said...

Yeah, but I haven't seen the Stevia there. I also haven't really looked, either.