What is Stevia?
What is stevia? Where does it originate from? What does it taste like?.. Stevia is a popular and a safe plant-based no carbohydrate, no calorie sweetener and a sugar substitute with a zero glycemic index value.
• It is derived from the Stevia rebaudiana plant, also known as sugar leaf or sweet leaf, that grows wild in small shrubs.
• Refined white stevia powder is up to three hundred times and herb or green powder is up to fifteen times sweeter than sugar, so you only need to use in small amounts.
• Sweet taste of stevia starts slowly and lasts longer than sugar. You will get a mild bitter after taste with both stevia products, similar to that of licorice.
• Your body processes this substance quite slowly so you are not likely to get a sugar high from consuming stevia.
• Stevia has been used to sweeten mate tea by Guarani tribes of Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay since the pre-Columbian era, with no reported or known ill side effects. It was even used for its medicinal properties to treat conditions like heartburn.
• It is claimed to come with health benefits such as lowering blood pressure, aiding digestion, enhancing glucose tolerance and lowering blood sugar levels, inhibiting fat absorption, controlling obesity and assisting in weight loss.
• In Japan, stevia has been successfully used in diet coke, sugar-free gums, some yogurt brands, Japanese pickles, confectioneries, dried seafoods and many other products that require sweetener.
• Please bear in mind that moderation should be the key with stevia use. Scientists argue that Japanese do not over consume stevia and do not suffer from potential toxicity as a result and that US consumers are not generally good with ‘moderation’, which may put them at potential risk of stevia toxicity.
Is it Expensive to Grow Stevia?
Stevia is currently not very cost efficient, in other words it costs a lot to produce the substance as it not widely cultivated all over the world like sugar is- this helps bring the price down in the case of sugar. Stevia needs to be cultivated first before being transformed into a sweetener and this requires a great deal of investment in equipments, farms and plants.
In case of other artificial sweeteners, they are simply a mix of cheap andnasty chemical materials. They cost hardly anything to produce and are sold at pretty good prices. So think about the big profits the sweetener companies are making.
However, stevia can now be found in some big garden centers as it is becoming more and more popular these days and you can also grow it easily in your indoor herb garden. Stevia needs dry soil, full sun exposure and plenty of watering.
Simply dry the harvested stevia leaves and add them as a sweetener in your herbal tea or even powder the leaf and use where you normally use sugar.
Current Availability of Stevia:
Stevia is available in Brazil, France, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia as a sweetener. It has been widely used as a sweetener in Japan since the 1970s, in United States and Switzerland as a dietary supplement andsweetener, in Canada still only as a dietary supplement.
Most of South America including Uruguay, Argentina, Peru, Paraguay, Colombia Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Israel in Asia are among the other countries that have been using stevia for a while now.
It is still banned in countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and European Union except for France. United States’ FDA also had issues around accepting stevia as a safe sugar alternative or a sweetener for a long time, with the alleged pressure of big companies that own the chemical artificial sweeteners.
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References:
Curi R, Alvarez M, Bazotte RB, Botion LM, Godoy JL, Bracht A (1986). “Effect of Stevia rebaudiana on glucose tolerance in normal adult humans”. Braz. J. Med. Biol. Res. 19 (6): 771–4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevia : What is Stevia?
Stevia, What is Stevia :http://herbgardens.about.com/od/culinary/p/ Stevia.htm.
‘What is Stevia?’: http://www.dorway.com/stevia.html
