The part of the Stevia plant approved for use as a food additive is Rebaudioside A, which is a naturally occurring glycoside in the plant.
From what I’ve heard, companies tend to use this compound as a part of sweeteners rather than an isolated chemical (apparently because of perceptions of off-taste). According to this article, stevia leaves or crude extracts from the plant are not approved for food use, and there remains some concern about health effects and drug interactions.
There’s nothing stopping people from growing their own and using leaves as a sweetener (except that getting the proportions right might be a challenge).
I loathe the taste of stevia. I dislike all artificial sweeteners, but stevia is the only one that makes me want to spit out whatever’s in my mouth.
I don’t drink any sweetened drinks, or add anything to my coffee, so it doesn’t come up very often for me, thank goodness. If I want sugar, I eat sugar.
One of the few that likes Stevia. My gut can’t tolerate artificial sweeteners and I stay away from sugar, so Stevia works very well for me. If I use too much it has a bitterness, but just a tiny bit works fine for me. I do find it tastes the best when mixed into food like plain yogurt as opposed to a liquid.
Diet/lo-cal/light/etc: hate them all. Sucralose isn’t as bad, I suppose, but none of them are welcome in my house.
I used to work in a factory where we made them, shovelling the agglomerated product into a huge vibrating sieve, and the air was thick with clouds of it. The upside was that I used to roll my own cigarettes, and my sweetener-laced saliva made them really sweet. But that’s it: pleasant if smoked.
For eating and drinking though, they can all fuck off.
You know some of us have to give up sugar. When I had to stop drinking my beloved Mt. Dew and Pepsi (cherry) and switch to diet I gagged. So I used half regular and half diet and slowly phased out the regular. It took about a week for me to be able to stomach the lack of HFCS.
If we moved to a place where cane sugar was used in pop a lot more than as a novelty I would have had to do a slow taste change because the one time my husband brought home some of that “From Mexico Pepsi” I thought it tasted horrible.
For our health we changed from cooking with corn oil to using olive oil. When the kids aged out of needing whole milk we switched to 2%. When my husband’s cholesterol levels were too high and the middle son became lactose intolerant (well, moreso) we switched from butter to a nice vegetable spread. With all 3 changes we started out half and half and slowly added the new stuff to give us time to adjust to the new tastes.
I did read the OP. Then read it again to be sure. And it appeared to be about how wretched a particular non-sugar sweetener is, so I interpreted the “evils” of artificial sweeteners - about which we were to avoid talking - as being the hysterical horror stories about the risk to life of these terrible, terrible chemicals.
I put Stevia in the same category as the rest of the usual suspects in the sweetener line-up, because I find them to be utterly hateful for the same reason as each other: their flavour. By saying how much I hate them all, I was agreeing with the idea that this stuff is best dealt with by pouring it down the sink.
I may have missed the point, and if so I apologise, but I promise you my post was written with the intention of being bang on message.
Quite insidious too, isn’t it? Something not advertising itself as Diet or Lite suddenly tastes nasty because the ‘natural’ sugar substitute that’s being used is surely fine and doesn’t require the same warning! So then my 7Up tastes revolting, even though I haven’t bought Diet 7Up, dammit…
Halo Top ice cream uses stevia, and it doesn’t bother me at all – in fact, I’m a bit obsessed with their Chocolate Covered Banana and Peanut Butter Cup flavors.
I’m not aware of anything else I’ve tried that contains stevia.
I can’t stand stevia either. The products that I have a real problem with are the ones that have both real sugar (whatever the variety) and stevia. It’s like the worst of both worlds. You still get all the carbs from added sugar and the nasty flavor of the stevia. I really don’t understand why any product manufacturers make such products, especially since the practice seems to be most prominent in things like protein powder or protein bars.
It’s funny how the subject of a thread can drift. This thread started out being about stevia but now it’s mostly about a careful reading of the OP. Anyway, to stay on topic: I think it should be “…for those who can…” rather than “…for those that can…”.
I’m a Splenda girl but I do keep packets of Stevia around. I haven’t had much of a problem with it. I had some the other day at my mom’s in a cup of tea (I never drink tea but I was sick) and it was fine.
I definitely hated the taste of artificial sweeteners when I first started using them, or products that use them. I think the further you get from sugar, the less profound the taste of the artificial sweeteners.
I do think “pink” and “blue” are awful, though. At least by themselves.
