In ``Sugar blues'' by William Dufty, one of my previous blog entries reviewing the name sake's book, i discussed the very likely possibility that sugar (as well as related highly refined ``foods'') is really quite harmful and possibly the cause of a wide range of health related problems that are facing our civilization. Wouldn't it be a whole lot easier to give up sugar if there were some alternative?

Shortly after reading the Sugar Blues book, i spent some time researching various opinions on the book, and while doing so, happened to stumble across some weird plant from South America that i had never heard before: Stevia.

Stevia, having been used by natives for centuries, grows incredibly sweet leaves. Incredibly adequately describes the effect, which is between 20-30 times sweeter then table sugar (with extracts as high as 200-300 times sweeter then sugar). On top of that, Stevia basically non-nutritive, especially in the way of calories: perfect for diabetics. Disbelieving, i went to the local health-food store here in town and bought some, and i was amazed! Just inhaling some of the powder while transferring it between containers made my mouth sweet--a dusting on the tip of a spoon left sweet residue for at least an hour.

So why had i never heard of Stevia before? After reading and digging around (confirming what i'd read) i discovered that the FDA has been keeping it off the market for quite a few years, and it is only now allowed (though somewhat ironically) as a health food supplement; even though its been used for many years with no problems by both natives as well as some Asian nations such as Japan, including in products such as Diet Coke. But why would the FDA want to keep it off the market? Nobody really knows, although there is a strong belief that it may have had something to do with money and Aspartame (which is widely known to be toxic and cause numerous health problems, yet somehow manages to keep its FDA approval). Conspiracy theories aside though (founded or unfounded), it is sad that it was held off the market, and still is to a large degree (as it can't be used in prepackaged foods).

Cooking with Stevia is a little different from my short but sweet (<cough> <cough>) experience with it. Since it is non-caloric it won't help yeast rise, and it doesn't have the body needed to make SOME candies (fudge), cookies, and cakes and won't caramelize. The hardest part is trying to learn how much to use: as it is much MUCH sweeter then sugar, and if too much is used a very slight bitter taste can be left in the mouth (somewhat comparable with the liquorish roots that i used to suck on as a child).

Summary: there are healthful sugar alternatives in existence, there are no compelling reasons to eat sugar, and there is a lot of interesting things left to discover and learn about the world.

For more information about Stevia see stevia.net, The Bittersweet Story of the Stevia Herb, Sinfully Sweet?, as well as many other sources available courtesy of Google. Visit your local health food store to try Stevia for yourself.