Stevia and lots of questions

[kathy003]

Hi all,

 

I have a question regarding sugar substitutes. I need to start cooking more heart healthy foods. We have had an unexpected change and need to change our eating habits. I bought a low cholesterol and sugar free cookbook, the cover says it helps if you have hypertension, heart disease and headaches, I thought it would help me learn different things i can cook with.

 

To use as a sugar substitute it says to use Stevia instead of sugar in cooking, has anyone ever used this? I never heard of it

 

Also, what do you think of refined sugar? It is really that unhealthy for you?

 

My husband has high blood pressure and had a heart cath that did not come back good yesterday, it showed he would need at least a triple bypass. For those of you who have experienced this, how did you change your eating/baking habits? His sugar is fine, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to at least check into different sugar replacements.

 

I think we are in pretty good shape since we don't eat alot of prepackaged processed food. I bought the book and it gave me some great idea's, but i'm not about to take advice from a book not knowing if they know what they are talking about, which is why I came here,, to ask people who DO know

 

Any advice would be great, thanks!

[themartianchick]

I will keep you and your hubby in my prayers... Stevia is a plant that can grow like a weed in some areas. Someone in Texas gave me some seed last year. It didn't grow well for me in NY. I also shared some seed with a blogger in Michigan. Hers didn't grow well either. This year, I bought some more seed from Seeds of Change... It still didn't grow well.

 

Luckily for me, I was able to try it by buying the product called TRUVIA. It is in the artificial sweetener section of the grocery store. As far as all of us being experts... Well, I'm definitely not. Maybe your hubby's doctor could recommend a nutritionist to assist in meal planning. This is such an important aspect of his life.

[Cat]

Some of the threads here mentioning Stevia:

 

~Stevia Info, Please?~ (motherload of other links to it here)

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=35222

 

The Health Advantages of Stevia (Comparison to other sweetners) and other herbs/spices

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=39191

 

Disappointed in Stevia

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=35829

 

Stocking up on something sweet

http://mrssurvival.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=39939

 

 

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

 

[Amishway Homesteaders]

we bought a plant at a farm market and it is doing OK in a pot in the herb garden.

This way I can bring it inside when it gets cold. AND I better get it in soon as we are getting colder weather now.

Thanks for the reminder. LOL

[themartianchick]

My stevia plants never got much taller than about 3 inches... I was really looking forward to being able to grow some since I can't have bees. Maybe I'll try them in a pot on the front porch next year.

[Motherhen]

I've tried Stevia and another natural substance --xylitol. (spelling???) At any rate, they do not taste like sugar to me and have to use a lot more than what it says to get even a hint of taste of sugar. I think their claims are greatly misleading. For the amount of sugar that I personally, I just use plain sugar. I appreciate that others would need to use a subtitute but thats my findings and thoughts.

[Vic303]

Some folks are allergic to Stevia. DH has tried it in his coffee and says it is ok.

[kathy003]

Thank you for the replies. I am going to hold off on getting this for now, maybe try it in a few things next summer and see how it goes.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

You can buy stevia powderi n health food stores (as welllo as others I am sure) in small bottles, it cost about $9.00 here. But seeing you use way les then sugar a little goes a long way, teaspoons of stevia instead of cups of sugar.

Now if you are using it to cook with (like cakes and pies) still need to use a little sugar or the stuff willl come out hard. Check out on the internet about this.

[Amishway Homesteaders]

You can buy stevia powderi n health food stores (as welllo as others I am sure) in small bottles, it cost about $9.00 here. But seeing you use way les then sugar a little goes a long way, teaspoons of stevia instead of cups of sugar.

Now if you are using it to cook with (like cakes and pies) still need to use a little sugar or the stuff willl come out hard. Check out on the internet about this.

[Leanna1017]

First, let me say that I've never had a sugar substitute that I've liked - so maybe I'm biased. It doesn't matter how "natural" they claim to be - they all have a chemical or metallic taste to me. Yuck.

 

You may have also heard about the new trend of using agave syrup as a sweetener. They must have a fabulous marketing agency spinning their story because it is just as highly processed as high fructose corn syrup only no one has studied the effects of this stuff yet. I'm passing on that one too. Good old honey works for me. It's natural, has vitamins and minerals and tastes great. Local honey can even help with allergies. You can't use it in eveything that calls for sugar but it's pretty versatile. Try my recipe for honey whole wheat brownies and see for yourself -

http://www.eastvalleylife.com/2010/10/october-unprocessed-brownies.html

 

About bypasses - I had a double last year at the age of 44. My story is here if you're curious-

http://www.eastvalleylife.com/2010/03/getting-to-heart-of-it-all.html If you're looking for info online- please check the dates of anything you find on the web. They've made pretty good advances with the surgery in just the last 3 years so anything older than that is, well, old news. :-) If you have any specific questions I can help with please let me know.

 

One tip I can give your husband - practice getting in and out of bed without using his hands and arms. Legs and back only. Trust me - this is a skill that will serve him well when the drag him out of bed to do laps in the hallway.

 

As for diet - clean eating is what you want to aim for. I wouldn't worry too much about the sugar unless he eats it to excess. Try less red meat and more lean turkey and chicken (but not the lunchmeat kind - high in sodium and fructose). Bake and grill instead of frying. More grains like brown rice and less white rice and potatoes. Same with flour - opt for wheat when you can and unbleached white flour when necessary. Forget Crisco and use a qood quality olive oil when needed. Add veggies or salad to lunch and dinner. Aim for 2-3 fruits per day. If you're already making a majority of your meals at home this probably won't we a big adjustment for you unless you fry everything. Still, you can make oven fried chicken and french fries and they're very good. There's lots of options.

 

I hope everything turns out well. You're both in my prayers.

[Pigzzilla]

I have 4 stevia plants that are doing ok. They are about 2 feet tall. I have picked a lot of the leaves and dried them. Smash the leaves to a powder and used in place of sugar in oatmeal. I do not sweeten my tea or coffee so can't say how that would work. It is sweet. Also it is natural, not a processed and chemicaled product like sugar.

 

Unless you really like having diarreha, go very easy with zylitol or any other 'itol' sugar substitutes, they are sugar alchohols, malitol, sorbitol, etc. Most all sweets marketed safe for diabetics are full of -itols and a lot of people don't realize thats what tears them up.

 

Agave nectar now on the market is a natural product, made from agave plants. Personally, I would rather use honey, but they can be swapped for each other. ........pigz

[Midnightmom]

The following is from Dana Carpender's blog:

 

Sadly, like so many natural things, agave nectar is not health food. Ironically, the heart of the agave plant, from which agave nectar is made, appears to be pretty healthy stuff. It's loaded with inulin, aka fructooligosaccharides, a carbohydrate which, while sweet, is classed with the soluble fibers rather than with the sugars. The stuff improves your absorption of calcium, and maybe magnesium, while nourishing the good bacteria in your gut. Inulin is one of the genuinely promising low carbohydrate sweeteners.

 

But is that good enough for the agave nectar folks? Nope. They use enzymes to break the inulin down into component sugars. In other words, they process it.. What results is a syrup of fructose and glucose, the same components as honey and table sugar. Except that, unlike honey and table sugar, both of which contain roughly equal quantities of fructose and sucrose, agave nectar is 92% fructose, 8% glucose.

 

This accounts for the claims of a low glycemic index. Unlike glucose, which can be metabolized by every cell in your body, fructose can only be metabolized in your liver. Apparently this slows absorption, leading to a seemingly low GI. Sounds good? Not so fast. According to Wikipedia:

 

There is a concern with Type 1 diabetes patients and the apparent low GI (glycemic index) of fructose. Fructose gives as high a blood sugar spike as that obtained with glucose. The basic GI measurement technique can be misleading. The blood sugar levels over time are graphed and the total area covered by this bell curve is used to calculate the GI number. This means that a slow release food can have the same GI rank as a food that raises the levels of sugar in blood, and lowers it again quickly.

 

In other words, fructose is still sugar, just a sugar subject to a metabolic bottleneck. As a result the blood sugar spike happens later -- a long enough time later that most glycemic index tests are over. But it gets worse.

 

Perhaps because of needing to be metabolized in the liver, fructose causes non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, making the livers even of teetotalers look and function like those of long-term alcoholics. Fructose is implicated in metabolic syndrome -- you know, carbohydrate intolerance, the thing we're all fighting. Repeated studies demonstrate that fructose raises triglycerides like nothing else. And there are some studies that indicate that the stuff is uniquely fattening.

 

(Completely speculative parenthetical note: It makes sense to me that fructose would be a trigger to store fat. Why? Because in a pre-agricultural world, fructose would only have been available in the form of wild fruit in season. A seasonal trigger to put on fat to get through the winter makes all kinds of evolutionary sense, especially when you keep in mind that that trigger would have coincided with the time of the year when the fattest game -- and therefore the greatest number of spare calories -- would have been available.)

 

All of this is why high fructose corn syrup is the current Nutritional Enemy Number One, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving substance. And I have to tell you, consuming lots of fructose in the form of "natural" agave nectar (no more natural that HFCS, which is also made by converting other carbohydrates into fructose using enzymes) is no better for you. Worse, actually, since the percentage of fructose in agave nectar is actually higher than that in HFCS.

 

In short, agave nectar is not your blissfully natural and healthful substitute for those evil artificial sweeteners. While I am not sure Splenda is 100% safe, I'm darned sure it's safer than nearly pure fructose.

 

If you are really afraid of Splenda, my best recommendation is one of the new erythritol/stevia blends on the market, or to simply stop eating sweet stuff. But agave nectar? Steer clear.

 

* Sucanat is unrefined sugar cane juice that is dried and ground into a coarse powder. It is, as I said, a concentrated sugar, but it does contain all the vitamins and minerals originally present in the sugar cane, which is a heckuva lot more than you can say for white sugar. It tastes much like brown sugar, though it doesn't have the sticky, packable texture.

 

http://holdthetoast....nt/agave_nectar

[kathy003]

Leanna, thanks for the advice about the bypass recovery. He is doing really well. He had a problem with his heartbeat getting regulated, so he was in the hospital a few days longer, but now that he has been home for a few weeks, it is back to normal.

 

He does not eat alot of sweets or sweet things. I did learn from the hospital what is good for him and what isn't good for him. I never really looked at how much sodium is in pre packaged lunch meat,, wasn't I surprised to see those numbers! I am thinking about buying turkey and chicken breasts, cooking it and making his lunch meat sandwiches out of that. I have a meat slicer and can always freeze the sliced meat.

 

I cook from scratch alot, so eating clean won't be a hard transition. The things I need to concentrate on are healthy lunch meat, canned broths (they aren't very healthy come to find out), and things like that.

 

It does say in his diet book that prepackaged foods are not good for you. I am wondering, with cookies and crackers homemade, if there would be alot of sodium in them, I only use a little bit of salt, and only for taste.

[Leanna1017]

I'm glad to hear that your husband is doing well. He may have the occasional strange heart beat episode (like fluttering) every now and then. My cardiologist said it's just a side effect of all the trauma of the surgery.

 

About sodium - I remember seeing a graphic presentation (on Dr Oz maybe?) that showed how salt literally makes tiny cuts in your arteries. As the cuts heal they fill with plaque and scar tissue that eventually builds up and creates more blockages.

 

There are lots of no sodium and low sodium options out there - I love Mrs. Dash Onion and Herb. For homemade cookies and crackers you can probably use half the amount of salt the recipe calls for with no change in the flavor.

 

Making your own turkey and chicken for lunch is far superior to any lunchmeat I've seen. Our local health food store carries sliced chicken and turkey breasts without sulfites but it still contains corn syrup as a preservative. That seems so crazy to me. You wouldn't pour sugar on your sandwich so why add syrup to the meat?

[Midnightmom]

Some folks are allergic to Stevia. DH has tried it in his coffee and says it is ok.

 

 

Just came across this info:

 

Stevia and chemicals contained in stevia, including stevioside and rebaudioside A, are LIKELY SAFE when used as a sweetener in foods. Rebaudioside A has generally recognized as safe (GRAS) status in the U.S. for use as a sweetener for foods. Stevioside has been safely used in research in doses of up to 1500 mg per day for 2 years.

 

Some people who take stevia or stevioside can experience bloating or nausea. Other people have reported feelings of dizziness, muscle pain, and numbness.

Special Precautions & Warnings:

Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Not enough is known about the use of stevia during pregnancy and breast-feeding. Stay on the safe side and avoid use.

 

Allergy to ragweed and related plants: Stevia might cause an allergic reaction in people who are sensitive to the Asteraceae/Compositae family of plants. This family includes ragweed, chrysanthemums, marigolds, daisies, and many other plants.

Diabetes: Some developing research suggests that some of the chemicals contained in stevia might lower blood sugar levels and could interfere with blood sugar control. However, other research disagrees. If you have diabetes and take stevia or any of the sweeteners it contains, monitor your blood sugar closely and report your findings to your healthcare provider.

 

Low blood pressure: There is some evidence, though not conclusive, that some of the chemicals in stevia can lower blood pressure. There is a concern that these chemicals might cause blood pressure to drop too low in people who have low blood pressure. Get your healthcare provider's advice before taking stevia or the sweeteners it contains, if you have low blood pressure.