What To Make Of This?

Submitted by Dana on Mon, 2010-08-09 18:54

Well, geez, the world is just full of fascinating but perplexing information. Consider this: a study showing that feeding stevia or steviosides increases abdominal fat in chickens.

I mean, what the heck? The chickens given the stevia or stevioside supplemented feed ate more, which makes sense if chickens, like people, have an inherent taste for sweet stuff. Certainly my chickens went nuts for the mulberries that fell from my tree this year.

The stevia decreased blood sugar and triglycerides in the chickens, which sounds like good news, but it also reduced levels of T3, the active thyroid hormone, which sounds like bad news, and certainly could account for fat gain. The steviosides -- the refined sweetening principle from the whole stevia leaf -- didn't lower blood sugar or triglycerides, but still lowered T3, making it a pretty bad deal all the way around.

Of course, people aren't chickens, and chickens aren't people. They're not even particularly close, though they're both warm-blooded omnivorous vertebrates. I have absolutely no idea if this implies a damned thing about what stevia does in people, but I'd be fascinated to see a study.

A lot of people have seized on stevia as the sweetener of choice because it's natural, and they're sure that means it's safer than sucralose (Splenda) or other artificial sweeteners. I have no clue how true that is or is not, though I reject the "It's natural so it's safe" concept utterly; many hideously toxic things are 100% natural, from rattle snake venom to death angel mushrooms, not to mention tobacco. I just know I find stevia a lot more problematic to work with than sucralose.

But if any of this carries through to human beings, people may be doing themselves a real disservice by using stevia, at least in any quantity or with an frequency.

I'm so confused.

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stevia questions

Submitted by againstthegrain on Mon, 2010-08-09 20:35.

I, too, have found stevia difficult to work with. Too much or the wrong kind or with the wrong type of food and you've wasted a bunch of good ingredients making something too bitter to eat. It's ghastly in coffee, yet it's ok in iced tea, but I don't sweeten my iced tea. So the bottle of stevia drops and the container of stevia powder sits in the cabinet unused, in case a guest asks for it.

I've seen negative reports on stevia, too, and like agave and a lot of other "newcomers" to the cornucopia of foods marketed as "healthy" , I tend to go lowly with caution and skepticism while I dig beyond the marketing claims. Sometimes unbiased information is very hard to find and there is little reliable research at all. And if a food or ingredient doesn't have a long, long history of supporting healthy human populations, it's hard to consider as worthy of regular use in my kitchen. Occasional, perhaps, maybe even rarely. Sometimes not at all.

I tend to stick to a pattern of lowered sweetness levels anyway (as well as less often), whether using reduced amounts of regular sugar/maple syrup/honey, etc.; a "natural" sugar replacement; or an artificial sweetener like Splenda. My tastebuds are so used to low sweetness levels since I stopped bombarding them many times a day with sugar and sugar substitutes, that I can now taste the natural sugars in really fresh romaine lettuce! Seriously. Romaine lettuce tastes sweet to me, corn tastes like candy, and commercially sweetened foods are grossly over-sweetened.

Alieving your difficulty with stevia

Submitted by jJuanster on Sun, 2010-08-15 17:27.

I've used Stevia for about ten years now. Of all the different brands I've tried, this one was the least bitterest of all
And, the recipes work.
Be Well,
The Janster

ps, About those Fat Chickens, were any of them Range raised? A caged raised chicken will not get the exercise that a ranged raised ckicken will.

Stevia & T3

Submitted by rcdyoga on Mon, 2010-08-09 19:41.

Very sad indeed. I am using stevia and my T3 levels are awful. Although I must admit my T3 was low before I ever heard of stevia. Thanks for posting about this study. I will stay tuned to see how this plays out in humans.