{"id":17,"date":"2004-07-26T20:47:00","date_gmt":"2004-07-27T05:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.taodekitchen.com\/2004\/07\/26\/how-sweet-it-is\/"},"modified":"2006-01-09T21:48:32","modified_gmt":"2006-01-10T06:48:32","slug":"how-sweet-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/nutrition-diet\/how-sweet-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"How sweet it is…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Being in the business of feeding people I am acutely aware of what I feed myself and am increasingly aware that what we feed ourselves affects our well being in so many ways. I\u2019ve recently been trying to find new healthier ways to get that \u2018sugar\u2019 fix without the sugar and without all those poisonous artificial sweeteners.\u00a0Did you know saccharine was banned because it was found to cause bladder cancer? It is, however, still allowed as an \u2018at the table\u2019 additive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>Did you know that there is a government agency that has listed over 160 symptoms and reasons to avoid the consumption of aspartame?\u00a0Did you know that pre-approval research on sucralose showed shrunken thymus glands and enlarged livers and kidneys?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>Do browser searches on each sweetener and you will find a wealth of information on why you should avoid the three artificial sweeteners like the plague.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span>So what\u2019s the alternative? For about a year now I have been using Sucanat as much as possible. Sucanat is dehydrated sugar cane juice \u2013 that is not refined sugar. While Sucanat is still \u2018sugar\u2019 it is not refined so it contains certain vitamins and minerals which offset the deleterious effects of it\u2019s refined form. Still, it\u2019s not quite so good for you but miles better than refined sugar though not a good sub for diabetics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Most recently, I\u2019ve been exploring two alternate sweeteners: Stevia and Xylitol. First I\u2019ll write about Stevia\u00a0Stevia is an herb native to Paraguay. The leaves are very sweet \u2013 in fact it is said to be 300 times sweeter than sugar. You can find it in it\u2019s natural form \u2013 ground leaves or in an extract form. I bought a small jar of Stevia extract to try from my local Vitamin Shoppe and also noticed it\u2019s available at Trader Joe\u2019s. So far I\u2019ve used it to sweeten drinks and it has worked great. Not the exact taste of sugar but pretty darn close with no unpleasant after taste. I\u2019ve read that different brands can taste slightly different so try out a few brands as you may prefer one to the other. Next I\u2019ll be experimenting with stevia in baking. So far I\u2019ve concluded that Stevia is a great sugar alternative and is a great alternative for diabetics. Do a browser search and find out about Stevia\u2019s intriguing history and why it hasn\u2019t been readily available until recently \u2013 could it have to do with not being able to patent natural substances and a certain corporation convincing the FDA Stevia should be kept out of the country even though places like Japan have been using it safely for over 40 years? The current artificial sweetener market \u2013 made up of chemical substances patented by large chemical companies is a multi-billion dollar industry afterall.\u00a0More later about Xylitol. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Being in the business of feeding people I am acutely aware of what I feed myself and am increasingly aware that what we feed ourselves affects our well being in so many ways. I\u2019ve recently been trying to find new healthier ways to get that \u2018sugar\u2019 fix without the sugar and without all those poisonous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nutrition-diet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taodekitchen.com\/tasty\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}