5 ms·
It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky. That said, I wonder why Stevia is
by technojunkie 10y ago
It's good to see that Splenda isn't the potential toxic substance we began to wonder it was, but I agree that it tastes icky.
That said, I wonder why Stevia isn't considered to sweeten drinks? It's very sweet, it's natural like sugar (meaning it's not synthetic or lab-grown), it also has zero calories, and it doesn't taste icky!
- chucknelson 10y agoI've always assumed Stevia hasn't taken off yet because that means companies have to spend money on trying to rework "flavor profiles" to work with Stevia. I long for a Stevia-powered Coke Zero...until they realize Stevia also causes horrible things in humans :-/
- mazlix 10y agoIt's not 0 calorie, but Coke does have a stevia drink called Coke Life (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca-Cola_Life)
- sscotth 10y agoBecause it also contains cane sugar.
- technojunkie 10y agoThey do have Stevia Coke and Pepsi but I've never had them. http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/news/companies/coke-pepsi-stevia/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2014/10/02/news/companies/coke-pepsi-st...
- hammock 10y agoStevia is HUGE. It's biggest benefit is that it can be marketed as "natural" allowing you to put "no artificial sweeteners" on the package. Pretty much everything sugar-free or reduced-sugar in Whole Foods has stevia in it. One of the reasons why you don't see it EVERYWHERE is that it's much more expensive compared to Ace-K and aspartame.
- TheGorramBatman 10y agoThey have Coca Cola Life. Stevia + Sugar. Not particularly great though.
- uremog 10y agoUp until 2008, it was banned in the US for food use. Wouldn't be surprised if sugar companies had something to do with that.
- grillvogel 10y ago>it's natural like sugar cyanide is also natural
- technojunkie 10y agoI'm not trying to state its health compared to sugar, just that it's not synthetic
- theophrastus 10y agoPlease just be cautious not to fall into the trap of the 'vital principle'[1]. If you had a bottle of L-ascorbic acid ("vitamin C") in your right hand synthesized in a laboratory and a bottle of L-ascorbic acid in your left extracted from rose hips, you'd agree that except for making arguments about impurities (certainly as likely in the 'natural' extract) that the molecules are identical in every sense in both cases..? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitalism
- DougWebb 10y agoI've always taken the "natural is better" argument to be based on what else is in the product. The drug industry has a long history of taking a complex natural product and isolating out specific chemicals, then patenting a manufacturing process for those chemicals to sell them as drugs. Sometimes that's fine, but there are many cases where the drugs have side-effects that the natural product doesn't have and that's due to the other stuff in the natural product. So your analogy really should be between lab-synthesized vitamin C and a piece of citrus fruit. The fruit is going to be better for your overall health because it's got more in it than just L-ascorbic acid. For example, it's got fiber, which is likely to slow down the passage of the vitamin through your digestive system, which will help you absorb more of it for an equal dose.
- theophrastus 10y agono... my analogy would be fundamentally a different analogy if i compared a bottle of vitamin C to a whole piece of fruit (quite "apples and oranges" in fact). I wanted to underscore that two pure substances, one synthetic and one extracted from nature are indistinguishable. When i teach biochemistry i'm always struck by the resistance to the pivotal biochemical scientific experiment of Friedrich Wöhler who synthesized urea and showed that it's identical in every sense to the urea extracted from urine. Thereby ending the notion that there is a vital principle. One may always quibble about contamination, but carbon atoms linked to other carbon atoms are the same whether made in a cell or made in the laboratory.
- Amezarak 10y ago> it's natural like sugar, Why is that relevant? That's orthogonal to whether it is healthy or unhealthy. There's no reason, based on that information, that I should expect it to be any more or less toxic than Splenda. I mean, the wrong 100% natural mushroom will kill you pretty dead.
- technojunkie 10y agoMost things can be toxic in high doses. Yes, being natural doesn't say much but I wasn't trying to relate that it's healthy for you just because it's natural.
- Amezarak 10y agoSure, I'm just wary of the term 'natural' when it comes to food. As far as I know it confers no benefit on the food item except making consumers feel good about it; i.e., as a descriptor it has little beyond marketing value.
- doomtop 10y agoThis. The term "natural" when it comes to food doesn't even necessarily mean it's not synthetic! Just that it is "derived" from something natural. [1] [1] http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=501.22 http://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrs...
- technojunkie 10y agoTo stay on topic, I'm calling Stevia natural as a comparison to sugar coming from sugar cane, which grows in nature and not in a lab. No marketing speak here.
- technojunkie 10y agoI updated my original comment to describe what I was talking about when saying "natural"
- SEJeff 10y agoopium (for heroine) and coca (used for cocaine) are also natural. Being natural != being healthy.
- technojunkie 10y agoIn strict moderation and control, both of these can be used to treat various problems with our bodies without severe side effects. I wasn't arguing that it's necessarily healthy because it's natural.
- jklinger410 10y agoBut opium and cocaine have strong medicinal qualities.
- SEJeff 10y agoSure is inconvenient when facts disagree: www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/06/11/481641640/more-than-ever-americans-are-dying-by-accident
- jklinger410 10y agoThe fact that people overuse those drugs does not negate their medicinal qualities. I'm kind of baffled at this comment.
- jeremymcanally 10y agoYou can actually buy Stevia-sweetened drinks and sodas at Whole Foods (I believe they're Zevia brand or something like that).
- DrScump 10y agoZevia has a whole product line of stevia sweetened soft drinks. In the Bay Area, they're available at Sprouts and probably Whole Foods as well.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mcguire 10y agoYes, it tastes icky. Maybe just to me, though.
- AnkhMorporkian 10y ago> but I agree that it tastes icky. You should consider getting some liquid sucralose. I agree that splenda is yucky, but that's largely because of the fillers that make the volume measurement manageable. Pure liquid sucralose, which is nothing but sucralose and water, tastes exactly like sugar to me. Seriously, put both in some lemonade and I'd never be able to tell the difference.
- lobster_johnson 10y agoThat doesn't sound right to me. Pure sucralose does not taste like sucrose. Splenda bulks up their dry packets with dextrose and maltodextrin, both glucose-based compounds that don't have any of the artificial flavour of sucralose. There are also a lot of sodas containing sucralose, all of which have that artificial sucralose flavour.
- AnkhMorporkian 10y agoWhat can I say? They taste identical to me. Splenda tastes nasty to me, but I can't identify any flavor differences between sucrose and sucralose. Perhaps it's a genetic thing, like cilantro tasting like soap to some people.
- soundwave106 10y agoStevia (the plant) naturally has kind of a slight bitter-ish anise aftertaste in the background. Not something I mind personally, but I'm sure others do. Personally I don't know how much this taste is in the purified compounds themselves. I know many of the early "stevia packets" also exhibited these same sort of characteristics, but it seems to have lessened over time. (Then again, some of this may be due to reformulation. For instance, Truvia switched away from pure stevia-compounds to stevia-compounds-plus-erythritol several years ago if I recall.)
- AceyMan 10y agoYou beat me to the punch on the mention of anise (licorice) aftertaste. IME, the liquid stevia preparations produce better results than any of the powder forms. I use it in my coffee exclusively and have tried 'em all. WRT the question, then, about stevia's relative lack of popularity: I think it comes from the aforementioned anise-like note, which seems to operate below a threshold in smaller amounts (such as to sweeten coffee), but at larger amounts (such as soda (pop)) this secondary flavor presents clearly. Since, for example, one 12oz (355ml) Coca-Cola has 39 grams of sugars (!), the amount of stevia required to equal this level of sweetness goes well into the range where the undesirable anise note becomes present. I've tried a couple of different stevia sodas and, yeah, they just aren't that great. (Since I rarely drink soda, when I do partake I usually go "full leaded," as they say. Life's too short, and all that...) That's just my working hypothesis as a stevia fan. YMMV. (Disclaimer: IANA chemist|biologist|nutrition scientist|&c).
- douche 10y agoI wonder if that would make it a good choice for something like Moxie, that already has a sort of licorice-y flavor from the gentian root it's flavored with.
- spuz 10y agoFor what it's worth, stevia drinks still taste icky to me, though they are not as bad as sucralose or aspartame based drinks.
- Grishnakh 10y agoBecause you're wrong. Stevia tastes nasty, like some kind of nasty unsweetened licorice or something. And they do use it to sweeten drinks. Go to any higher-end grocery store and you'll find weird-brand drinks with it, for weirdos like you who apparently can't taste the ick. What does cilantro taste like to you? To some people, it tastes like soap, to others it doesn't. There's a gene which controls this.
- technojunkie 10y agoI wonder if the same can be said about sugar, where some people taste it as nice and others think it's too sweet or gross. There are various mixes and types of stevia out there. You should find the varieties.
- Grishnakh 10y agoI've tried several, as my ex-wife was into that kind of thing. They all taste terrible to me. Some other things that taste terrible to me that other people claim are sweet: aspartame and saccharin. They don't taste sweet to me at all, just nasty. Sucralose tastes bad too, though it at least tastes sweet, just in a really nasty way. Stevia tastes sweet too, just in a nasty way. I wonder how much of this is how much people are used to: if you keep drinking diet soda for years and years and "acquire" a taste for it, maybe then real sugar will taste weird to you.
- notacoward 10y agoTo me, it tastes extremely icky. It immediately and unpleasantly overpowers anything I put it in, even though I'm fine with every other sweetener I've ever found. It's probably one of those weird genetic things, like how some people can taste PTC or PROP and others can't.
- darreld 10y agoAs said, differences and all. To me Splenda tastes like sugar. No aftertastes at all. Stevia on the other hand is awful with a bitter taste that I can't even take.