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Stevia: Safe & Healthy Alternative to Sugar
We’re in the midst of the holiday season and with it an increased consumption of sweet and baked goods. At a time where so many of the foods commercially available are laden with sugar, and excess sugar consumption has been found to be detrimental to our health, it is important to find alternatives.
There are, of course, many alternatives to sugar, including honey, agave, molasses as well as sugar substitutes that don’t add caloric content to the food. However, most of these calorie-free sugar substitutes come with consumer alerts. The latest one I saw was on a toxic chemical released in Splenda when it is heated. Studies found that dioxin, a cancer-causing compound, is released when Splenda, particularly sucralose, is cooked (Ji, 2018).
On the other hand, stevia is touted as the healthy alternative to sugar (Santana, 2018). I decided to learn more about it, and here is what I found.
What is Stevia?
Stevia is a sweetener extracted from a plant called Stevia rebaudiana. The plant is native to South America, particularly Brazil and Paraguay. Although the raw leaves can be used as a sweetener, what is commercially available comes from purified extracts that include stevioside. aglycone steviol, and steviol glycosides (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC), 2018).
