Texas Gardening: Bug Babble!, 1 by tomatomaniac

tomatomaniac wrote:
I am so delighted that there are others concerned over the artificial sweetners carelessly dumped on the public. Our food and drug, as well as our health and safety laws of this nation are totally out of whack and politically driven by big business. The depth of the pockets of big business, especially the large drug/chemical companies, funding massively successful lobbying in Congress is despicable. We have drugs that could save and/or benefit lives that are mired down in bureaucratic red tape and things like Searle's Aspartame that got pushed through. Due do our hysterically irresponsible news media and our band of politicians in Washington Cyclomates were removed at that time because they were reported to cause cancer. In actual fact, when the studies came in later for Sodium Saccharin, data showed it to be more causative for cancer than Cyclomates! Cyclomates were banned only due to the fact that their data came in first. If all the data had been properly evaluated Saccharine would have been banned, NOT Cyclomates. If you go to Canada you will not find any Saccharine on their shelves, but rather Cyclomates. It had nothing to do with science and our well being, but manic media, money and politics.

Then comes Searle looking for a "safe" alternative to Saccharine. They pushed the FDA to approve it with very inadequate research, hearlding its safety. The food and beverage companies then stuck it in just about every place they could, giving the public very little choice. I regret my attitude, but I just don't trust big business and big government these days. I am a retired dentist and thank G-d did not jump on some of the new drug band wagons that some of my collegues did, finding themselves in law suits over untoward reactions. I also never thought that I would live to see prescription drugs actually advertised in the media. That use to be that sort of boring crap you would find in professional journals.

Anyway, I have done a fairly extensive search for non-nutritive sweetners for purely selfish reasons. I have had to be quite sedintary for several years that allowed me to gain weight I didn't need with my spinal issues. Some of the meds I take also have weight gaining issues. Several postings in this thread have mentioned one very good alternative that the South American indians have been using to sweetent their Yerba Mate for millenia, Stevia. The leaves of this holly-like tropical shrub have a sweetness about 300 times as sweet as sugar that are called, Steviosides. I have used the ground natural leaves as well as numerous brands of Stevia extracts. The real issue here is the saccharine-like bitter after taste if you use too much. I think the best brand of Stevia extract is by KAL. It is the least bitter of almost 6 brands I have tasted and I found it the cheapest online at: http://www.vitanetonline.com.

This company also sells another really great natural non-nutritive sweetner made from the gourd-like fruit of the Lo Han vine. China has been using this gelatinous material for sweetening for years. Matter of fact, if you Google Lo Han, you will find that Proctor and Gamble actually looked into developing this material. It goes by the name SlimSweet. I buy it in the 1 lb. jars, as it is much less expensive in bulk. It is sweeter than sugar so even though it looks a bit pricey, you use less.

The last area of non-nutitive sweetners are the sugar alcohols. Most of us have seen these if you read labels. Examples of these are: Mannitol, Sorbitol, Glycerol, etc. One person mentioned "Zylitol". Actually, it is spelled Xylitol and is a great product that is used in some chewing gums etc. The only problem with Xylitol is that in some individuals it is not tolerated by their digestive system and will have some degree of diarrhea. The answer here is yet another sugar alcohol called, Erythritol. Most of these sugar alcohols are not actually as sweet as sugar. Erythritol, for instance is only about 70% as sweet, but if you buy in bulk, you can get the cost down. I bought mine online from Emerald Forest Sugar, but it appears that they are not listing it right now. I did a brief search and found the best buy right now online is: http://www.xylitolnow.com/erythritol.html?gclid=CKW9stv5244C... I have never used them but it looks like a good site. I have found that most of the folks that have these companies are as dedicated as we are to improving our quality of living.

It is scary these days just what many of us are ingesting, especially in this day of processed foods and pre-prepared foods. I have always been teased about making most everything I can from scratch, but at least I know what went into what I and my friends and family were eating.

This is a pic of the products I had menitoned above: