I thought I had finally found a healthy drink I liked with no artificial sweetness and they had to go and fuck it up
On the plus side, stevia isn’t artificial.
some people dont like the taste of stevia, i used at least the ones that have actual stevia, and not just filled with dextrose, which is basically sugar, or ethyrithiol. its pricier and less sweet. ALot of stevia products will have sugar in it. i buy the sweet leaf, i heard you can get pure stevia leaves, but its expensive.
That’s precisely why I use it in my coffee and have for many years. However there’s a big difference from one brand to another I’ve found. Sweet Leaf stevia drops are the only kind I’ll use now.
i use it too, because almost all the other brands have dextrose, which is basically actual sugar, or ehtyrithiol, which is a sweetener, but it can cause GI issues. I bought 2 boxes from amazon to try it out, its worht it. its pricey but not sugar is better.
Yeah the first stevia I ever got had dextrose in it and literally 8 grains was enough, it was silly. I didn’t know until I was almost done that it was just basically sugar.
Stevia is DISGUSTING and by far the worst non-sugar sweetener. Aspartame is good in my opinion.
its sweet, but aspartame is generally not good for you long term.
Cite a source on that
It’s interesting to read people’s reactions to stevia. I don’t seem to have the same reactions/aftertaste others point out.
I much prefer stevia over other sweeteners. I wonder if there is some sort of cilantro type thing going on.
Edit: Turns out stevia can taste different to other people!
you have to be careful of which stevia brand you buy, most of them will contain real sugar, either maltodextrose or dextrose as the ingredient, or the sugar alcohol. i use sweetleaf brand, which is pure stevia. with the other brands with the dextrose you notice its sweeter too.
Imo stevia is one of the best of the no calorie sweeteners, but since that entire category is absolutely abhorrent that’s sort of like being called the fastest snail.
I think we have to allow that when you’re raised on sugar like we all were, substitutes are never going to live up.
However lots of people throughout history didn’t have refined sugar. The ancient Egyptians for example. What would they have thought of stevia?
I once went on a strict no-carb diet for a few months and a stevia tea at the end of the day was a very enjoyable treat that I looked forward to. Now, having gone back to a normal diet, it doesn’t taste as good.
So I think habituation is a big part of it.
the sweetleaf brand doesnt have the wierd dextrose ingredients that the others have, i used 2 different ones and they all had sugar in it.
What is “artificial?”
It is all marketing BS
Generally, artificial sweeteners are chemically synthesized while natural sweeteners are grown and refined.
I used to grow the stevia plant in my garden.
Can you differentiate synthesis and refinement for me?
I would say synthesis in this example is the creation of a molecular compound from differing source materials while refinement is the isolation and concentration of an existing compound.
Does that matter at all?
In reality it is all arbitrary. By that definition table salt is artificial and poison nightshade is natural.
Hey, you asked… I just answered.
Salt is also a poison
but “table salt” contains iodine, and that requires a refining brine which is an industrial process. Its natural but also not. When it comes down to it, lots of this is splitting hairs
its like some vegans cant decide if a FIG is natural or not, since wild figs, or normal ones are fertilized by fig wasps and thier parasitoids. the fig wasps die in the fig after laying its eggs and fertilizing.
I thought stevia wasn’t an artificial sweetener. It’s just a leaf.
That’s the trouble with words like ‘artificial’ and ‘natural’. They mean nothing. It would be better to call them refined additives, because I expect the “stevia” would be in a refined, extracted form when added - whether substantially changed from the form present in the plant or not, this could be considered artificial, if we insist on using this word.
This is what bothers me the most from marketing. Uranium, arsenic and petroleum are 100% natural too
the oop said it came from petro, which isnt true. the substance which used to extract stevia isnt organic though, probably using an organic solvent, but they purify it to some extent. but alot of stevia brands only used the pure stevia from the plant.
Stevie leaf extract is a petroleum base sweetener. It was used as an artificial sweetener , but then they found that it could be naturally occurring in small quantities and rebranded. It works like natural flavors where it can still come from petroleum so long as its naturally occurring with some source. I find it extremely bitter and soapy, just like almost every other artificial sweetener.
sounds more like aspartame, aspartame is entirely artificial, stevia comes form the stevia plant.
Could you give a source? I can’t find ANY mention of stevia being “petroleum based”.
Afaik Stevia is entirely produced from the shrub.
How about drinking water from the tap? Much cheaper, not wasting cans, and healthy. If you live in a community with bad tap water, write a letter to your local water board, and buy a filtration tank you can put in your fridge.
If you must really have flavor, buy some of the powdered dehydrated lime or orange powder packets.
I presume you’re not from the US.
Many municipalities across the US have poor quality or non drinkable water, and many more do not offer public access to water fountains. Thus, bottled water is a huge market in the US as free facilities are not always available.
I’m Canadian and I legitimately cannot recall the last time I bought bottled or canned water. I bring my two 18.9L jugs to the store to fill them with filtered water for $5 and that’s the extent of my “bottled water” consumption. Elsewhere, I carry a metal water bottle I can get refilled anywhere for free.
Have drank tap water across the US for decades. Some municipalities are crappier than others, but a fridge filter tank takes care of those places.
Absolutely, I’m not stating that the US’ water is undrinkable, simply that enough municipalities have poor quality or non-drinkable water that it’s easier for companies to market water bottles to people.
Stories like Flint, Mi. go international, and its crisis lasted for a really long time, despite being mostly the exception (see the other commenter’s Wikipedia link). And public access water fountains are not a thing in many cities, leading to an even greater perceived scarcity by consumers.
My point above was that enough municipalities have a drinking water quality problem to drive sales of water bottles across the country, the US’ drinking water is not bad across the world stage, but probably worse than most western European countries.
The solution should be either a water filter, or a filtered water dispenser from a refillable jug. Not disposable water bottles.
I’ve quite literally drank Flint water. Not for a humble brag (far from it) but I really hate that they became some kind of trope. They have needed help for decades and could have recovered faster if America ever cared about people. Good people there. Shitty America management. It’s like they keep them down for the Internet points.
As for municipal water. Stop by Altoona, Iowa sometime and drink their water. It’s just so terrible. Ground water full of stuff they can’t filter at scale. I don’t hate them for it, it’s what they can suck out of the ground, for maybe a few more years before it becomes brine.
It is hard to produce drinking water that is safe, and also tastes good. Is my global point.
Personal filters can improve that. Otherwise, buying water just leads us to a human future that is by far the worst reality we could ever impose upon ourselves.
Edit: TL;DR: bad tasting municipal water isn’t a conspiracy. It’s just the reality you have to work with at the time.
My fiance loves liquid death because it didn’t have anything for sweetness aside from the agave. Now all he’s gonna taste is the stevia. :(