Recently someone told me that some are really bad for your liver and in large amounts not healthier than large amounts of sugar.
I haven’t had time to look up their sources, but it was a professor at uni who told them. Do you have any insight that I might be lacking?
Now I am not interested in stuff like the bogus aspartam rat studies, those weren’t any good.
I mostly believe that most artificial sweeteners are not very unhealthy and thus miles better than sugars. So drinks or food sweetened with it should be good imo.
It depends. I think for many things it is unnecessary since one can achieve a reasonable sweetness with small amounts of sugar too. On the other hand I don’t think thoughtful amounts would cause harm (I usually try sticking to the recommendations from the federal institute for risk assessment, e.g. regarding stevia or sucralose)
what if I want something to be really sweet!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stevioside the sweetener from stevia is pretty cool, I have known about it for a long time, but it’s expensive to buy and not as tasty as others. Also it’s highly refined and I am not sure that it’s healthier than the other ones.
Isn’t it a little inconsistent to worry over the amount of refinement in plant sweeteners (stevia, cane, beet, etc) but not the intense process that goes into creating whole molecules of artificial sweetener? At some point you have to drop the level of refinement as an important criteria if you consider artificial products viable options.
yes it is, I meant to say that I don’t think it’s much better in this regard. It’s less refined though and that’s a plus. If it were available I would totally buy sweetener on stevioside basis.
Yeah, that makes sense. I have a friend who grows stevia indoors and just uses the dried, ground up leaves for sweetening her tea. That’s a cheap way to get a sweetener if you have some window space to spare.
I have done that in the past! But I don’t drink a lot of tea and the stevia leaves have a strong taste to them. Still crazy how sweet they are though.
The level of refinement is often associated with increased negative health outcomes such as comparing heavily refined plant oils (such as crisco) to those which are not (such as olive oil). It’s a valid concern to have.