At my Material Girls Doll Club fun group Sunday we were talking diet, which is where most conversations go to eventually when you get a bunch of women together. One of the ladies mentioned that she found something that she thought was wonderful – STEVIA – a sugar substitute that was touted to be the latest in “safe” artificial sweeteners. I have been using Stevia for a long time now, and I just took it for granted that everyone knew about it. I don’t know why I thought that, but I did.
I have a very strong and unrelenting sweet tooth, and sweets of any kind were the biggest problem I had in actually reducing to and maintaining my desired goal weight. If I had a glass of iced tea and used sugar to sweeten with, it would take 10 teaspoons full to get it right. I had no will power when it came to eating cookies, candy, cake, pie, pudding, etc. It was nothing for me to sit down with a bag of Pecan Sandies and eat the whole bag without even thinking about it until there wasn’t any more. That’s how bad I was and that posed my biggest problem, so I resorted to sweeteners years ago. I quit using saccharin when it was found to be harmful, quit using Sweet-n-Low when I found out it had saccharin in it, quit using Nutra-Sweet when I found out it had very harmful chemicals in it, and then came along Splenda. Splenda – a product made from the sugar itself. How could that be bad for you? WOW! it seems that Splenda is every bit as bad as all the others, maybe even worse. Dr. James Bowen, who suffered from the poisoning of aspartame which is Nutra-Sweet also found himself at the mercy of Splenda and his research revealed – well, let me quote a little bit from his article on Splenda:
“……..Splenda/sucralose is simply chlorinated sugar; a chlorocarbon. Common chlorocarbons include carbon tetrachloride, trichlorethelene and methylene chloride, all deadly. Chlorine is nature’s Doberman attack dog, a highly excitable, ferocious atomic element employed as a biocide in bleach, disinfectants, insecticide, WWI poison gas and hydrochloric acid.
“Sucralose is a molecule of sugar chemically manipulated to surrender three hydroxyl groups (hydrogen + oxygen) and replace them with three chlorine atoms. Natural sugar is a hydrocarbon built around 12 carbon atoms. When turned into Splenda it becomes a chlorocarbon, in the family of Chlorodane, Lindane and DDT…..”
Now what? What is a person to do when all the artificial sweeteners seem to be so unhealthy – keep using them? Well, that is what I did, because I thought that it was probably better than the sugar and I was wrong. However, during this time period, I learned how to control my cravings and listen to my body and quit eating when I was satisfied. I could walk away from a dessert without even finishing it, and I could stop at two cookies and not eat the whole bag, and I could therefore rationalize that because I was eating so little sweet stuff, a few chemicals wouldn’t bother me, and besides, I was having no adverse effects.
When Stevia was brought to my attention as a safe, natural, non chemical herb that you could use to sweeten foods, I started using it. It was good and took so little to actually sweeten anything. I did find that if I used too much, it would cause a bitter taste and that the powder was not as easily dissolved as the liquid. But a few drops of the liquid in any beverage or food was just enough to give me the sweetness I desired. For some reason, the FDA will not allow Stevia to be called a “sweetener”, but has to be considered an herb or food supplement and cannot be sold commercially as a sweetener. For more information on Stevia, just “google” it in and you can learn all about it. It definitely has solved my problem of “How do I sweeten my drinks and food without harmful effects such as toxicity or becoming overweight” If you haven’t tried Stevia yet, you can find it in any health food store and I would recommend getting the liquid for beverages, but the powder is great for baking.
Think Thin Thoughts
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Tags: Add new tag, cake, chlorocarbon, cookies, DDT, desserts, diet, Doberman, doll club, FDA liquid, hydrochloric acid, methylene chloride, Nutra-Sweet, Pecan Sandies, pie, poisoning, powder health food store, saccharin, Splenda, Stevia, sucralose, sugar substitute, sweet tooth, Sweet-n-Low
