Friday, May 05, 2006

Sweet!

I'd heard about stevia a while back, and have wanted to try it. It's a super sweet leaf (often used as an extract, or you can use the leaves). Mary picked up a little jar of it for me last week and I've been drinking it in my tea.

You see, my new doctor (no, not Mary) told me that I'm fat (not those words, but...). While I can normally tolerate that from my friends (it's a mantra in Moab - "You know why you can't do X? Because you're fat!" - and it's true), or my family might tell me. But when a near complete stranger approaches you soberly (wearing a white lab coat or not) and tells you that you should think about changing your diet, it kinda sticks.

Anyway, I'm doing a lot more than just using stevia in my tea, and I'm down 6 pounds this week.

But that's not the point. You should check stevia out. It's pretty wild. It's 250-300 times as sweet as sucrose (regular sugar) - which means that 1/4 teaspoon is as much as 1.25 cups of sugar. It's very sweet and has a nice aftertaste. It does have a slight bitter pre-taste (as I call it) that takes a little getting used to, but that's not bad - certainly no worse than Nutrasweet or any of the other artificial sweeteners I tasted way back when.

I'm gonna go have some tea right now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank-you for posting your sweet success good work on the weight loss....and don't you feel 100 times better. I use the sweetleaf stevia and lost 20 lbs. when I stopped overloading my body with sugar and fat-free garbage. I now eat all the good fats, whole organic fruits and vegetables a lot of which are grown in my own back yard, as well as use stevia when cooking and baking. For lots of yummy recipes check out www.sweetleaf.com

Unknown said...

I use stevia in my cooking and baking all the time and I love it! It's nice to not have to worry about counting calories or carbs as much because the brand I use, SweetLeaf, has no calories, no carbs and no glycemic index - ideal for pretty much anyone. When I substitute stevia for sugar in a recipe I always add a filler substance like mashed bananas or yogurt to help keep the amount of ingredients the same. It's great knowing that you're eating something all natural!

Also, I discovered these videos on YouTube as I was doing research on stevia if you want to check them out:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=6wwMAe_Hi0k

http://youtube.com/watch?v=s5ILDC5Cx_o

Anonymous said...

SweetLeaf® Sweetener™ can be used in hot drinks, cold drinks, is great on cereal, brings out the delicious flavors in fruits, can be used in cooking and baking, makes great-tasting desserts and is incredible in smoothies and blended drinks.

yodasmith said...

Broken record alert! I love sweetLeaf stevia, too! I baked with it for the first time last week in chocolate chip cookies and I really liked them!

I also like how it is not extracted using chemicals or solvents and that there is no dextrose or malto-dextrin in it!

Next, criss-cross peanut butter cookies!