-- Simple Smart Nutrition

Agave-A Healthy Sweetener or Fat Fuel?

Is Agave the New “Healthy” Sweetener?

Agave syrup has been advertised as a new “healthy” sweetener that is low glycemic, good for weight loss, and better for you than either regular sugar (sucrose) or high fructose corn syrup.

And sales of agave syrup have skyrocketed in the last few years.

But is it really that much healthier? No, not so much.

What is agave?

Agave is an exotic plant that is a member of the yucca family that grows in the tropical heat of Mexico. It has been used for thousands of years by the Mayans in herbal remedies to help with indigestion, bowel irregularity, and skin wounds. Fermented agave juice is the familiar alcoholic beverage, tequila.

The agave industry would like you to think that agave nectar is a very natural product that goes straight from the plant to a jar and is a healthy, natural sweetener great for weight loss, but this is not really the case.

Agave syrup has been deceptively marketed as a ‘health food’ and it most certainly is not.

The truth is, agave nectar or agave syrup is not a natural sweetener at all, but a highly refined type of fructose sweetener—very similar to the common sweetener, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). Depending upon where the agave comes from and the way it is processed, agave syrup can be anywhere from 50-90% fructose!

Guess what?? High fructose corn syrup is about 55% fructose, the rest glucose.

Yep, you heard that right–almost the same exact composition as agave syrup! So that doesn’t make agave syrup a good choice if you’re hoping to avoid the high levels of fructose in HFCS (high fructose corn syrup).

Ok, so what is wrong with fructose?

Isn’t that the sugar that is found in fruit? Well yes, and no.

There is a huge difference between how our bodies handle the natural fructose in fruit and the highly refined unnatural fructose in sweeteners. The fructose eaten in the form of fruit is in its natural form along with lots of fiber, vitamins and antioxidants, and is way different than the concentrated, refined fructose in agave syrup.

When fructose is extracted from fruit, concentrated and made into a sweetener, it wreaks havoc with your metabolism.

Don’t be fooled by agave syrup’s reputation as a great weight loss sweetener. It is not low calorie—in fact it has about the same number of calories as regular table sugar. And while it is often marketed as “low glycemic”, it still contributes to weight gain.

According to most research, fructose, more than any other kind of sugar, contributes not only to insulin resistance, but it raises blood levels of triglycerides (a risk factor for heart disease) in both obese and healthy people.

Triglycerides are a form of fat in the blood, and are stored in the body as excess body fat.

Elevated triglycerides (a key marker for heart disease), contribute to clogged arteries and increased inflammation. Fructose also has a greater propensity than other sugars to increase abdominal fat, which then elevates the risk for diabetes, heart disease and metabolic syndrome.

And the fructose, like that in agave, is most often linked to nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.

So, if you need to lose weight, fructose is a sweetener you will definitely want to avoid, especially in its refined form.

And if that’s not enough, here are a few other good reasons to avoid agave:

• Eating sweeteners in the form of fructose (both agave and HFCS) doubles advanced glycation end products, (AGE's), which are harmful chemical byproducts that age (no pun intended) the human body.

• Yucca species, together with other agaves, are known to contain large quantities of saponins. Saponins are toxic steroid derivatives, and should be avoided during pregnancy because they might contribute to miscarriage.

These toxins have negative effects on non-pregnant people as well. They can destroy red blood cells, and are especially harmful to people taking statins (cholesterol medicine) and high blood pressure drugs.

• Poor quality control and pesticides. There are very few quality controls in place to monitor farming and production of agave syrup. Most agave sold in the U.S. comes from Mexico. There is concern that agave producers are using other more toxic species of agave plants due to a shortage of blue agave and the agave is heavily sprayed with pesticides.

• Some agave syrups contain a contaminant called hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF, also called 5-hydroxymethyl furfural), an organic heat-formed compound that forms during the refining process of both agave syrup and HFCS. HMF has possible toxic and carcinogenic effects on humans. HMF is also extremely toxic to honey bees.

• Agave syrup is not a whole food–it is refined and processed; devoid of the nutrients contained in the original, whole plant.

Bottom line—agave syrup or agave nectar is NOT the healthy alternative to high fructose corn syrup or sugar.

Nor is it a good sweetener for fat burning or weight loss.

If you are looking for a low calorie, healthy and natural sweetener, use Stevia, or use raw honey or maple syrup (although not low calorie) in small amounts.

Till next time, stay healthy and lean!

Catherine (Cat) Ebeling RN BSN, is a back to basics diet and nutrition specialist. In addition to her advanced degree in nursing from a major medical school, she has spent the last 30 years intensely studying diet, health and nutrition. She also has a book titled "The Fat Burning Kitchen, Your 24 Hour Diet Transformation" that has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide, and has helped thousands of people transform their lives, lose weight and improve their health.

Her mission is to help others prevent disease and live their best life ever.

Nutrition made Easy. Simple.Smart.Nutrition.

Sources:

Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, Jeannette Bessinger, “Agave Health Claim Doesn't Match Its Hype;

Prickly Health Problems Arise from Agave Nectar Sweeteners” Bottom Line’s Daily Health News, March 8, 2010. Bottomlinesecrets.com

Joseph Mercola, “Agave: A Triumph of Marketing over Truth”, July 2, 2009. Mercola.com Joseph Mercola, “Shocking! This 'Tequila' Sweetener is Far Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup”, March 30, 2010.

Mercola.com Joseph Mercola, “Is this Popular Natural Sweetener Worse than High Fructose Corn Syrup?” July 3, 2010.

Mercola.com Morell SF and Nagel R. , "Agave nectar: Worse than we thought," April 30, 2009.

Weston A. Price Foundation. Westonaprice.org Carr C. "Agave’s sweet spot," January 31, 2009. Time Magazine.

Sugar Kills

Evidence is piling up against sugar and its role in the skyrocketing rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

But somehow we still get the message that sugar is okay, if we eat it in moderation.

How much is too much? What’s the harm in sugar?

Gary Taubes, author of “Why We Get Fat,” recently wrote an eye-opening article on sugar in the NY times. In it, he discusses the subject of sugar and its role in disease. If you would like to read the full article, click here.

A few brave medical professionals and research scientists have actually had the courage to speak out on the damage sugar can cause. Sugar, it seems, is actually a much bigger factor than cholesterol and saturated fat in heart disease.

Although sugar is considered an unhealthy indulgence, the medical and scientific community are beginning to find that sugar has a very real and definite role in heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.

Could it be that sugar is THAT bad?

In my own 25 years of research on diet, nutrition, and disease, I have to say that I too, have come to that same conclusion.

During my recent studies in disease physiology at a major medical institution, for my BSN, it was presented in class that sugar and glucose (as it becomes in our bodies) is highly damaging to the heart, blood vessels and the circulatory system. This is why diabetics experience a higher rate of heart disease, glaucoma, and blood vessel damage.

Blood sugar spikes also stimulate insulin, which causes the body to turn glucose into fat which is then stored in our livers, circulating in our blood or our fat cells. Ok. I got it.

What seemed strange to me is why something as fundamental as that never really made it to mainstream media. If high blood sugar is so damaging to diabetics, then why was there never a connection made to blood sugar and heart disease in the general public?

There seems to be a huge disconnect here. I just don’t get it.

It is startlingly clear to me that sugar is damaging to individuals other than diabetics.

Can sugar actually be deadly?

Let’s define what we are talking about when we say ‘sugar’. We usually think of sugar as the white stuff that sits in the cute little bowls on our tables, or in those little packets at restaurants. Table sugar usually comes from sugar cane or sometimes, beet sugar.

Sugar is also the ‘high fructose corn syrup’ you see on virtually every label of processed or packaged foods, or in most soft drinks. There are many other forms of sugar but for now, let’s concentrate on the two most often consumed sugars, sucrose and fructose.

Regular white table sugar (or brown sugar for that matter) is called 'sucrose'. Sucrose is composed of one molecule of glucose bonded to a molecule of fructose. So, sucrose is 50% glucose and 50% fructose. Fructose is 2x sweeter than glucose. Since table sugar is half fructose, it is lots sweeter than starchy carbs like potatoes or bread that also turn into glucose in the body.

So the more fructose in a sugar, the sweeter it is. High fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose and 45% glucose. That makes it even sweeter than table sugar.

So white sugar and high fructose corn syrup are both a combination of glucose and fructose in our guts and our bodies react pretty much the same way to both.

So really, the question is not whether high fructose corn syrup is worse for our bodies than sugar, it’s how our bodies react to either type of sugar.

The harmful effects of sugar have more to do with the way your body metabolizes the fructose portion of the sugar. While many dietitians and physicians say, “calories are calories”, it’s how your body reacts to calories that really matters.

For instance, if we eat 100 calories of glucose (from a starchy food like pasta or potatoes) or 100 calories of sugar (remember basically 50/50% of glucose and fructose), they are metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body.

This is key: fructose is metabolized by our livers. The glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by our cells.

Consuming cane sugar or HFCS causes your liver to work harder than if you just ate a starchy food. And, if the sugar comes in a liquid form like soda or fruit juice, the fructose gets in the body very fast and causes the liver to go into overdrive in an attempt to process it. Even worse, since the fructose portion of HFCS is not bound to the glucose it hits your liver even faster than regular cane sugar.

Lab studies show when fructose is ingested quickly in larger quantities, it goes straight to the liver where it is immediately converted to fat.

So you see why soda and fruit juice are so fattening?

Soda, fruit juice and other drinks are quickly ingested. When those liquids hit the stomach, fructose portion of it must be processed by the liver. The liver converts it to fat, which then becomes triglycerides. Triglycerides are the excess fats floating around in your blood and are a major contributing factor to heart disease. Any excess fat is stored in the liver.

What does this have to do with diabetes and obesity?

In 1980, only about 1 in 7 Americans were obese, and about 6 million people had diabetes—it was not a common disease. By the early 2000’s, 1 in 3 Americans were obese, and 14 million had diabetes. More than double the rate in about 20 years.

Interestingly enough, sugar consumption was 75-80 pounds per person per year (according to the USDA) in the 80’s and increased to well over 100 pounds per person per year in the 2003. Direct correlation.

In 2009, at least half the population consumed a whopping 180 pounds of sugar per year!

19% of the U.S. population now has diabetes, another 7 million are undiagnosed and 79 million have pre-diabetes accoding to 2011 National Diabetes Fact Sheet. And 81 million have some form of cardiovascular disease!

Back in the 1970’s, a nutrition expert and scientist in the U.K named John Yudkin, published a report on sugar’s harm called, “Sweet and Dangerous”.

In the 60’s, Yudkin conducted research experiments on rodents, chickens, rabbits, pigs and college students using cane sugar vs. starchy foods. The cane sugar quickly caused elevated levels of triglycerides in the test subjects. Elevated triglycerides are a primary risk factor for heart disease. The sugar also caused insulin resistance, which directly links it to type 2 diabetes.

Unfortunately, though, the mainstream medical community did not take his studies seriously. Most of the medical community was following the saturated fat and cholesterol theory of heart disease, led by scientist, Ancel Keys.

The two theories butted heads here: saturated fats raised cholesterol and led to heart disease vs. sugar caused triglycerides to go up and caused heart disease.

One must be right and the other wrong–or so it was thought.

Keys published the results of a study in nutrition in the 1970’s called the Seven Countries Study. And the mainstream medical community picked up on the saturated fat and heart disease theory.

But guess what? There actually was a higher correlation between sugar consumption and heart disease in the seven countries studied, but this was never highlighted in the study findings. And, many societies that ate high amounts of saturated fats but little sugar showed low rates of heart disease and other diseases.

So which is it–sugar or saturated fat?

We now know that one of the most accurate predictors of heart disease and diabetes, is a condition called ‘metabolic syndrome’. According to the CDC (Center for Disease Control) at least 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome, and probably many more have it but have not yet been diagnosed.

What is metabolic syndrome? It means your body has become resistant to insulin. Normally when you eat carbs or sugar, blood sugar goes up, insulin is released, and blood sugar goes back to a normal level.

If your diet is high in sugars and starchy foods, your body is continually pumping out insulin. Eventually your cells stop responding to the insulin, and your pancreas (which is where insulin comes from) becomes exhausted and cannot create enough insulin in response to the demand.

Blood sugar levels then begin to rise out of control, until you end up with type 2 diabetes.

Elevated blood sugar and insulin levels also result in high triglycerides, high LDL cholesterol (the bad stuff) and low levels of HDL (the good cholesterol). So clearly, excess sugar creates a poor lipid profile.

What then, medical scientists wonder, triggers insulin resistance?

Fatty liver syndrome.

According to Varman Samuel from Yale University, there is a strong correlation in fatty livers and insulin resistance.

What would cause the liver to build up fat? It was once thought that just getting fatter lead to a fatty liver, but many lean people also the same problem.

This all points directly at fructose.

Animals or people fed large amounts of pure fructose or sugar convert the fructose into fat immediately. That fat circulates in the blood as triglycerides. Excess fat also gets stored in the liver. When the liver starts storing excess amounts of fat, insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome follow, and not far behind then, is type 2 diabetes.

Stop the sugar, and fatty liver goes away, and along with it, insulin resistance.

It’s that simple.

So, the answer to the question of whether sugar is toxic is ‘YES’. How toxic, how quickly? We don’t know that answer for certain.

There is one more deadly disease that can be tied directly to sugar—Cancer.

Cancer is also tied to obesity, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome as well.

A connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first studied in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.

This is what they found:

Your chances of getting cancer are much higher if you are obese, diabetic or insulin resistant. What’s the connection? Sugar.

And your chances of dying from a form of malignant cnacer are way higher if you eat sugar. Malignant cancer is a very rare occurrence in populations that do not eat a typical Western diet.

Cancer researchers now know that the problem with insulin resistance and cancer is that as we secrete more insulin, we also secrete a related hormone known as ‘insulin-like growth factor, and the insulin encourages tumor growth.

Craig Thompson, president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, has done a big part of this research on cancer and insulin, now says the cells of many human cancers depend on insulin to provide fuel to grow and multiply.

Some cancers actually develop mutations to affect the influence of insulin; other cancers just take advantage of the elevated blood sugar and insulin levels from metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes.

In fact, many pre-cancerous cells would never acquire the mutations that transform them into malignant tumors if they weren’t being driven by insulin to take up more and more blood sugar and metabolize it.

Elevated insulin (or insulin-like growth factor) signaling appears to be a necessary step in many human cancers, particularly cancers like breast and colon cancer.

If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, then its an easy conclusion that sugar is tied to cancer—at least some cancers. Yes, this may sound radical and this suggestion is rarely if ever been voiced publicly, but the scientific and biological evidence is there.

I know I am convinced of how harmful sugar is to my health and I avoid it as much as possible.

I really wish my teenagers would avoid it as much as possible, and I try to tell my friends and loved ones to avoid sugar too. Especially if they happen to have one of the above health conditions.

It’s a tough call to tell someone with cancer, heart disease or metabolic syndrome that it may be caused by too much sugar, even knowing what I know. Our perception of good foods vs. bad foods is deeply ingrained in our psyches, and our society, and it’s going against the tide to condemn something that most of the medical community accepts, but I know as a health advocate, that will I continue to try.

I wish you all the best of health.

For more great info on sugar, healthy sugar substitutes, and a healthy diet without cravings, read the Fat Burning Kitchen. (note: this link opens to another sales page on my co-author's site).

Look for the Fat Burning Superfood Recipe Book coming next month!! Tons of great, healthy, fat burning, Paleo style recipes everyone will love!

Catherine (Cat) Ebeling RN BSN,is a back to basics diet and nutrition specialist. In addition to her advanced degree in nursing from a major medical school, she has spent the last 30 years intensely studying diet, health and nutrition. She also has a book titled “The Fat Burning Kitchen, Your 24 Hour Diet Transformation” that has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide, and has helped thousands of people transform their lives, lose weight and improve their health.

Her mission is to help others prevent disease and live their best life ever.

Nutrition made Easy. Simple.Smart.Nutrition.

Sources:
D Kromhout, A Keys, C Aravanis, R Buzina, F Fidanza, S Giampaoli, A Jansen, A Menotti, S Nedeljkovic and M Pekkarinen, Food consumption patterns in the 1960s in seven countries, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Vol 49, 889-894, Copyright © 1989 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc.

Gary Taubes, Is Sugar Toxic?, New York Times, April 13, 2011.

US News and World Report, One Sweet Nation, March 20, 2005.

Dr. Mercola, This Addictive Commonly Used Food Feeds Cancer Cells, Triggers Weight Gain, and Promotes Premature Aging, April 20 2010.

3 Critical Things You MUST know in Order to Lose Weight and Keep it Off.

If you are working on burning body fat and increasing your energy, there are three key things to keep in mind.

These things are so important and so many people are trying like crazy and cannot figure out why dieting does not work. Until you ‘get’ this, weight loss and fat burning will be hit or miss.
Many people have been brainwashed into believe that “calories are calories” all the while trying unsuccessfully to lose weight. Not that simple really….

The first of these principles is to eat food your body recognizes.

By that I mean, eat REAL food. Our bodies have evolved in a relatively short time and the foods we are putting in them are often unrecognizable. Packaged, refined processed foods with chemicals and preservatives in them are foreign substances to the body. Yes, foreign substances.

What happens when you eat something that is processed and unnatural is that the body doesn’t recognize or is confused by something artificial. Unable to metabolize it into usable nutrients, it breaks it down as well as it can, causing a blood sugar response, the resulting insulin surge and viola!

All the calories you have just ingested get stored as fat.

The easy solution? Eat REAL food that your body recognizes. Eat unrefined, natural foods with one ingredient. And for excitement, combine a couple of one ingredient foods for snacks. Like fruit and nuts. Cheese and nuts. Eggs and veggies. Avocado and turkey slices. Get it?

Principle number two: Losing weight is less about calories and is ALL about controlling your blood sugar and insulin response.

Blood sugar spikes cause insulin to be released in the body. Insulin causes the body to immediately start storing everything consumed as fat. That includes anything with any kind of sugar–fructose, glucose, sucrose, etc. That also includes grain products such as corn, wheat, soy, oats and more. And that INCLUDES whole grain products.

Starchy products like potatoes and gluten free foods also stimulate insulin as well.

And, while it sounds healthy, fruit juice is actually just a natural form of sugar water. This is a refined product that basically contains fructose–a sugar–and water. This stuff hits your system fast and your blood sugar spikes quickly. Insulin follows, your body stores calories ingested as fat, blood sugar drops, and you are hungry again. Not good.

Fruit on the other hand, while it too, is full of fructose and too much of a good thing can be fattening, has lots of fiber in it, so the sugar in fruit is absorbed more slowly. Better.

Best–eat fruit with nuts, nut butter, cheese, or other form of protein and/or healthy fat to help it get absorbed more slowly into the body. Result is more stable blood sugar and no fat storing.
So the main trick here is pretty simple: control your blood sugar by avoiding the starchy and the sweet and you stay in the ‘fat burning’ zone.

Principle number three: The nutritional value of your food makes all the difference.

In other words, if you had to choose between something with little nutrition and few calories or a superfood packed with nutrition, antioxidants, healthy fats, vitamins and minerals, but high calorie–which would you choose?

The correct answer and the best fat burning, healthy answer is the higher calorie, nutrient dense food. If it’s real, your body recognizes it and packed with tons of nutrition–go for it. Your body will metabolize this food, use it to build health and energy in your body, and rev up your energy and fat burning as a result.

Controlling your blood sugar has significant health benefits other than JUST fat burning too:

-Controlling blood sugar and insulin response actually is extremely healthy for the heart and blood vessels, dropping your risk of heart attacks and stroke immensely.
-Controlling blood sugar and keeping it at an lower even level will drastically reduce your risk of cancer and will prevent any cancer (whether it has been detected or not) from growing.
-Controlling blood sugar is very effective as an anti-aging tool and will keep you looking younger and prevent wrinkles and sagging skin as well.
-Controlling blood sugar also keeps your energy high with no peaks and valleys. You stay alert and vibrant.
-Controlling blood sugar also keeps triglycerides low and helps prevent deposits in the blood vessels.

I will go into these important principles in depth in upcoming articles, and you can read more about these KEY principles in The Fat Burning Kitchen. Check it out.

And start burning fat to get healthy and lean!

America’s Feedlot?

Have you ever stopped to think that America is turning into one big gigantic feedlot–but WE are the cattle?

The American public is now living on a diet that consists mostly of corn, wheat, and soy products, very very similar to commercially raised cattle, chickens, and fish.

These industrialized big business agricultural products have been pushed into our food supply in thousands of insidious ways.

Starting with the thousands of packaged, processed items available at the grocery store, all the way back to the feed for commercially raised meats–it seems that corn, wheat and soy are on the ingredient list in some form if you look long enough.

Our diet is way out of whack.

It's far too heavily weighted with grain, and grain-based food products and grain-fed meat, poultry, dairy, fish and eggs as well.

At least a third or more of your local supermarket’s 45,000 or so ingredients have corn, wheat or soy products or their derivatives in them.

The tricky part is the derivatives do not always say they come from corn, wheat or soy.

The biggest offender is corn.

Corn is THE most abundant grain produced in America by far!

There is the ever-present high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, corn flour, corn bran, dextrose, and much less obvious– leavenings and lecithin, mono-, di-, and triglycerides, the golden coloring added to foods, and even citric acid can all be derived from corn and corn bi-products.

Corn is milled, refined and restructured, and can become an amazing number of things, from ethanol for the gas tank to dozens of edible and not-so-edible food products.

Consider the thickeners in milkshakes, hydrogenated oil in margarine, modified cornstarch that binds the unrecognizeable meat in a chicken McNugget.

And then there is the unavoidable sweetener, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

This sneaky sweetener has invaded every nook and cranny of the food system.

Sadly, the commercial food industry has done a great job convincing the public that those 45,000 different items in the grocery store are real variety in food instead of clever rearrangements of the same basic ingredients with come chemical flavorings and food coloring to make it all different.

We have unknowingly become trapped in our own feedlots, and now are becoming a country of obese, sick and apathetic people who care nothing about nutritional quality and the source of our food—simply because, “It tastes good.”

Unfortunately this very dysfunctional food system has also supersized appetites and created food addictions for the sweet and starchy artificially flavored 'food' creating big dollars for food companies in spite of the serious cost to our health and well-being.

And in America, most all conventionally raised meat can be traced back to corn: turkeys, chickens, pigs, and even cows (which would be far healthier and happier eating grass) are forced into eating corn.

Even our farmed fish supply is now becoming corn-fed, like the carnivorous salmon.

All of these grain raised meat then lose their natural nutrition and become full of unhealthy, disease-causing fats.

There is a way to see exactly how much of your diet is from corn:

Corn has a very specific carbon structure which can be traced in any animal that consumes it.

If you compared a hair sample from an average American and a Mexican who eats a diet high in corn, you would be shocked to learn that the American would have a much larger amount of corn-type carbon in their system.

Todd Dawson, a plant biologist at the University of California-Berkeley says, "We are what we eat with respect to carbon, for sure. So if we eat a particular kind of food, and it has a particular kind of carbon in it, that's recorded in us, in our tissues, in our hair, in our fingernails, in the muscles," Dawson says.

In most Americans, the carbon test shows that about 70% comes from corn!!

“North Americans are like corn chips with legs,” says one of the researchers who conducts such tests.

So exactly what is wrong with eating such a corn-rich diet?

The base of the food pyramid is GRAIN–isn't that what we've been told is healthy?

We are what we eat, but there is plenty of evidence that this grain-heavy way of eating not only spreads illness, but waste, and ecological devastation around the world.

The other big problem with corn and a grain based diet, is that the average American diet consists of food products heavy in Omega 6. An average ratio would be about 25:1 of omega 6 to omega 3.

However, nutritional scientists state that mostchronic diseases start occurring and are detectable when the omega 6:3 ratio exceeds 4:1.

And, the optimum ratio, seems to hover around 1:1 which is the ratio found in grass-fed animals.

Since all grains have high omega 6 to omega 3 ratios, it’s obvious to see that a grain-based food system creates a serious omega 3 deficiency!

All the way back in 70's scientists knew that grain-based foods, and grain-fed livestock products were one of the primary causes many of today's big chronic diseases such as: Cancer, heart disease, depression, ADD, Alzheimer’s, obesity, allergies, and autoimmune diseases such as lupus and arthritis, diabetes, asthma, and more.

Obviously, to win the battle against all these diseases, we are going to have to make major changes to our diets, and no one food product can solve the problem by itself.

It's a HUGE change.

Primitive man lived on a diet of greens, vegetables, some tart fruits, some nuts, and mostly meat–all grass fed and naturally raised of course.

That way of eating is often referred to as the Paleo diet, the Hunter Gatherer diet, or the Cavemen diet.

Here is a thought: Corn has the ability to fatten up a beef steer much faster than pasture-grazing does–although it makes the cattle themselves unhealthy and sick as well.

Cattle that have spent four to six months in a feedlot eating grain, have four to six times more fat, twice as much saturated fat, and as little as 1/10 the quantity of omega 3 fatty acids compared to meat from grass-fed cattle.

Of course, this does create big, fat cattle that grow in about half the time as grass fed, the cattle become as sick or sicker than we humans from eating corn and grain.

Corn and grain do not agree with cow's sensitive systems and cattle get GERD, ulcers, and other serious digestive issues. Another big issue with corn is that it is also very low in calcium and can lead to broken bones in the cattle. Farmers then add soybean meal and it makes the problem worse! The calves grow way too fast with the extra protein and end up with even weaker bones.

I don't know about you, but I am beginning to draw some parallells here… Is it any wonder that we, as people have so many cases of osteoporosis, GERD, ulcers, and digestive issues?

Do we want to follow in their ‘hoof’ steps?

Slowly but surely many of us are. Are we turning into a national feedlot of people?

Let's not be cattle but humans who can think and who want to be healthy, strong and lean like our primitive ancestors.

The combination of a wide variety of grass-fed meats, free-range poultry, wild caught fish, and grass fed dairy products would certainly go a long way to help.

Let's be individuals in our dietary choices and make the decision to not follow the herd. The Fat Burning Kitchen Program will show you how to eat well, avoid grain, have effortless weight loss, and exceptional good health.

Till next time, stay healthy and lean!

References David Kamp, Deconstructing Dinner, New York Times, April 23, 2006.

Michael Pollan, What’s Eating America, Smithsonian, June 15, 2006

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, If we are what we eat, Americans are corn and soy, CNN 9/22/07

Tim Flannery, We’re Living on Corn!, The New York Review of Book

Avoid These Grains!

Cave men didn't eat grains; at least nowhere close to the form we eat today.

But our country has been steadily increasing its consumption of grain for the past 30 or more years. Along with that are the rising numbers of obese and overweight people.

In the 1970’s, the average American ate 85 pounds of flour, 84 pounds of sweeteners, 8 pounds of fried potatoes, and 39 pounds of cooking oil.

Even then, not so good.

Fast forward to the nineties…

By 1997, each of us was consuming 122 pounds of flour, 105 pounds of sugar or other sweeteners, 20 pounds of fried potatoes, and 50 pounds of vegetable cooking oils.

That's almost a pound of knowingly bad-for-you foods per day!

And that doesn’t count a whole lot of other junk food…but clearly, the reason many are overweight or obese today. And today, flours are more refined than ever, missing fiber and essential nutrients. Processed white flour (alias "enriched wheat flour" or "wheat flour") is missing the two most nutritious and fiber-rich parts of the seed: the outside bran layer and the germ (embryo).

Eating a high starch diets will make you feel fatigued, malnourished, constipated, jumpy, irritable, depressed, and vulnerable to chronic illness.

And, refined/bleached wheat and corn flour fuels high blood sugar levels. High blood sugar leads to insulin release, immediate fat storage, and further hunger.

The more refined foods a person eats, the more insulin must be produced to manage it. This leads to insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, and weight gain. The refined carbohydrates turn to glucose very quickly once in our systems, stimulating the body to produce insulin.

A vicious cycle occurs: insulin promotes the storage of fat, making way for rapid weight gain and elevated triglyceride levels, inflammation and atherosclerosis, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease.

"Enriched flour," is very misleading, because only four vitamins and minerals are typically added back, compared to the 15 nutrients and essential parts of the grain that are removed, along with most of the fiber and other beneficial substances such as antioxidants that are removed.

Eating wheat can cause one to feel lethargic, foggy, groggy, puffy and bloated, irritable and depressed.

Many would never connect these symptoms with eating grains; but weight gain, emotional, physical, and mental symptoms are fairly frequent with gluten sensitivity.

Gluten is the protein portion of wheat, rye and barley. It is so widespread in standard processed food today; it is very hard to escape. Unfortunately gluten sensitivity is on the rise (notice the “gluten free” sections at the grocery store?) and it can cause a host of problems.

Best to avoid processed flours altogether!

The American food supply is also heavily based on corn.

Bumper crops of corn help to keep corn prices low which in turn helps to keep many of the items we buy at the store low-priced. Contrary to popular belief, corn is a grain, not a vegetable, and is really not appropriate as a dietary staple for several reasons—one of them being that corn has a high sugar content.

When civilizations such as the Mayans and Native Americans changed their diet to a corn-based one, rates of anemia, arthritis, rickets, and osteoporosis skyrocketed.

Our bodies were not made to exist on grain-based foods. This evidence shows up in the archeological records of our ancestors. When archaeologists looked at skeletons of native Americans in burial mounds in the Midwest who ate corn as their primary staple, there was a 50% increase in malnutrition, four times as much incidence of iron-deficiency, and three times as much infectious disease, compared to the more hunter-gather ancestors who primarily hunted and did not eat grain.

Keep in mind that we are not just talking about corn-on-the-cob (sweet corn) here… we are also talking about corn cereals, corn chips, and other modern corn-based foods that are promoted by food companies as “healthy”.

There are several reasons researchers give for the nutritional problems and the weight gain caused by a corn-dominated diet:

* Corn contains lots of sugar, which raises insulin levels, causes you to be hungrier and causes your body to store calories as fat. Don’t be mistaken, just because corn does not taste obviously sweet, doesn’t mean it isn’t full of sugars. Once eaten, your body quickly turns corn products into sugar. Even the starches in corn products can be broken down quickly by your body spiking your blood sugar levels, and causing cravings for more carbohydrate-based foods.

* Corn is also an poor source of protein, usually deficient in 3 of the 8 essential amino acids: lysine, isoleucine, and tryptophan. The essential amino acids are so-named because they must be obtained from the diet, since the body is unable to manufacture them.

* Corn contains a high amount of phytate, a chemical that binds to iron and inhibits its absorption by the body. So, consequently, a diet high in phytate can make people more likely to have iron-deficiency anemia and fatigue. Phytate is also a nutrient blocker and inhibits other vitamins and minerals from being utilized.

* Corn is a poor source of certain minerals such as calcium and some vitamins such as niacin (B3). Deficiencies of niacin can result in a condition known as Pellagra, which is common in civilizations that eat a lot of corn. It can cause a variety of symptoms such as dermatitis, diarrhea, and depression. Since we are now a nation of corn-eaters, it wouldn’t be surprising that this is more common here than we realize.

It's not just people who eat too much corn.

A large amount of the nation's corn crop ends up feeding commercially raised cattle, which are cheaply fattened on corn and other grains before slaughter. Beef from corn-fattened cattle also has much higher ratios of inflammatory omega-6 fatty acids than healthier grass fed beef. Most meat in supermarkets comes from grain-fed animals.

Because corn and other grains are an unnatural diet and difficult to digest, cattle raised on corn develop higher stomach acidity, which is a breeding ground for the dangerous E. coli O157:H7, the deadly strain of the bacteria.

While eliminating refined grains such as corn and wheat (yes, it seems they are in everything!) can seem a very daunting task, the reward is a return to wonderful health, sparkling eyes, clear skin, clear thinking, weight loss as the body is once again able to extract appropriate nutrients from food, and a resolution of nutritional deficiencies from the lack of absorption.

Once you commit to eating a diet of whole and natural foods, you will begin to eliminate a large amount of these grains.

Although many grocery stores, health foods stores, and online companies are now offering a wide selection of wheat-free/gluten-free foods including breads, bagels, cookies, cake mixes, doughnuts, etc; it is best to avoid these as much as possible. While they are made without wheat, they still contain other refined and process grains and wheat substitutes such as tapioca flour and corn flour.

Best thing to do is avoid grains–especially wheat and corn–all together. Substituting another processed grain may bring about a small improvement, but not the drastic improvement necessary.

Try two weeks with no grain products. I guarantee you will see some drastic improvements in your weight and general outlook!

Till next time,

Stay healthy and lean!

Catherine (Cat) Ebeling RN BSN, is a back-to-basics diet and nutrition specialist. In addition to her advanced degree in nursing from a major medical school, she has spent the last 30 years intensely studying diet, health and nutrition. She also has a book titled "The Fat Burning Kitchen, Your 24 Hour Diet Transformation" that has sold over 60,000 copies worldwide, and has helped thousands of people transform their lives, lose weight and improve their health.

Her mission is to help others prevent disease and live their best life ever.

Nutrition made Easy. Simple.Smart.Nutrition.

The Most Preventable Epidemic

According to some of the most recent estimates, the number of Americans with diabetes will double in the next 25 years — from the current 23.7 million to 44.1 million in 2034. And of course, annual health costs for treating those patients are expected to soar, nearly tripling from the current $113 billion to some $336 billion.

This latest information on the diabetes trends in the United States is a very sad testament that the food pyramid, the media, conventional medicine and the food industry are very wrong in their standard diabetes recommendations–in terms of lifestyle, diet and medication.

Even sadder is that these current figures are on conservative side as they are based on the obesity levels staying the same and not increasing. So, it is entirely possible and even likely, that the number of the cases of diabetes, and resulting health care costs, could be even higher than predicted.

And the past is a great example. Previous estimates from 1991 projected that around 11.6 million Americans would have diabetes by 2030. The number of Americans with diabetes right now, in 2010, is double that number!

Besides the rapidly growing numbers of diagnosed diabetics, even worse are those with ‘pre-diabetes’, who are only steps away from having the full-blown disease. Nearly one out of four people in the US have a condition called ‘pre-diabetes’. And many do not even know they have this condition.

What is ‘pre-diabetes’?

Before people develop type 2 diabetes, they almost always have ‘pre-diabetes’–in which blood glucose levels stay higher than the normal range, but are not high enough to be diagnosed as full-blown diabetes. There are approximately some 60 million people in the United States who have pre-diabetes. Recent research has shown that similar long-term damage to the heart and circulatory system may already be occurring during the pre-diabetes stage.

Physicians can use three different tests to check for pre-diabetes conditions:

# The A1C test

# The fasting plasma glucose test (FPG)

# Oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT).

The blood glucose levels measured after these tests determine whether you have a normal metabolism, or whether you have pre-diabetes or diabetes.

Because it’s now so common, it’s almost easy to overlook the seriousness of this disease. It increases your risk of early heart disease and fatal and non-fatal heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events up to 15 years earlier than in those without diabetes, as well as significantly shortening your lifespan.

The additional health complications are numerous and include:

· Heart disease and stroke
· High blood pressure
· Blindness
· Kidney disease
· Nervous system disease
· Amputations
· Dental disease
· Pregnancy complications

However, in spite of all these dire statistics, the fact is that diabetes can be preventable. And if you already have it, you can improve or actually cure it. Especially type 2 diabetes. No you won’t hear this from mainstream medical practice, or pharmaceutical companies, because treating diabetics is just too darned profitable. But a real cure can come from YOU — by changing your lifestyle, your diet and increasing exercise.

Drew Carey did it and many others less famous have done it too.

Conventional treatment focuses on treating the symptom of elevated blood sugar, rather than addressing the true causes of the underlying disease. Treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar while raising insulin levels can actually worsen the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

Consider this–diabetes may not be caused by elevated blood sugar–but more likely is caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signaling, both of which can be managed with diet and exercise.

What is Leptin?
The hormone leptin is largely responsible for the accuracy of insulin signaling and whether you become insulin resistant or not.

Leptin, is a relatively recently discovered hormone produced by fat cells in the body. It communicates to your and brain how much energy it has, whether it needs more (appetite increases), whether it should get rid of some (decrease in appetite) and most importantly, how to utilize the energy.

When your blood sugar becomes elevated it signals for insulin to be released to store the extra energy. A small amount is stored as glycogen in your body, but the majority is stored as your main energy supply–fat. So, insulin’s major role is not to lower sugar, but to take that extra energy and store it as fat for energy.

Insulin lowers your blood sugar as a side effect of moving the extra energy to the fat cells. This is why treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar for diabetes while raising insulin levels can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication.

Lifestyle Changes Can Get Rid of or Drastically Improve Diabetes

The good news is if you can make–and maintain–major changes in your diet and lifestyle, you can reverse diabetes yourself! Diabetes is actually not a difficult disease to prevent or reverse because it’s not really an affliction that takes over randomly. It is the biological and cumulative effect of following unhealthy diet and lifestyle choices and you have control over these factors!

Even the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine concludes that “the majority of cases of type 2 diabetes could be prevented by the adoption of a healthier diet and lifestyle”.

The results of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine show that intense lifestyle changes including diet and exercise demonstrated significant decreases in body weight and lowered blood pressure and A1C blood glucose readings. Cardiovascular health also improved as blood pressure was reduced and HDL cholesterol levels increased.

The study continued over the course of four years and found that compared to a control group the lifestyle intervention participants experienced a considerably lowered risk of cardiovascular disease, as well as biomarkers which predict diabetes. The study also found that the prescribed lifestyle intervention group also lost (around 7%) weight as a beneficial side effect. This is significant as research has shown that losing as little as 5% of total weight can reduce the risk of mortality from all causes.

Diet is the single most important factor which leads to metabolic dysfunction, rising blood sugar, insulin control issues, and excessive levels of triglycerides which then become stored as abdominal fat.

Following a natural diet which excludes all sugar, processed carbohydrates, grains and hydrogenated fats in favor of grass fed meats, wild caught fatty fish, free range chicken, and plenty of fresh, raw fruits and vegetables is the best and healthiest way to regain your body’s natural balance, prevent diabetes and related cardiovascular disease.

1. Eliminate Grains and Sugars
For the last 25 years, many people have been following the nutritional recommendations dictated by the food pyramid, uninformed physicians, and the food industry of consuming a high carbohydrate diet and avoiding fats. The end result has been a several hundred percent increase in diabetes–so this route is obviously NOT working.
Eliminate foods that cause an insulin response in your body–this includes all types of sugars and grains–even so-called “healthy” grains such as whole, organic grains promote an insulin response. Avoid all breads, pasta, cereals, rice, potatoes, and corn (which is in fact a grain not a vegetable and highly glycemic). You may even need to avoid most fruits until your blood sugar is under control.

Stop eating all refined sugars. This means totally avoiding made with HFCS (especially soda) or other refined sugars, including regular table sugar, syrups, honey, fructose, agave and more. This means reading labels carefully and HFCS has been snuck into many foods you would not suspect–catsup, sauces, soups, mixes, etc.

Do NOT substitute with artificial sweeteners. These sweeteners are very harmful and will cause more health problems in the long run. In addition, they do not help keep blood sugar and insulin levels in check–contrary to what you may have been told. Best to use Stevia–an all natural low calorie sweetener that will not affect blood sugar levels.

2. Eat real, whole foods. Refuse to eat refined or processed anything. That includes packaged foods, processed meat (which strongly promotes diabetes) and commercial dairy products.

3. Get plenty of omega 3 fats in your diet.
There is clear evidence supporting the link between fish oil and diabetes relief. Administration of EPA (a component of omega 2 fats) was shown to decrease the glucose and get clotting factors under control (a major contributor to heart disease), as well as lowering LDL cholesterol.
According to some researchers omega-3 fatty acids may improve the adverse effects of insulin resistance by lowering blood pressure. Omega 3 fats given to patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus also resulted in significant beneficial effects on diabetic neuropathy and serum lipids and triglycerides. Research studies suggest that omega-3 is useful in combating circulation problems associated with diabetes by rendering the walls of the veins and arteries smoother and more elastic.
A large study on the omega 3 fats and the diabetes link found that taking one gram of omega 3 a day reduced cardiovascular mortality by 30% and the risk of death by heart attack by 45%.

4. Optimize Your Vitamin D Level
More than 70% of white Americans are vitamin D deficient. That number rises to an even higher percentage among those people with darker skin pigmentation. Vitamin D deficiency promotes diabetes (and cancer, heart disease, kidney disease, immune suppression, and more).

Boost your vitamin D levels with either daily sunshine or quality vitamin D3 supplements. Interestingly, optimizing your vitamin D levels can not only help improve type 2 diabetes if you have it, but can likely eliminate the risk of type 1 diabetes in your children if you are pregnant.

Ideally the best way to receive vitamin D is to get it from the sun, but if you live in colder climates in the winter, it is often hard to do. In that case, you may want to use an oral vitamin D3 supplement. If you choose to take an oral supplement it is suggested that you get your levels tested to make sure you’re not reaching toxic levels, and are within the therapeutic range.

5. Exercise
Exercise is an absolutely essential factor, without which you’re highly unlikely to get this devastating disease under control. It is clearly one of the most potent ways to lower your insulin and leptin resistance.

Regular exercise reduces the demand for medication by 20% in diabetics and checking the blood glucose levels before and after exercise can be a motivator to continue the exercise regimen. The benefits of exercise for diabetes are many and include:

· Control of blood glucose levels: Glucose is the source of energy in our body. Physical activity utilizes the glucose and helps to reduce the blood glucose levels. Physical activity also decreases insulin resistance. A few studies have also indicated that activity increases the insulin receptors in the red blood cells. All this together helps to keep the glycosylated hemoglobin (three-month average of blood glucose levels) levels normal.

· Improved cardiovascular function: Individuals with type II diabetes are more prone to cardiovascular diseases (hardening of arteries, heart attack, and stroke). Exercise increases the cardio-respiratory fitness by

Lowering the blood pressure

Lowering the bad cholesterol (triglyceride)

And increasing the good cholesterol (HDL)

· Psychological benefit: Physical activity is associated with an increased sense of well-being, a positive attitude and improved quality of life.

· Weight control: Physical activity helps obese/overweight individuals to lose weight and also helps them to maintain a healthy BMI.

6. Monitor Your Fasting Insulin Level

This is every bit as important as your fasting blood sugar. You’ll want your fasting insulin level to be between 2 to 4. The higher your level, the worse your insulin receptor sensitivity is.

Serious lifestyle and dietary changes mean making a huge commitment to implementing and maintaining the changes. However, you can and will greatly improve your health, your quality and length of life if you follow these guidelines. Don’t be a diabetes statistic!

Sources:

Time, “Why so Many of Us are Getting Diabetes” November 27, 2009

Elbert S. Huang, MD, MPH1, Anirban Basu, PHD1,Michael O’Grady, PHD2 and James C. Capretta, MA3, “Projecting the Future Diabetes Population Size and Related Costs for the U.S”. Diabetes Care, December 2009, vol. 32 no. 12 2225-2229

Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, “How I cured diabetes in five steps, and why one-third of U.S. adults will have diabetes by 2050” Natural News, October 23, 2010

Dr. Joseph Mercola, “Diabetes Epidemic Expected to Double”, December 15, 2009.

Effects of Omega-3 Fatty Acids on Lipids
Glycemic Control in Type II Diabetes and the Metabolic Syndrome and on Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Renal Disease, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, and Osteoporosis, http://www.ahrq.gov/clinic/epcsums/o3lipidsum.html.
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Best Healthy Sweeteners

Our craving for sweets often ruins the most well intentioned lean body plan, and we succumb to
chocolates, handfuls of cookies, a slice of cake, a generous scoop of ice cream, or other such decadent
fare. The key ingredient in all of these items and essentially most of the sweets available on the market
is sugar or worse, high fructose corn syrup.

Too much sugar is often the culprit in sabotaging our diets, but it seems hard to avoid or resist. Sometimes you just crave a little something sweet. Artificial sweeteners are loaded into so many foods and snacks promoted as “diet” foods, but the long-term negative health aspects, as well as the potential weight gain is good reason
for you to avoid any and all artificial sweeteners.

Fortunately there are a variety of natural sweeteners that have been quite common in
supermarkets for a very long time, and are likely sitting on your shelf in your pantry at this
very moment.

Honey makes an excellent alternative to sugar and has some health benefits for you
compared to refined sugar. Although honey is still a form of sugar (and you need to be
aware of its caloric impact), one benefit of honey vs. refined sugar is that several studies
have found that raw honey can actually improve your body’s ability to process glucose. On
the other hand, refined sugar negatively affects your body’s ability to process glucose over
time.

Different types of honey contain different nutrients and health benefits, depending on types
of pollen and flowers the honey comes from. All honey possesses antibacterial agents and
act as an antioxidant. Honey contains vitamins B2 and B6, and is a good source of iron.
Consuming just a spoonful of honey each day can raise the antioxidant levels in our bodies,
and it is also the healthiest natural sweetener available for those with Type 2 Diabetes. Raw
honey can often be found at Whole Foods, local farm stands, and even some grocery stores,
and is by far the best you can get—and chock full of enzymes, as well as the above listed
nutrients.

Honey is a great replacement for sugar in many recipes, and because it is quite a bit sweeter,
you can use a smaller amount. The rule of thumb is about a 1/2-cup of honey per cup of
sugar. Also when cooking, you should also reduce liquids in the recipe by a 1/4 cup to
ensure proper consistency. Honey also serves to brown foods more easily as they cook, so
cooking temperatures should be lowered by 25°F.

Maple syrup is another product many of us have in the home and another natural sweetener
that can often be used in place of sugar. We are talking about real, pure, natural maple
syrup—not Aunt Jemima (which is just flavored corn syrup)! Real maple syrup is a good source of minerals and trace nutrients. As with honey, maple syrup is also a useful antioxidant, and possesses a good amount of zinc,
which can help prevent atherosclerosis and lower cholesterol, as well
as strengthen the immune system.

Maple syrup can be purchased in three specific colors or grades, each
denoting a particular flavor. The lighter syrups (grade A) will possess a more subtle flavor, while the darkest coloring (grade B or C) yields the strongest, sweetest flavor. The darker maple syrups typically contain higher
antioxidant and nutrient levels than Grade A maple syrup.

As with honey, you need to be aware of the high caloric level of maple syrup as it is still a
concentrated source of sugar, but it is definitely a better choice than refined sugar. My
personal preference is to use just a tiny pour of real maple syrup in my coffee instead of
white sugar. For teas, I prefer to use a small dab of raw honey instead of refined sugar.
Maple syrup is also great on oatmeal too.

Even though honey and maple syrup are slightly healthier options compared to refined white
sugar, your best bet is to still reduce your dependence on added sweeteners to food and
drinks by learning to adjust your taste buds to prefer less sweetness. As a matter of fact,
I’ve trained my taste buds over the years to prefer the taste of unsweetened iced tea these
days compared to years ago when I absolutely needed some added sweetener. Same with
coffee – although I still occasionally use a small dab of real maple syrup in my coffee, I’ve
adapted my taste buds to be able to enjoy a plain black coffee as well.

Blackstrap molasses is another option for a natural sweetener that can be used in baking. It
is a particular type of molasses that is rich in several essential vitamins and minerals,
including a good concentration of manganese, iron, calcium, potassium, and more. It is also
substantially lower in calories than other natural sweeteners.
Because molasses has a such a distinctive flavor, it may not be used as often as other natural
sweeteners as a replacement for sugar, but it can impart some foods with unique flavors,
such as baked beans and gingerbread.

A natural sweetener option that is calorie-free

Newer low or no-calorie sweeteners are just coming out. The healthiest of these is
stevia. Stevia comes from the leaves of a shrub native to Paraguay and Brazil, stevia has
been used as a sweetener for many years in South America. Stevia is about three hundred
times sweeter than sugar, and has all the benefits of a sweetener without being bad for you
or fattening. It’s truly natural, not some chemical compound from a laboratory, free of
calories, doesn’t promote tooth decay, and won’t elevate blood sugar levels, or cause weight
gain.

To sugar-crazy, and diet conscious Americans, stevia should be incredibly popular and well
known, but up until recently, it was not allowed in food or easily found. The Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) banned stevia in 1991. Why? Like many proponents of stevia, the
sugar industry has a hand in the FDA’s strict stance. The FDA ban allowed it to be sold as a
dietary ‘supplement’, and it can be found in most health food stores in the supplement aisle,
right next to the vitamins. Most of the time, it is pretty difficult to find and never in the
sugar or sweetener aisle…until now.

In the many years that stevia has been used in South America, and Japan, no ill health
effects have ever been attributed to its use.

Just this year, US-based beverage giants PepsiCo and Coca-Cola reported they were looking
to switch from (or at least offer customers the choice) Splenda for a sweetener they have
more invested in: Rebaudiosides A (Reb-A), developed from stevia.
The actual name of the plant is stevia. The stevia plant also contains the sweeteners Reb-A,
B, C, D and E; dulcoside A; and steviolbioside. “We’re testing stevia and Reb-A in a variety
of products, but it absolutely comes down to taste,” said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing officer
for Coca-Cola.

Like all the previous low-calorie sweeteners out there, there have been some conflicting
stories on the health benefits and safety of stevia but it has been approved by the FDA as a
general-purpose sweetener since December 2008.

In 2005, Coca-Cola and the food giant Cargill began to work on their own form of the
sweetener. The companies are now marketing their stevia sweetener as Truvia. You may see
food items now sweetened with Truvia. Coca-Cola is initially using Truvia in two of its
Odwalla juice drinks and in the new Sprite Green.

PepsiCo’s stevia sweetener is being marketed as PureVia, and like Truvia, the marketing is
pushing the fact that it is natural. “This is a potential game-changer among zero-calorie sweeteners,” said Lou Imbrogno, PepsiCo’s senior vice president of Pepsi Worldwide Technical Operations, at a press
conference in July 2008. PepsiCo’s partner is using stevia in its Sobe Lifewater drinks and in
a new line of Tropicana orange juice, Trop50.

Stevia is the standout sweetener in the marketplace, because it is what the public is looking
for in a low-calorie sweetener to replace the questionable and not-so-natural Splenda and
NutraSweet chemical artificial sweeteners.

Stevia’s sweetness comes from its leaves. The stevia leaves are milled, and a freshwater
brewing method is used to extract the sweetness. This extract is then purified further until a
very high purity Reb-A is obtained.

Splenda’s creater, McNeil Nutritionals is getting in on the stevia craze as well. In March,
Sun Crystals All-Natural Sweetener was launched, which combines stevia with pure cane
sugar. This will be marketed as being as natural as sugar with half the calories.
NutraSweet has reported that they were not worried about stevia.

But coincidentally, the company is working on its own NutraSweet Natural made with
stevia! At least now they can compete head-to-head with stevia in the market.
While the previous chemically-processed artificial sweeteners have been connected to lung
tumors, breast tumors, and other rare types of tumors; several forms of leukemia, and
chronic respiratory disease in several rodent studies, as well as rashes, headaches, and other
serious and nasty side effects, stevia, Reb-A and its derivatives seem to be the safest of all
low-calorie sweeteners for the moment.

You can find stevia blends for your own use at this site: Naturally Stevia

Try Stevia in your favorite beverages like coffee, tea, lemonade, and more. Depending on
the brand and type of Stevia you use, the taste may vary. Some of the health food store
varieties had a “green” aftertaste, but really not bad—just something to get used to. Now
that Stevia is becoming more mainstream, the taste has improved. And some Stevia comes
in liquid form with great flavors like vanilla, toffee, lemon, etc. Give it a try!