Is Stevia Safe to Use as a Sweetener?

Another copy of my comment on a post Jimmy Moore’s about artificial sweeteners

From Jimmy Moore:

Is Stevia Safe to Use as a Sweetener?: http://www.coachcalorie.com/is-stevia-safe ~ Not all stevia is created equal. REAL stevia comes from a leaf and is green ideally. Liquid is next best if you can get your hands on it. The key is to avoid the highly-refined versions and especially most commercially-sold ones which are combined with GMO erithrytol.

My comment:

Stevia leaves whether dried or fresh are the best way of using Stevia and you may not be aware of it but you can actually grow Stevia in most parts of North America so you can always have a fresh supply. Certainly throughout the summer months and it’s as easy to dry as, say, mint or any other leaf that you would use in cooking.

It’s the process ones that I find have a metallic taste. If anything, the natural products might have a slight licorice taste but other than that they’re very sweet and the licorice taste, if it doesn’t compliment what you’re eating is often lost in the cooking simply because the sweetness of the leaf is far greater than the licorice taste.

The products I would steer away from are all of the derivatives of Stevia no matter how natural the claims of the manufacturers are. That said, if you want a liquid sweetener it’s easy enough to make it yourself at home without any troubles whatsoever.

For those of you that would like to take this further, there’s a very useful book by Jeffrey Goettemoeller and Kaen Lucke called “Growing and Using Stevia”. It’s well worth reading not just from the point of view of using Stevia but also the fact that it has some recipes in it as well.

Hope that helps,

Mark