Truvia

This is the newest "natural sweeter" out on the market.
With the masses becoming more aware of their health and well being people are making more of an effort to look at the ingredients in the foods they are eating. Many people are beginning to consciously replace overly refined food items in their diet with more natural and whole foods. In turn food companies are being forced to create foods that are seemingly more natural and less refined. I feel it’s important to do a little research on these new foods that are being offered to us as healthier alternatives. Being a former user of Equal and a current user of stevia I decided to take a look into Truvia. What I discovered is that Truvia is not stevia, it's a new sweetener using stevia.

Stevia has been a battleground for the sugar and artificial sweetener industry for sometime now. Many of the big sugar and sweetener companies have spent a number of years and a lot of money lobbying against the likes of stevia. Imagine what would it do to business if a completely natural no calorie sweetener were readily available? But what if they could find a way to get in on it? This past December (as in last month) the FDA approved the use of a stevia byproduct that was created jointly by companies Cargill (America's second largest private corporation) and Coca-Cola. Stevia, as in the whole plant, continues to be labeled as a dietary supplement and it remains unapproved by the FDA.

Truvia's claims
1) It's not made in a lab like other no calorie artificial sweeteners
2) It's made from plants

Yes there are stevia plants involved. They use a process of steeping the leaves that produces what they have coined rebiana, which allows them to isolate best tasting part of the plant leaving behind the crude unnecessary parts like fiber for example. They further "purify" the isolated rebiana AKA refine it. Technically table sugar is also made from a plant but it’s the refining process that complicates matters and makes it nutritionally undesirable.

Truvia's other main ingredient is a sweet flavored bulking agent called Erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol. Erythritol is made by breaking down food starch into glucose. Then a yeast called Moniliella pollinis is added to the glucose. By way of fermentation, the glucose is broken down into erythritol. The erythritol is then purified into 99.5% pure erythritol.* It does appear to be less harmful than saccharin and aspartame, but it's not exactly what I would call naturally occurring and as far as I am concerned saying this ingredient wasn't made in a lab would be a lie.

Lastly Truvia contains "natural flavors" aka MSG and other things, which if used in certain amounts do not need to be listed according to the FDA. Overall I think it’s certainly a better choice than Equal, Sweet'n'low and Splenda but why not just use stevia it's pure form?



*http://abouterythritol.homestead.com