Benefits of Stevia - Health Channel

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Benefits of Stevia |

Natalie Castro, Registered Dietitian with Baptist Health South Florida, explains stevia is a natural form of a sweetener and says it will sweeten the food without giving us extra calories.

“One of the downfalls of stevia is the aftertaste it has; a lot of people don’t like it. It is a little overpowering.”

Transcript

Isn’t it the calories which causes weight gain or better to use a sugar substitute yep so it is the calories that end up causing the weight gain that end up leading to other issues so it ends up becoming what we’re consuming and how our behavior habits are occurring that end up leading to those chronic diseases I want to talk about another sweetener ones that comes from a plant grown in South America and it’s the sugar substitutes called stevia so stevia good for us so stevia is a natural form of a sweetener right because it does come from a leaf so if you actually bite into the leaf its you taste the whole stevia plants so what they do when you see the little powder in the little packets is that they process this leaf and they make it into a powder form or into a liquid form so these liquid forms or powder form is just like our and somewhat of a sense of our artificial sweetener it’s gonna sweeten the food without giving us so much extra calories and that sugar spike that we would have one of the downfalls of stevia is the actual aftertaste that it has so a lot of people don’t like that it oh it’s a little overpowering okay um so is it beneficial is it something you can have you can use it as a sweetener if you’re okay with that taste do you need to have it no it’s not something that you need to have but can you use it as a sweetener if you if you and are okay with the taste and that’s fine now health wise is it a good substitute stevia yeah so like I mentioned it’s a natural source so it can be something that you use the only problem is as far as it is considered safe we do have an upper limit of how much we should have um so they say about two beverages sweetened with the stevia is safe to have the thing is now that they’re adding it to many products so most of the yogurts on the on the market now are sweetened with stevia a lot of I’ve seen protein shakes and all kinds of different things that will add stevia to it so that’s where the concern comes guys how much are we adding to it and then what effect will that have on us you

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