what you think about stevia?

Choose what you like. Stevia is perfectly fine if you enjoy the taste, same as aspartame. If you're worried about your sugar consumption, try diet sodas and such.

Remember, being healthy is just having a wide range of foods. Eat whole foods, and eat the things you enjoy in moderation.

Everything is chemicals. If somebody is telling you not to eat a food because of the ingredients they cant pronounce, they are selling you something.

There is no evidence that supports the idea that aspartame is bad for you, just choose the stuff you like.

I don't know what's artificial about stevia. It's a plant that I have grown. We used to just crush the leaves and steep it with tea when I was a kid

From what I’ve gathered over the years, it seems better than a lot of artificial sweeteners. Like, it’s not cancerous (that we know of or at least less cancerous?) and it doesn’t create blood sugar spikes.

That being said, it’s just better to reduce sweet foods.

It doesn't react chemically the same so certain baked things don't come out correctly. Like you can't make caramel out of it.

It also has the same kind of weird dry mouth/after taste combo that other artificial sweeteners give me. It's extremely unpleasant.

I'm glad he cleaned up and turned his life around, but honestly I was never a fan of Jackass in the first place.

I avoid artificial sweeteners as much as I can, and I've just been trying to reduce my sugar intake as well. If a recipe calls for sugar though, I'll just use that.

I've found it's fairly easy to avoid desserts through making good fruit smoothies, and substituting sugary cereals for plain whole grain with frozen berries. I've dropped sugar from my teas, too.

I still enjoy a good dessert, but I'm trying to wean myself off of ultra-processed foods as much as I can, just because there's so many hidden ones (spaghetti sauce, for example , which was new to me. Apparently it contains a stupid amount of sugar iirc.)

Every bodies response to artificial sweeteners is different. Curiously the perceived sweetness can result in a cephalic insulin response by itself. I.e. drink a zero calorie drink with a artificial sweetener can create a insulin spike!

The best way to see your bodies reaction to a sweetener is to get your blood sugar very stable, then eat a large sample of the sweetener and monitor your glucose response over a hour. This is most easily done with a CGM.

If your sensitive to the sweetener you will see your glucose decrease! Because your body is producing insulin from the taste alone.

If your blood glucose goes up, then the sweetener has sugar in it anyway, so its not a artificial sweetener... It's just a sweetener

Doesn't get caramelized :(

First of all, stevia is not artificial but actually plant based as well. It‘s fairly healthy.

As for usage as sweetener: I like sweetening my tea with it. It tastes different than regular sugar of course, but I prefer the taste over a lot of other sweeteners, especially artificial ones like aspartame (which I loathe), safe for maybe Xylitol and Erythritol (which are sweet poly alcohols, also non artificial but less sweet and less healthy than stevia, albeit probably still a lot better than sucrose and which taste very nice, imo). At some point I actually got used to stevia so much, that normal sugar tasted a little weird to me.

As some other comments mentioned though, for cooking and baking it doesn’t work as well. Xylitol and Erythritol may work better there (haven’t used them in baking but worked well for tomato sauce).

So, long story short: if you like, or can get used to the taste of stevia, it’s a great sweetener. Also look up Xylitol and Erythritol, if you haven’t yet, they’re also pretty great.

It is still healthier than the damage sugar does to your metabolism. Sugar in its modern form doesn’t really serve a great purpose and basically only introduces inflammation. Sweeteners can get around this but I believe evidence supports that the “sweet” feeling still illicits some sort of physiological response with the metabolism. Still, it’s better to get only natural sugars in our food and use a light sweetener to help replace sugar. Over the years I’ve discovered I only like certain brands of stevia based flavor squirts. When I tried powderized stevia, I found the major brands used gross filler and had a bad aftertaste. Even Stevia in the Raw still has an organic option that uses sugar to bond the powder instead of the filler. I think it takes a lot of discovery and exploration. Sometimes, it also requires some Stockholm syndrome to finish whatever supply you wasted money on lol

I actually quite enjoy the taste of the actual leaf, but any stevia sweetener or soda I’ve tried is just awful. Just as bad as diet soda taste to me.

It tastes really terrible.

I like the taste. It doesn't taste exactly like sucrose, but no sweetener will.

I don't eat it often, but it's nice to have a different kind of sweetness once in a while.

It's fairly easy to grow, too, and the leaves make a nice sweet snack.

Just eat better and stop trying to trick yourself.

Stevia is bitter, so it's best when used in coffee or black tea. It's usually mixed with something else (erythritol, or even plain sugar) to try to cover up the bitterness.

Tastes like licorice to me. I hate all artificial sweeteners. Real Cane sugar for me thanks.

Stevia is the medically 'safest' artificial sweetener. If your body can handle it, and you can get used to the awful taste. But unless you're using it to transition away from artificially sweetened things altogether, its best to avoid it.

Just crush some fruit into whatever you're trying to make sweet, or add some neutral honey. That's worked for tens of milenia, its just as good today.

It's in the Liquid Death teas I drink sometimes. Tastes good to me.