Truvia vs. stevia

A friend recently asked me about the difference between Truvia and stevia.

Truvia is a branded, processed sugar substitute consisting partly of stevia extract and mainly of erythritol, a natural sugar alcohol that is almost non-caloric, does not affect blood sugar, does not cause tooth decay, and, in regular use (i.e., not extreme quantities), does not cause side effects.

Stevia is a plant; its leaves, the aqueous extract of the leaves, and purified steviosides are used as sweeteners. It is mostly just sweet but has a tinge of a licorice flavor. Stevia has a negligible effect on blood glucose and may even enhance glucose tolerance. Powdered, crystallized, and aqueous stevia can be purchased in natural foods stores.

Cutting the calories in your diet that come from sugars — everything from processed white sugar to the simple starches and carbohydrates that naturally occur in fruits and white flour — has multiple benefits. You will reduce your propensity towards insulin resistance and thereby cut your diabetes risk, lower inflammation caused by insulin spiking in the blood, lower fat storage and even lower LDL or "bad" cholesterol.

But it is not as simple as replacing the white sugar you use in your tea/coffee with Truvia or stevia. It's about reducing your overall intake of simple carbohydrates. To accomplish that, you should stay away from foods with a high glycemic load, such as sugar, white starches (white rice, white bread, potatoes), fruit juices and purees and juices from sugary vegetables like carrots and beets; even many alcoholic drinks are high in sugar. Eat instead: whole grains (brown rice, steel cut oats, buckwheat, flax flour, whole grain pasta), whole fruit in place of juice, whole vegetables.

Most people find they feel much better — have more energy, feel less tired — when they cut simple carbs out. After you flood your bloodstream with glucose, insulin spikes to take it out, and then you feel hypoglycemic and like eating something starchy again; it's exhausting, a vicious cycle, and over time very damaging to the circulatory system and linked to chronic
disease. Complex carbs release glucose into the bloodstream much more slowly.

Going further: My brother also believes that, because there is a natural insulin spike at the beginning of the day, people should take advantage of that and have all of their carbs prior to 2pm and try to eat nothing during the 2 hours before you go to sleep. So he has steel cut oatmeal for breakfast, a sandwich on whole grain bread for lunch, things like that, and he tends to load up on proteins like fish or lentils for dinner accompanied by raw or lightly cooked vegetables (i.e., no more rice at dinnertime for him). This seems to be working for him.

How Cooking Made Us Human

Some excerpts from the review of Richard Wrangham's new book, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human:

"Just over two and a half million years ago, our brains swelled. Less than a million years later, they swelled again, our posture and our gait changed, our jaws shrank, and we grew taller. These two evolutionary changes define our species, distinguishing us from our fellow primates. 1.8 million years ago, we learned to cook. Cooking... literally powered our evolution."

"Archeologists have found earth ovens more than 250,000 years old.... Cooking is the only possible explanation for the transformation that stood us on our feet, shrank our guts, gave us silly teeth and receding jawlines, and swelled our brains to their current, horrendously fuel-inefficient size."

"No one, ancient or modern, settled or nomadic, has ever survived for more than a couple of seasons on an exclusively raw diet."

Food Poem Fridays: John Engels' CRANBERRY-ORANGE RELISH

Cranberry-Orange Relish
by John Engels

A pound of ripe cranberries, for two days
macerate in a dark rum, then do not
treat them gently, but bruise,
mash, pulp, squash
with a wooden pestle
to an abundance of juices, in fact
until the juices seem on the verge

of overswelling the bowl, then drop in
two fistsful, maybe three, of fine-
chopped orange with rind, two golden
blobs of it, and crush
it in, and then add sugar, no thin
sprinkling, but a cupful dumped
and awakened with a wooden spoon

to a thick suffusion, drench of sourness, bite of color,
then for two days let conjoin
the lonely taste of cranberry,
the joyous orange, the rum, in some
warm corner of the kitchen, until
the bowl faintly becomes
audible, a scarce wash of sound, a tiny
bubbling, and then
in a glass bowl set it out
and let it be eaten last, to offset
gravied breast and thigh
of the heavy fowl, liverish
stuffing, the effete
potato, lethargy of pumpkins

gone leaden in their crusts, let it be eaten
so that our hearts may be together overrun
with comparable sweetnesses,
tart gratitudes, until finally,
dawdling and groaning, we bear them
to the various hungerings
of our beds, lightened
of their desolations.

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P.S. What do you think of poem-recipes?

Recipe by Miz SunDrop: Cornbread Dotted with Dried Cherries

We used Indian green chillies (just 2, finely sliced -- nowhere near the 1/2 cup the recipe calls for!) instead of the canned kind. Enjoy!

1 cup butter

3/4 cup sugar

4 eggs

1/2 cup diced canned green chillies (or 2 finely sliced fresh Indian or Thai green chillies)

1 1/2 cups "creamed" corn (canned)
1/2 cup shredded jack or cheddar
1 cup flour

1 cup yellow cornmeal

2 tbsp baking powder

1/2 cup dried cherries

Cream together butter, sugar and eggs. Add remaining ingredients, mix well. Spread into a greased 9"x9" pan (double recipe makes a 9"x13").

Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for 45 minutes.