WebProNews

Tag: sugar addiction

  • Stevia: The Healthy Alternative To Sugar?

    Stevia: The Healthy Alternative To Sugar?

    All our lives we’ve been told that if something, “sounds too good to be true, it generally is”. Then….Stevia happened.

    Imagine something that is 300 times sweeter than sugar, is reported to have absolutely no calories, and comes from a plant rather than being man-made. Well, that’s Stevia in a nutshell.

    As Americans come to terms with the reality of sugar addiction and the unwanted obesity and health problems that come with it, they must decide how best to treat the “sweet tooth”. Some brave souls have decided that they will go without sweets of any kind, opting to face down their sugar dependance by going completely cold turkey. Others are not looking to give up sweets, but to steer clear of sugar.

    Enter the practically miraculous Stevia, and an industry looking to make billions off of diet and sugar-free crazed Americans.

    Jeremiah Mann, who is in charge of the Yuba-based, “Stevia First”, is very optimistic about plans to grow and market the plant in the United States.”Unlike artificial sweeteners, these are molecules that taste really good,” says Mann. He believes that stevia will be a “highly profitable crop in California.”

    Most stevia currently is produced in China, but that could change, especially as the $60 billion industry expands. The World Health Organization has it on track to replace 20 to 30 percent of all sweeteners worldwide.

    Despite the seemingly good news about Stevia, there remains a cynical element. If Stevia is so wonderful and as natural a plant as sugar, why are we just now hearing about it? Are there any negative side-effects that we won’t be hearing about until billions of dollars have been made off of Americans?

    Stevia hasn’t been approved by the FDA, but that won’t stop companies from selling it. Despite a lack of in-depth research, there are early concerns that it can drop the blood sugar levels of diabetics to an unsafe degree, as well as blood pressure. It’s also recommended that anyone with allergies to ragweed and related plants steer clear of stevia.

    Will stevia prove to be better for you than sugar and successfully set the sugar substitute market ablaze? Or will it turn out to be like margarine was with butter—worse for you than what it was replacing? Only time will tell.

    In any case, it’s best to abide by the “if it sounds too good to be true” creed and proceed with caution.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Oreos Addictive? Not So Fast, Say Researchers

    Are Oreos as addictive as cocaine? That seems to be on many headlines lately, after a Connecticut College press release on a student research project broke the hearts of North America, but is it true? I’m not reserving my spot in rehab just yet, and here’s why. The research on that project is not absolutely certain, according to LiveScience.com.

    The experiment ran as follows:

    Student researchers put rats in a maze with two sides. On one side, the rats were rewarded for traversing the maze with delicious, sugary Oreos. On the other side, they got bland and boring rice cakes. The students then measured how long the rats spent on either side of the maze. I think we can all guess how that turned out. Oreos beat rice cakes everytime.

    The students then conducted the same experiment, except this time the reward at the end of one side of the maze was a shot of morphine or cocaine. On the other side, it was a shot of saline. The time that the rats spent on the side with cocaine in the second experiment was equivalent to the time spent on the Oreo side in the first experiment. However, that information doesn’t warrant calling Oreos addictive.

    “The study performed cannot determine whether Oreos are as addictive as cocaine,” said Edythe London, a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles, who uses brain imaging to study the neural basis of drug cravings. “That question is best addressed in a comparison of how hard a rat will work for Oreos versus cocaine — how many times a rat will press a lever to get one or the other.”

    The question of whether foods can be addictive remains unanswered. The desire to binge on scrumptious sugary or fatty foods reportedly shares some similarities in the brain as the need for drugs. Rats fed junk food and then given a normal, healthy diet show brain changes similar to those seen in drug addicts trying to kick a habit, according to a 2012 study, for example.

    Scary. But, researchers suggest that other factors like government subsidies that make junk food cheap are just as much to blame as any perceived food addiction. More research will be needed to be conclusive on the subject.

    “We are biologically wired to respond to certain tastes, textures and colors, but that doesn’t mean it’s an addiction,” Gabriel Harris, an assistant professor of food science at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. I’m going to take that and run with it.

    image via wikipedia