Stevia is actually a 'sugar'.
Regular white sugar is made from sugar cane, or 'cane sugar'.
Stevia is derived from the Stevia plant. It is NOT calorie-free, but it takes a LOT less Stevia to sweeten the same as white sugar, so there are far fewer calories involved.
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/soft.html
Early warning in 1942:
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Warnings about the dangers of soft drink consumption came to us as early as 1942 when the American Medical Association’s (AMA) Council on Food and Nutrition made the following noble statement: "From the health point of view it is desirable especially to have restriction of such use of sugar as is represented by consumption of sweetened carbonated beverages and forms of candy which are of low nutritional value. The Council believes it would be in the interest of the public health for all practical means to be taken to limit consumption of sugar in any form in which it fails to be combined with significant proportions of other foods of high nutritive quality."
Re: the fizzy stuff [read labels!]:
http://www.mindconnection.com/librar...softdrinks.htm
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Reading the rest of this article may be the best use you've ever made of 5 minutes. Yeah, we know Pepsi will never sponsor an ad on this site. But your health is more important to us.
It's tragic that the "beverage" industry shoves this toxic brew at human beings. Let's take a closer look at what it does.
The carbonation in all soft drinks causes calcium loss in the bones through a three-stage process:
1. The carbonation irritates the stomach.
2. The stomach "cures" the irritation the only way it knows how. It adds the only antacid at its disposal: calcium. It gets this from the blood.
3. The blood, now low on calcium, replenishes its supply from the bones. If it did not do this, muscular and brain function would be severely impaired.
But, the story doesn't end there. Another problem with most soft drinks is they also contain phosphoric acid (not the same as the carbonation, which is carbon dioxide mixed with the water). This substance also causes a drawdown on the store of calcium.
So, soft drinks soften your bones (actually, they make them weak and brittle) in three ways:
1. Carbonation reduces the calcium in the bones.
2. Phosphoric acid reduces the calcium in the bones.
3. The beverage replaces a calcium-containing alternative, such as milk or water. Milk and water are not excellent calcium sources, but they are sources.
From the same page:
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And now you know why bone damage formerly apparent only in the very old is now showing up in teenagers.
HELLO REGGIE! ;)
One more from:
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Soft Drinks:
America's Other Drinking Problem
http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/soft.html
[long article but well worth the read!]
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While our children are exposed to unremitting publicity for soft drinks, evidence of their dangers accumulates. The consumption of soft drinks, like land-mine terrain, is riddled with hazards. We as practitioners and advocates of a healthy life-style recognize that consuming even as little as one or two sodas per day is undeniably connected to a myriad of pathologies. The most commonly associated health risks are obesity, diabetes and other blood sugar disorders, tooth decay, osteoporosis and bone fractures, nutritional deficiencies, heart disease, food addictions and eating disorders, neurotransmitter dysfunction from chemical sweeteners, and neurological and adrenal disorders from excessive caffeine.
