Stevia is just fine for me kind of sweet if you don't over do it,
but I have known others with the same reaction as yours.
I also like licorice,
but cilantro barely tastes like anything to me
a garnish with nothing to distinguish it from random yard clippings.
A percentage of people get a bitter taste from stevia. It depends on the person. I think that’s a big reason why it hasn’t replaced standards like sucralose.
When Coca Cola released their Stevia sweetened "Coca Cola Life", I thought this was a great compromise between taste and calories. I drank quite a lot of that stuff, and suddenly, from one day to the other, the taste absolutely disgusted me. It just felt horribly artifical, and until today it sends a shiver down my spline just seeing those bottles in the supermarket. No idea what made my brain switch.
Definitely not the only one. Stevia instantly and completely ruins the taste of anything it's in for me, so when I'm looking at energy or hydration drinks I always have to check the labels carefully. Gives me a bit more empathy for people with more serious allergies and sensitivities, I guess.
I've found that stevia works well in small amounts when coupled with sugar, but less sugar than you otherwise would have used. I really like in in my protein shakes along with a couple of dates. Using it as the sole source of sweetness results in the disgusting bitter taste. Maybe i just got lucky with my taste buds though.
It seems to work a lot better when a big company's flavor chemists handle it with other flavors, versus when I try to do it at home. Like MyProtein's vanilla/chocolate stevia-flavored soy protein. Beats the pants off of my own attempts with unflavored soy protein.
Wait... Are you using 100% clean stevia? I thought it is sold in a mix with eritrol, where stevia is a small percent of that mix, because it is 400% more sweetness compared to sugar and to prevent bitter
Yep 100% pure powder. It is so strong that your post nasal drip is sweet after using it
I mix some into a big jar of whey protein, close it up and mix well. That way i can get my preferred brand of protein with no additives to have just enough sweetness to be palatable when combined with some blueberries and dates.
I’m not sure what phenylketonuria has to do with this. Phenylketonuria is a rare genetic disorder that leaves you unable to process an amino acid, phenylalanine. This has nothing to do with taste or sugar, as far as I know. It does mean that you have to have a special diet low in phenylalanine to control your phenylalanine levels.
A certain percentage of people get a bitter taste from stevia. Kind of like how a certain percentage of people get a soapy taste from cilantro.
In this case, phenylketonuria is the first condition I ever heard of where it could affect your taste buds. I ran into this in high school, when my best friend could taste the slightest amounts of phenylalanine, but no one else in the school could. Our science teacher was very pleased to have him in the class, because he could now dive deeper on genetic conditions, with a real world example right there in the room.
And, as it just so happens, cilantro does taste like soap to me, and I have been a subscriber to nocilantro.com for many years.
And so now, I've been wondering if there's a similar problem with Stevia, where I am again affected negatively. And so I mentioned phenylketonuria as the poster child for that pattern.
Maybe I need to see if there is a nostevia.com domain that I can subscribe to, or create one if not?
What's the current consensus on artificial sweeteners overall? How do they stack up in terms of healthiness, taste, and cost? Are there other parameters that are important?
Context - I've been trying to figure out if there are any downsides (besides cost) to using Monk Fruit.
I don't think monk fruit and stevia are considered artificial sweeteners. I think they fall under the "alternative (to sugar)" sweeteners category. As opposed to artificial sweeteners like saccharin, aspartame, acesulfame potassium, sucralose, etc.
I think, patent is talking about stevia the plant, whose leaves are quite sweet with a licorice taste when eaten raw or dried. When powdered, you can use those to sweeten i.e tea. You are talking about steviol glycosides that can be extracted, like sugar, from that same plant.
No. What I mean is that processing of stevia plant to obtain sweetener powder is conceptually the same as processing of plants to obtain sugar powder. So either both are artificial, or neither are. FWIW I wouldn't call either artificial.
I'm not talking about synthetic stevia as I haven't encountered such.
My experience with monk fruit is it's not really that expensive, so long as you go with the 25% or better mogroside-v concentration. The sticker price of $25 for something measured in ounces doesn't seem great, but you really don't need much of it. Erythritol, which I use when the bulkiness of sugar is helpful, is way more expensive sweet-for-sweet in comparison.
As far as taste goes, I have no complaints, but I'm also pretty easy to please. I tend to use dissolved sucralose in things that don't get mechanically mixed, and I don't mind that taste at all.
I don't think any of the ones that people still use today have any sort of health problems. Not like maltitol, the famous sugar-free gummy bear sweetener which made everyone crap (or whatever sweetener was in those fat-free chips that was the real culprit behind people's digestive trouble, not the olestra).
There is no consensus on taste—you give the same non-sugar sweetener to different people and they’ll have different reactions to how they taste.
The health effects are largely the same—your body doesn’t do much with these sweeteners, and they’re used in small quantities to begin with. Saccharine was thought to be unsafe after experiments in the 1970s, but the modern consensus post 2000 is that it is, in fact, safe.
Xylitol is the odd one out because it has calories, just 40% less than ordinary sugar. It’s being sold as something with all sorts of amazing health effects—fewer calories, lower glycemic index, etc. Some of these are overstated. I think most of these are overstated. IMO it is more convenient to just eat less sugar. Unlike most sweeteners, you can bake with xylitol, more or less. Some people find it irritates their stomach.
Stuff like sucralose and stevia are convenient and easy to source. YMMV, the only reason I’m having an artificial sweetener to begin with is because it’s in a factory product like soda or chewing gum, so I’m stuck with whatever the choice is off the shelf. If I’m cooking or baking, I look for recipes that use less sugar to begin with or I just eat less of the final product.
Xylitol is also found in nasal sprays. It was even tested to see if it helped with covid in that form. I could not find the study but I think it helped a bit.
My relatives found this out the hard way last week, they made a low-calorie cake which was sweetened with xylitol, which their dog got into -- they left it on the kitchen table for a few minutes to cool and he managed to jump on and gavone half of it before they saw him.
They had to take him to the vet where they fed him charcoal and pumped his stomach. =-/
Erythritol is absorbed by the body before it reaches the large intestine and therefore does not make you farty. (It is subsequently excreted unmodified.)
There's many different sweeteners each of them has its own lifecycle in our body.
In general you can eat them safely, most of the studies showing their negative effects are poorly conducted inconclusive experiments (asparthame especially). The other half shows adverse reactions in mice, which have a very different digestion.
The point of sweeteners is that you do not digest them, they leave your body with the same structure they had when they entered.
I would avoid stevia though, I think it's the one more controversial and it's only pumped because it's extracted from a natural plant rather than sythesized.
IMO the sugar alcohol allulose[1] has crossed the uncanny valley of sweeteners. It tastes (and cooks!) almost like sucrose and it doesn’t have a weird aftertaste. Like erythritol, it is absorbed and excreted unmodified so it is nearly acaloric and doesn’t cause GI problems in reasonable doses. My only minor complaint is that, like erythritol, it causes a slight cooling sensation, so the best use cases are foods that are served chilled.
It is naturally occurring at trace levels in some fruits and was first isolated in the 1940s but commercially viable manufacturing methods only became available recently. It’s starting to appear in some low-carb bars, cereals, and ice creams, but it’s still quite hard to find in products.
The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed :)
I like allulose, but the kind I tasted was both less sweet and finer than ordinary table sugar. The granularity of it was more like powdered sugar (and like the other artificial sweeteners like stevia, aspartame, xylitol, erythritol, etc) than ordinary table sugar.
To me tagatose[1] is way more like ordinary table sugar than any other sweetener that I've tried. In fact, it's indistinguishable from sugar to me. It's a real shame it's not more well known.
I came cross tagatose in this article [1] about the company Bonumose [2], which has been attempting to commercialize a production process.
Their efforts were hampered by some drama — some shady grant fraud involving a key Chinese researcher, with subsequent litigation — which is the premise of the article. But another problem with tagatose, historically, is that it's difficult to scale up the process, which requires processing yeasts with exensive enzymes, to commercial levels. Bonumose claims to have solved that problem, but it's still stuck at the patent licensing stage, from what I can tell.
GI issues is actually one of the most reported side effects of allulose. It certainly does a number on me. So much so that I ruled it out as an artificial sweetener after trying it a few times, but I guess it might still work for me as a cheap laxative.
My wife has been trying Allulose over the last month or so, particularly for low carb heated foods, with fairly good luck. In particular, it makes a very good low carb+sugar free caramel that she serves frozen. We've also been using it in homemade ice creams.
We take a can of low sugar peaches or pears, mix in 2tbs of allulose and a pinch of xantham gum, freeze it and then run it through the Ninja Creami and get a quite good sorbet with 120 cal a pint, and super easy to make.
The cooling effects of some of the sugar alcohols, I'm not sure exactly which one, is pretty weird. She made some great cookies that I just wouldn't eat because of that cooling effect. Which makes them even lower calorie. :-)
Do you have a link to data on Glycemic Load? Even if something appears to be acaloric it can set off cascading reactions that trigger insulin production in the liver that leads to fat storage. I know this is the case for many sweeteners, and they end up being no better than sugar.
"Sweeteness" isn't an absolute chemical property of a molecule, it's about the capacity of a molecule to bind with our sweet receptors inside our mouths and the neural response our brain receives.
Sweeteners generally have much higher capacity of binding with our sweet receptors, thus they produce a stronger electrical signal towards our brain. Afaik the relative sweeteness is calculated by diluting glucose and sweetener X in a glass of water and then calculating the amount of one compared to the other.
E.g. If you need 0.05 grams of a sweetener to obtain the same effect of 1 gram of sugar then it's 20 times more sweet.
As the article describes, the enzyme in the title is a "uridine diphosphate–dependent glucosyltransferase" which "catalyzes the addition of branched glucosides to compounds in stevia".
So the sweet compound is not the enzyme, but "diterpenoids called stevioside and rebaudioside A" which are small molecules. Well small-ish, as you can see:
I think the article describes an enzyme for synthesizing a class of sweeteners similar to stevia. This could be used as a cathalyst. What is a cathalyst you may ask?
Every chemical reaction is in an equilibrium between reagents (R) and products (P). Products consistently transform in reagents and viceversa, and the equilibrium (more reagent or more product) depends on the relative energy levels.
It's like going from a valley to another one, the lower valley will determine if you have more reagent (R) or product (P).
But to go between the two valleys there is a mountain. The mountain does not determine whether you will have more P or R, but it determines how much energy (of various forms) to go from valley of reagents to valley of products. Sometimes the mountain between the valleys is so high that no reactions occur or they occur at such a small speed that you will see no difference.
Simple example: diamond and graphite. Graphite is MUCH more stable than diamond, because it's energy level is much lower than the one of a diamond. BUT there is a very high mountain between the two forms, thus it takes millions of years for a diamond to transform into graphite and you don't see your jewelry turning into pencils (even though, eventually it will).
What catalysts do is that they basically lower the mountain: the reactions from R to P and P to R become much faster, now I can go from valley to valley with ease.[1]
This means that you can chemically engineer new sweeteners, potentially much more sweet. This is good for the producer (needs less sweetener) but also for the consumer (taste is the same, but eats less sweetener).
Does anyone else get a weird feeling in their mouths after eating something with sucralose? For me it's like there's a coating on my tongue that lasts an hour or so after having anything that sweetener.
58 comments
[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadIs this another Phenylketonuria problem?
Anything with aspartame in it seems to make me immediately feel nauseous. Not sure if I’m an outlier here.
I mix some into a big jar of whey protein, close it up and mix well. That way i can get my preferred brand of protein with no additives to have just enough sweetness to be palatable when combined with some blueberries and dates.
A certain percentage of people get a bitter taste from stevia. Kind of like how a certain percentage of people get a soapy taste from cilantro.
And, as it just so happens, cilantro does taste like soap to me, and I have been a subscriber to nocilantro.com for many years.
And so now, I've been wondering if there's a similar problem with Stevia, where I am again affected negatively. And so I mentioned phenylketonuria as the poster child for that pattern.
Maybe I need to see if there is a nostevia.com domain that I can subscribe to, or create one if not?
Context - I've been trying to figure out if there are any downsides (besides cost) to using Monk Fruit.
I'm not talking about synthetic stevia as I haven't encountered such.
Is this level is discourse really necessary here? I'm pretty sure it breaks the site guidelines.
As far as taste goes, I have no complaints, but I'm also pretty easy to please. I tend to use dissolved sucralose in things that don't get mechanically mixed, and I don't mind that taste at all.
I don't think any of the ones that people still use today have any sort of health problems. Not like maltitol, the famous sugar-free gummy bear sweetener which made everyone crap (or whatever sweetener was in those fat-free chips that was the real culprit behind people's digestive trouble, not the olestra).
The health effects are largely the same—your body doesn’t do much with these sweeteners, and they’re used in small quantities to begin with. Saccharine was thought to be unsafe after experiments in the 1970s, but the modern consensus post 2000 is that it is, in fact, safe.
Xylitol is the odd one out because it has calories, just 40% less than ordinary sugar. It’s being sold as something with all sorts of amazing health effects—fewer calories, lower glycemic index, etc. Some of these are overstated. I think most of these are overstated. IMO it is more convenient to just eat less sugar. Unlike most sweeteners, you can bake with xylitol, more or less. Some people find it irritates their stomach.
Stuff like sucralose and stevia are convenient and easy to source. YMMV, the only reason I’m having an artificial sweetener to begin with is because it’s in a factory product like soda or chewing gum, so I’m stuck with whatever the choice is off the shelf. If I’m cooking or baking, I look for recipes that use less sugar to begin with or I just eat less of the final product.
They had to take him to the vet where they fed him charcoal and pumped his stomach. =-/
In general you can eat them safely, most of the studies showing their negative effects are poorly conducted inconclusive experiments (asparthame especially). The other half shows adverse reactions in mice, which have a very different digestion.
The point of sweeteners is that you do not digest them, they leave your body with the same structure they had when they entered.
I would avoid stevia though, I think it's the one more controversial and it's only pumped because it's extracted from a natural plant rather than sythesized.
It is naturally occurring at trace levels in some fruits and was first isolated in the 1940s but commercially viable manufacturing methods only became available recently. It’s starting to appear in some low-carb bars, cereals, and ice creams, but it’s still quite hard to find in products.
The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed :)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psicose
To me tagatose[1] is way more like ordinary table sugar than any other sweetener that I've tried. In fact, it's indistinguishable from sugar to me. It's a real shame it's not more well known.
[1] - https://www.wired.com/2003/11/newsugar/
Their efforts were hampered by some drama — some shady grant fraud involving a key Chinese researcher, with subsequent litigation — which is the premise of the article. But another problem with tagatose, historically, is that it's difficult to scale up the process, which requires processing yeasts with exensive enzymes, to commercial levels. Bonumose claims to have solved that problem, but it's still stuck at the patent licensing stage, from what I can tell.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/11/1048913/inside-t...
[2] http://bonumose.com/
GI issues is actually one of the most reported side effects of allulose. It certainly does a number on me. So much so that I ruled it out as an artificial sweetener after trying it a few times, but I guess it might still work for me as a cheap laxative.
We take a can of low sugar peaches or pears, mix in 2tbs of allulose and a pinch of xantham gum, freeze it and then run it through the Ninja Creami and get a quite good sorbet with 120 cal a pint, and super easy to make.
The cooling effects of some of the sugar alcohols, I'm not sure exactly which one, is pretty weird. She made some great cookies that I just wouldn't eat because of that cooling effect. Which makes them even lower calorie. :-)
Does it actually remain calorie free when caramelized? That's a chemical change.
"Sweeteness" isn't an absolute chemical property of a molecule, it's about the capacity of a molecule to bind with our sweet receptors inside our mouths and the neural response our brain receives.
Sweeteners generally have much higher capacity of binding with our sweet receptors, thus they produce a stronger electrical signal towards our brain. Afaik the relative sweeteness is calculated by diluting glucose and sweetener X in a glass of water and then calculating the amount of one compared to the other.
E.g. If you need 0.05 grams of a sweetener to obtain the same effect of 1 gram of sugar then it's 20 times more sweet.
So the sweet compound is not the enzyme, but "diterpenoids called stevioside and rebaudioside A" which are small molecules. Well small-ish, as you can see:
https://www.ebi.ac.uk/chebi/searchId.do?chebiId=CHEBI:9271
with a formula of C38H60O18 it is 4-5 times the size of a glucose molecule.
Every chemical reaction is in an equilibrium between reagents (R) and products (P). Products consistently transform in reagents and viceversa, and the equilibrium (more reagent or more product) depends on the relative energy levels.
It's like going from a valley to another one, the lower valley will determine if you have more reagent (R) or product (P).
But to go between the two valleys there is a mountain. The mountain does not determine whether you will have more P or R, but it determines how much energy (of various forms) to go from valley of reagents to valley of products. Sometimes the mountain between the valleys is so high that no reactions occur or they occur at such a small speed that you will see no difference.
Simple example: diamond and graphite. Graphite is MUCH more stable than diamond, because it's energy level is much lower than the one of a diamond. BUT there is a very high mountain between the two forms, thus it takes millions of years for a diamond to transform into graphite and you don't see your jewelry turning into pencils (even though, eventually it will).
What catalysts do is that they basically lower the mountain: the reactions from R to P and P to R become much faster, now I can go from valley to valley with ease.[1]
This means that you can chemically engineer new sweeteners, potentially much more sweet. This is good for the producer (needs less sweetener) but also for the consumer (taste is the same, but eats less sweetener).
[1]https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image...