Saturday, July 16, 2011

A Note on my Absence

I had a moment of disillusionment with stevia after reading a few articles about the effects of low-cal and no cal sweeteners on the body.

For awhile I decided that I was through trying to cut corners when it came to food. I was just going to eat real food with normal calories and just watch my intake. Unfortunately, this didn't exactly lead to a healthy diet and after counting calories so many times in the past, I could not muster up the motivation to keep up with it again.

Then I discovered this blog. It opened my eyes. It brought together everything I was learning about eating right. I already wrote about this in my weight loss blog (although it's as poorly kept up as this one) so I won't rehash it here, but suffice it to say, I am now committed to eating real foods as much as possible. By "real" I mean unprocessed and as close to the source as my ability and budget allows.

So anyway... although the author of my inspirational blog, Erika, does not use stevia herself and has mentioned that since it is also processed it is probably a no-no, I am finding that adding stevia back into my diet is helping me give up things that had such a hold on me my whole life.

Like pop. I LOVE pop. Or at least I did. Now that I am eating clean, pop isn't doing it for me anymore. It just doesn't taste as good as it used to. But the absence of pop from my life leaves a gaping hole that water just does not fill. So I brought back stevia. I think it is worth it to be cutting out all that HFCS. And as my taste buds recover from processed food overload, I find I don't need as much stevia to make an enjoyable beverage.

Okay... back to the recipes!

2 comments:

  1. Hi there! I have read similar things about avoiding processed foods includes processed stevia.... the lady I have been taking advice from says 'Stevia Leaf' is okay as long as it is unprocessed. When it is unprocessed, it's green straight from the leaf. I bought some from iherb.com -- the brand is Planetary Herbals. Too me, it has a veggy twang that the kal doesn't have...so I am not sold on it completely....and I am not a big experimenter... I tried it only once in my Fage Total... maybe I will try it again today. /sigh. Actually... what I am going to try it in... is Koolaid! As soon as this batch is gone. =) Thanks for your blog!

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  2. just thought I would share that I tried to sweeten my breakfast drink (2 servings)... which usually I use 3 heaping scoops of kal.... and I used 1/4 tsp of the planetary green stuff and couldn't tell it was in there! =( Not sure whether it's worth trying.

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