Trim Healthy Mama Plan (16 page)

Are you at or close to goal weight? You may want to include a little more raw honey here and there. Don't be afraid to put one tablespoon in your smoothies or shakes sometimes. But even though we are both at goal weight, we have not simply traded out stevia for honey. Most of our sweetness still comes from stevia but we enjoy more honey than we did in the earlier stages of our THM journey. If you are exercising a lot, running around burning up energy, and feel like you can handle (or even benefit from) the glucose/fructose energy gift of honey, do so but always in moderation.

Children can enjoy regular honey-sweetened treats if they don't have weight issues, since their cells are not nearly as insulin-resistant as ours. But remember, even children shouldn't overdo glycemic-impact sweeteners. Our children enjoy both honey- and stevia-sweetened treats. They often use a little of both in their oatmeal, in their drinks, and in some baked sweet treats they enjoy making. In our homes we call that “honey 'n' doonk.” These two sweeteners harmonize fabulously together. Stevia extract is actually a much more affordable sweetener than honey, since it is so potent—so combining them this way helps out our budgets.

What if you have a super-high metabolism and actually need to put on weight? In this instance it does not make sense to use stevia over honey. Try a little raw honey with every meal, always make sure to center these meals with protein, and don't forget to load the buttah on, too, for a good Crossover effect!

While coconut sugar does not spike your blood glucose nearly as much as regular sugar, it does have a glycemic index (GI) in the mid-thirties, which means its ability to raise blood sugar is about the same as that of raw honey. It contains both carbs and calories, so if weight loss is desired, it is best not to use coconut sugar as a chief sweetener. Like honey, though, it is another sweetener that can be used with our blessing when you are close to or at goal weight, for children, or for those who only like rare sweet treats and prefer to use it over stevia sparingly.

While this is promoted as a low-glycemic sweetener and safer than sugar, we don't recommend it due to its extremely high fructose component. Due to processing (even at
low temperatures) it has an unnaturally high concentration of 90 percent fructose to 10 percent glucose. Nowhere in nature does this occur naturally. The only other food that is similar is high-fructose corn syrup, which most people know is extremely unhealthy.

Chicory root and
monk fruit extract are two other natural sweeteners that do not have an impact on blood sugar. If you have allergies to any of the above-mentioned sweeteners, you can use these on the plan, but be careful to read labels when purchasing. Make sure they are not blended with any items on the list we mentioned above in the
Stevia Baddies section
. Chicory root (otherwise known as inulin) can also cause some stomach bloating for certain people.

We can't end this chapter without addressing some of the myths and concerns about stevia that continue to propagate. Please don't simply take our own word for it: We encourage everyone to do their own research when considering adding any new food or supplement. There are hundreds of studies and much research available on this subject. We were compelled to get to the bottom of it all for our own peace of mind.

Stevia has been called a fake sweetener—ouch, that stings—and of late it's been given a hard time by some food-blogging sites. Stevia extract powder is not “created” in a laboratory like artificial sweeteners. It's every bit as natural as honey, maple syrup, or sugar itself. Recently it's been called overly processed, bleached, and responsible for insulin spikes (despite the fact that it does not raise blood sugar). Stevia is sometimes blamed for triggering “sweet taste addictions” that will never go away and that cause people to overeat. What else? Oh yes, it's been labeled an unbiblical sweetener. But here's what hurts the most: Stevia has been blamed for infertility and miscarriage. All joking aside now, some of these are pretty serious accusations. Let's tackle them.

Much of this finger-pointing at stevia comes from it being lumped in with the pink and purple packets of artificial sweeteners at your grocery store. Stevia is not sugar, which is
perceived to be “natural,” so what else could stevia be but an artificial sweetener—a fake! This notion could not be more wrong. You may have heard the speculation that artificial sweeteners keep you fat by raising insulin levels—and there may be some truth in that—but don't lump stevia into that category. A study published in the August 2010 issue of
Appetite
comparing sugar, aspartame, and stevia revealed that stevia reduced both blood sugar and insulin levels as compared with the other two sweeteners. This same study revealed that the group who were preloaded with stevia before meals did not overeat at subsequent meals.

Stevia plants are grown to maturity, then the leaves are dried naturally. The sweetest parts of the leaf are extracted via water (which simply means they are soaked for periods of time). This water extract is then filtered with the use of food-grade alcohol (in the case of THM's stevia, every ingredient used—even this alcohol— is certified organic). Those of you who have ever made a vanilla extract in your kitchen will know that this part of the process is exactly the same one used when extracting vanilla flavor from the vanilla bean.

But
how does the leaf start out as green and the powder end up as white? Serene's husband led a team for a second visit over to the farms where our stevia is grown and processed to find out more about this. Stevia extract is often unfairly bashed due to the presumption that it is bleached. While it is true that some stevia products are bleached at the end of processing, organic stevia farmers do not typically bleach the extract (THM's stevia is never bleached). Since not all parts of the stevia plant are sweet and some are even bitter, extraction needs to occur for this sweetness to be isolated. The sweet taste of stevia comes from the
glycosides inside the leaf. Glycosides are naturally a whitish color, and they can be anything from a creamy hue to a stark white depending on the strain of plant.

Once the green part of the leaf (chlorophyll) is separated during the extraction process, the glycosides remain. But even though they've been separated from the other non-sweet parts of the plant, these glycosides are not chemically altered from their original state. The end result after they are dried is a white, fluffy powder. This powder is then usually granulated, making it easier to spoon out or pour through shaker holes. THM's
Pure Stevia Extract Powder is a little different from most other extracts in that it is not granulated. We chose to leave out this extra step because in our opinion it changes the flavor of the stevia—making it slightly more bitter (according to our taste buds)—and we also wanted as few processing steps as possible from leaf to powder. True, it's harder to shake out; but that is why we “doonk.”

So yes, stevia undergoes some processes to get to the white-powder state. This does not mean it has been debauched into something not recognized by the human body. If you prefer to grow stevia leaves in your garden, dry them, soak them, and then follow further steps until you can pulverize the redried leaves into a green powder—go right ahead. This homemade stevia option is certainly fine for some of our ultra-purists who prefer the whole-leaf option rather than the extracted
glycosides; but there will be more bitterness in this powder. We used to think that while the green powder didn't taste as good, surely it was the only type that contained all the health benefits of stevia. Our thinking was that the white glycosides did not pose actual harm but they probably didn't contain many health goodies, either—sorta neutral health ground. We were wrong. A study published in volume 64, issue 7, of
Nutrition and
Cancer
in 2012 showed that the extracted sweet part of stevia kills up to 71 percent of human
breast cancer cells after seventy-two hours of treatment in vitro. Researchers also found that this stevia compound acts as an antioxidant for healthy cells and helps protect them from damage. It does the exact opposite to the breast cancer cells and floods them with toxic-free radicals. This halts DNA replication and disrupts the cancer cells' mitochondria, causing the cancer cells to die. The extract itself has also shown significant anti-inflammatory, immune-boosting, and blood sugar–stabilizing effects.

Does stevia cause
infertility and miscarriage? These are fair questions and they continue to arise as stevia gets more time in the spotlight. No use putting our heads in the sand and ignoring these questions just because we love having a natural sweetener that is calorie-free and doesn't raise blood sugar. If it's dangerous, let's logically find out. We could not encourage something that is damaging to fertility and health.

The whole controversy over stevia and fertility started when it was rumored that women in two indigenous tribes of South America chewed on the herb as a contraceptive (or drank the tea—there are different claims). There is no data showing that this did in fact work for these women and many researchers point out that if stevia did have contraceptive properties, then the native population of Brazil and Paraguay would certainly be affected, which is simply not the case. Many researchers have been quick to make the argument that it is likely that if the contraceptive effect of stevia were real, scientists would have long ago discovered that fact and isolated the compounds responsible.

It was this rumor that grew into folklore that triggered many hundreds of studies attempting to see if there is any real connection between stevia and fertility issues. In the 1960s a study was published in which rats were given extremely high doses of liquid stevia (in place of water), which caused a downward trend in their fertility. If you hear someone say, “Stevia causes infertility,” this is the study that entrenched that claim in some people's minds.

Hundreds of subsequent studies with better methodology and larger numbers of test subjects have not shown that stevia poses a risk to fertility, especially in the dosages of normal consumption. A recent study done at the Primate Research Center of Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, once again studied the effects of extremely high doses of stevia on rodents but again revealed opposing results to the initial controversial 1968 study. The researchers not only looked at the rodents ingesting the high doses but on two subsequent generations. They found that health, mating, and fertility were not affected at all, in any of the generations, even with a dosage of 2,500 mg/kg. The recommended daily dose for humans is 2 mg/kg. Another study published in the
Journal of Endocrinology and Reproduction
(volume 12, 2008) concluded that
Stevia rebaudiana
had no adverse effects on the fertility of adult female mice.

We're talking rodents in those studies, so what about human fertility? Professor Joseph Kruc, the Purdue University biochemist who headed up the initial stevia study on rats in 1968, summed up the likelihood of stevia affecting human fertility. He admitted that the reason the rats in the study experienced fertility issues was because of the overdose of the stevia they were given. For the same effect to be had in humans, a 120-pound human would have to consume upward of seven pounds of stevia a day. Also, these rats were fed extremely high doses of dried green stevia from the entire plant, not just the leaves. It's not unusual for stems and roots to contain higher amounts of toxic components that leaves do not (elderberry is a great example of this).

In fact, the use of stevia and its positive influence on blood sugar (which can also be researched in hundreds of studies) has been touted to improve fertility in women with
PCOS. Once insulin levels decrease when sugars and starches are lowered in the diet, cycles normalize and fertility has a much better chance of returning. We receive hundreds of testimonies from women who could not conceive before THM and now that they have regulated their blood sugars they are pregnant!

Miscarriage is a heartbreaking topic. We have both suffered miscarriages and we would never wish that painful loss on any family. We have each had two miscarriages but
we had them before we ever began using stevia. We never blamed our diets, which were high in honey and maple syrup at the time probably because those two are such common sweeteners.

When dealing with the trauma of miscarriage sometimes we're just desperate to have a reason—grief is blinding, feelings of loss are overwhelming, and confusion is high. It's human to grasp at anything different in our lives that may or may not have been a cause. Some women can have many full-term pregnancies and then suddenly their body will not carry a pregnancy—“WHY????!!!!” we scream. While there is no scientific evidence to put any blame on stevia for miscarriage, there are anecdotal reports of women who begin stevia use and then relate their miscarriage to that. The tribal folklore and the early rat studies that are often stated as factual keep the suspicions about stevia twirling around in women's minds.