Stevia or Sugar? Which of these do you put in your coffee or use in your sweet recipes? Our favorite Nutritionist Alexandra Kontodimou (nutrition_home) explains the benefits of stevia consumption and how important it is to replace sugar with it. Let’s see:
Stevia or Stevia Rebaudiana is a plant with a strong sweet taste that belongs to the chrysanthemum family. It originates from Paraguay and Brazil and has been used as a sweetener since the 16th century.
Stevia is a vegetable alternative to sugar as it is 250-300 times sweeter than regular sugar, and its use has been recognized by the FDA as safe. Recently, it has gained interest from people who care about their diet and health but are lovers of sweets.
As an alternative to table sugar, the use of stevia has significant health benefits. Some of them are:
- Stevia, which contains fewer calories than sugar, can play a role in weight management by helping you eat fewer calories. Indicatively, a stick of stevia Freevia powder contains only 2 calories
- while a stick of liquid stevia Freevia contains 0 calories!
- Because it contains very few carbohydrates, it is an excellent sugar alternative for people on low carb diets.
- Replacing sugar with stevia also lowers the glycemic index (GI) of foods, which means that they affect blood sugar levels to a lesser extent making it an ideal solution for people with type 2 diabetes.
- Sugar has been linked to many negative health effects, such as corpulence, the development of chronic diseases and chronic inflammation, and its replacement with stevia reduces its long-term health effects.
In addition, some studies have linked stevia consumption to low triglycerides and high HDL (good) cholesterol levels, both of which are associated with a reduced risk of heart disease.
You can replace sugar with stevia in your coffee, tea and even in sweet preparations such as cakes, creams and jams, thus reducing their caloric load, but also the fluctuations of blood glucose which lead us to… “a piece a little while later”.
Alexandra Kontodimou
Dietitian-Nutritionist MSc
Nutrition Home, 71 Tsimiski, Thessaloniki
www.nutritionhome.gr
