Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Truvia/Nectresse "NATURAL" Sweeteners?

Third installment in the sweetener controversy.  This one is about the ALL NEW - ALL NATURAL- ALL GIANT MONEY MAKING BANDWAGON RIDING WAVE OF all natural LIFE AFFIRMING WONDROUSLY CALORIE FREE sweeteners, Truvia and Nectresse.  Cargill and Coke came out with Truvia awhile ago and their claim that it is all natural is a huge crock.  I use stevia leaves in my mint tea all the time.  I steep the leaves in hot water.  Cargill claims the same thing, they make tea out of natural stevia. Then they process it.  The actual Coke patent for the process outlines a 40+ step process that includes the use of acetone, methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, and isopropanol to "purify" the stevia extract.  I'm sorry, whatever happened to just using an evaporator to dry out the stevia tea to get stevia powder?  Anyway, the FDA took just three weeks to approve this "ALL NATURAL" process and grant it GRAS status.  Money talks as we have seen in the past.
Nectresse is the newest product in the lineup of all natural sweeteners.  It comes from Lo Han, or Monk fruit.  Monk fruit are 150 to 200 times sweeter than sugar.  McNeil, the makers of the very toxic Splenda, are the makers of this new product.  I have not found the info on how the Monk fruit is processed, so I can't really comment on that at this time. 

What I can comment on is the MAIN ingredient in Nectresse and Truvia.  Erythritol.

Erythritol is a naturally-occurring sweetener found in many fruits, in nature it is present in such small amounts (less than .005% by weight) it’s impractical to use natural sources.  So Cargill and McNeill manufacture erythritol by chemically converting genetically modified corn into a food grade starch which it ferments to create glucose and then processes further to create erythritol.

Shame on the FDA for allowing the deceptive advertising by these giant agribusinesses to state that these chemically made artificial sweeteners to state that they are "ALL NATURAL".  They are not in anyway all natural, they are made using toxic chemicals and are as far from natural as shoe leather is from a cow.  

2 comments:

  1. Just now getting this Truvia sweetnr here. Is big deal, all natural. So you say no??????

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  2. Ana, Truvia is very bad. certainly not in the same level as Aspartame, which is EXTREMELY bad. Stevia is a simple plant and you should be able to buy the bulk leaves online. Steep in water or vodka, strain and you have very sweet liquid you can use to sweeten any drink. And it is cheap cheap cheap. And no toxic additives. Good luck, try it and you will be surprised.

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