musings of a gluten free runner

Posts Tagged ‘stevia’

Dark chocolate is my favorite dessert.  Often I have a double whammy of my homemade cocoa with a few squares of premium chocolate.  The irony is that I never liked chocolate until after I discovered that I was allergic to gluten.  I’m not sure why, I just hated the waxy consistency and felt like it was over-dominant and overly sweet.  Even as a child I always gravitated to the more subtle flavors like cinnamon or vanilla.

Actually what made the difference was all the chocolate research and tasting that I did for my cookie recipes.  I became obsessed with chocolate production, with cocoa mass content, with the purity of the ingredients and with the absence of soy lecithin…. something that I very much contribute (along with low quality milk solids) to the waxiness of my childhood Halloween candies.

It’s no secret that cacao is a superfood.  The bean is high in antioxidants and a delicious source of minerals… including IRON.  Next time you are shopping for dark chocolate, look at the nutrition label and check the iron count.  The brands vary, but all the bars that have a high cocoa content should supply a really decent amount of iron!  It by far my favorite iron-rich foods… pumpkin seeds are second!

So, I thought I would share some of my favorite eating and baking chocolates…. (a note of disclaimer: the darker the better for me!) And although there are some lovely raw chocolates, they don’t have the complexity of flavor that I find from some of these amazing chocolate gurus.  Here are my faves in order for least intense to most hard-hitting.

1) Sweet Earth Baking Chocolate- 65% Big Baking Chips

Small chocolate producer in the Bay area.  These are the big chips I used in the Sift Bakery Double Chocolate cookies.  They are organic and Fair Trade Certified, vegan and soy free!  They have a number of other quality items too.  These were my snack during long days at the bakery!

2) Vivani’s 85% Bar

Just the right amount of bitter bite and smooooth.  When this goes on sale at New Seasons, I buy a case full.  This bar is truly astounding. Organic with just three ingredients: cocoa mass, cocoa butter, raw cane sugar.  They have an Allergy note on the website, saying that the machines are cleaned to a very high standard.  I have never had a problem with these and I am very sensitive.  There are many other chocolate bars that I’ve tried and won’t eat again because of reactions, but these feel very clean to my system.  Chock it up to German fastidiousness.

3) Theo Chocolate’s Venezuela 91% Bar

This company is from Seattle and it rocks.  The Origin Bars all have distinct flavors, like fine wines or coffees where you feel you are tasting the nuances in the soils from different regions of the world.  hmmm.  And 91% is just hardcore, but not bitter.  I love it.  The higher the cocoa content, the less I feel like I need to satisfy the jones.  No soy, no dairy, it’s beautiful!

4) Michel Cluizel’s Noir Infini 99% Bar

OK, I admit that 99% cocoa content sounds extreme, and maybe it is… but this bar is sweeter than expected.  The first time I bought a tiny square of it at Portland’s chocolate boutique (HEAVEN) Cacao, I was expecting it to taste like chomping on a square of baker’s chocolate.  Was I wrong!  The Noir Infini is an intense experience and not for the mainstream snicker’s addict… but it is a cocao-lover’s dream.  In addition to a tiny amount of sugar, it contains bourbon vanilla, a hint of orange and undisclosed spices.  Lucky for me I can’t taste the orange, I just taste intensity.

Here’s my cocoa recipe again:

1-2 TBS Raw Cocoa (I love Nativas Naturals)

pinch celtic sea salt

2 packets stevia (I love NuNaturals)

6-8 oz Hot H2O

2 oz Coconut Milk (like SoDelicious- I use the unsweetened)

optional: sprinkle of cayenne or cinnamon or both!

I can’t contain my excitement for this new coconut milk! It totally took me by surprise. We were in Ashland for the Easter holiday weekend (UP is a Catholic school, so they get a four-day weekend) and I started jumping up and down when I saw this in the Co-op. By the way, the Ashland food co-op is like my home away from home. I practically live there when we’re visiting. Luckily Ian is a sport and let’s me make a daily (sometimes twice daily) trip. Why is it so exciting? They have mate on tap, three kinds of raw-granola in their bulk section, a juice bar!!!, a huge assortment of kombuchas, amazing fresh fruit and gorgeous young coconuts & dates… my mouth is watering… I’m going to stop now.

When we got back to Portland I was elated to find that my very own Whole Foods in the Pearl is carrying both the orginial and the unsweetened varieties. I picked up a carton of the unsweetened version last night and made some hot rice porridge for desert. It was so creamy I wanted to cry.

I was alarmed to find this article about Stevia on the Vegnews website. I eat a fair amount of stevia… ever since the non-bitter types came out a number of years ago. My favorite brand is NuNaturals out of Eugene, Oregon. It really has the cleanest flavor of any that I’ve tried over the years. The maltodextrin doesn’t seem to have any adverse affects on my stomach at all. The new Truvia, however, doesn’t sit as well. I appreciate them trying to cut stevia with Erythritol to give it that granular sugar-like quality, but my system doesn’t do well with sugar alcohol even though Erythritol is much more gentle on my system than Xylitol.

An aside: Erythritol & xylitol, are natural sugar alcohols so they are digested differently than regular sugar and don’t produce the pronounced blood-sugar spike and insulin response… too much of which is linked with diabetes and weight gain. Erythritol is known for having less gastric side effects than other sugar alcohols because it is absorbed in the small intestine while xylitol is absorbed in the large intestine and larger quanities often lead to gas, bloating and a laxative effect. Erythritol, has 5% of the calories of table sugar (.2calories per gram vs. 4 calories per gram) and 70% of the sweetness. So it is almost calorie-free

But back to the sweet stevia leaf…. after reading this article I want to figure out how it affect fertility in women, not just men. ugh. I really don’t want to give up my little white packets. They make cocoa & tea so much more delightful.

READ THE FULL STORY ON VEG NEWS.COM
Does this sugar stand-in stymie hopes for fertility in the future? VN’s resident nutritionist studies the sweet substitute.
By Ilyse Simon

Confused about whether or not switching from sugar to stevia might hurt your chances at parenthood? Your nutritional debate is understandable. Though the Food and Drug Administration approved stevia in December, there’s still some question about how much is really safe, especially if you’re trying to conceive. The short answer is that adding stevia to a cup of tea or coffee each day won’t compromise your health. However, stevia is worth scrutinizing if you plan to use it often or in large quantities.

Stevia is a shrub native to South America with leaves sweeter than white sugar. It’s calorie-free and one of just a few alternative sweeteners for people with diabetes, and the FDA has designated stevia Generally Recognized as Safe. (This is controversial because there are many products deemed “safe” by the FDA that I would never consider consuming, and the FDA has a history of protecting big agribusiness over human health—but there’s an element of truth to this one.) Stevia has been used in other countries for centuries without ill effects. Used to sweeten yerba mate in Paraguay and in Japan to sweeten pickles since the 1970s, stevia—in small quantities—has not been proven harmful. The main concern is that if we mass-market this plant extract as we have with soy, stevia could become a ubiquitous ingredient in everyday packaged foods. If your energy bar, smoothie, tea, and dairy-free ice cream are all sweetened with stevia, that might be more than is considered healthy.

North Americans, in general, still think more equals better, and tend to go to extremes when we find something we like. Again, it’s similar to the soy story: Asian cultures eat moderate amounts of soy daily in whole-food forms without negative consequences; Western cultures have processed and refined soy into isolated protein components, added it to highly processed energy bars, and continue scarfing them down like health foods. This is where the problems lie. The specifics on stevia show that high amounts affect male reproductive health with reduced sperm counts and possible infertility. In some laboratory studies, stevia acts on a cell’s DNA to cause unwanted mutations and may promote cancer. In other studies, large amounts of stevia interfere with normal carbohydrate metabolism. Recently, the Center for Science in the Public Interest lists stevia as an additive that people should “try to avoid,” but maintains that small amounts are probably safe.

The bottom line is that a little is probably fine, but a lot is not. That’s advice for almost any situation. One or two cups of coffee with stevia is not raising concern amongst researchers. It’s the scenario where stevia sweetens diet soda, fruited waters, and every piece of chewing gum stuck to your shoe that is of concern. Keep your diet clean, eat lots of fruits and veggies, go ahead and ditch the tighty-whiteys, and your fertility will likely be fine.

I was so excited to find this stuff last week… all I kept thinking was: it’s about time! Zevia is a “natural” soda made very simply: water, stevia and flavoring ingredient. I haven’t bought any kind of soda in ages, but I just had to try this stuff because it had stevia in it. Hopefully this is a good sign that more foods will start using the delicious calorie-free herbal sweetener instead of all the chemical sh*t that’s been out there since the days of women drinking Diet Rite. (For some reason those cans always conjure pictures of feather-haired women donning leg warmers, sweatbands, and full body leotards.)

More to the point, stevia is still considered a supplement. The sugar industry, and especially the established big boys of the artificial sweetener realm have been pressuring the FDA for years to keep this thing under-wraps.

What a shame. And if, like me, you tried using stevia 10 years ago and shied away because of the aftertaste… you will be pleasantly surprised by all the new “non-bitter” formulas out there. Basically a little of this “sweet leaf” goes a long way. Many of the new stevia powders (especially the packets) are cut with small amounts of other sweeteners (like sugar alcohols) and this mellows the flavor and makes it less potent. The straight stuff is SUPER easy to overdo!

It’s just a matter of time before this one hits huge… and we start seeing it appearing in more processed foods and drinks. Even with all the recent fan-fare stores like Whole Foods still can’t keep stevia next to the other sweeteners, because technically the FDA still classifies it as a “supplement.” So sometimes you have to go hunting for the herbal nectar. Most Whole Foods keep the packets by their tea selection. Trader Joes and Whole Foods both have really reasonably priced boxes of 100 packets under their own labels… both are around $5.00.

Sweetness.

For more information on Stevia and articles on artificial supplements check out the Zevia website links page. (Obviously they are going to be a little biased, but it has some good links).
http://www.zevia.com/products_stevia.html