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Good evening, folks!
It's been a couple of months I didn't greet you with my foods
My excuses are I was doing my community service during 2 months starting from June and conducting a food exhibition "Foodcraft 2017" with my friends. Later, I'll tell you about Foodcraft.
Now, I'm back with tons of information of food to share.
As you can read from the title above, today's discussion is about sweetener. We know than many people like consuming sweet foods, such as candy, fruits, sweet beverages, and many more. Yet, they themselves are afraid of suffering obesity or diabetes. Those two may even cause people to suffer more illnesses.
In 2008, The U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had stated a new non-calorie sweetener as Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS). Also in 2011, The EU gave an approval to use this non-calorie sweetener in foods and beverages. This non-calorie sweetener is called steviol glycosides, one of components extracted from Stevia plant (Stevia rebaudiana), which you can see the picture above.
Stevia plant is originally from South America, exactly from Paraguay. Ancient people of Paraguay got used to add Stevia leaves into their bitter beverages. Basically, people has already known that Stevia can be used as sweetener. The sweet components of Stevia plant are steviol glycosides, steviol, steviosides, and rebaudioside (A, B, C, D). The sweetness level of Stevia can reach to300 times than sucrose.
During our body metabolism, Rebaudioside A will be degraded by colon microbes into Stevioside and Steviol. Stevioside is further converted to glucose, yet the glucose will directly be consumed by colon microbes and there will not be absorbed in blood. As for the Steviol, it's the last metabolized product of Rebaudioside which is absorbed and glucuronidated. The glucuronide bond is then filtered in kidneys into urine.
Furthermore, Stevia plant is safe for kids, adolescents, nursing mother, diabetic and obesity people. We know that kids are fragile to any excess consumption of certain nutrition, like carbohydrates. Excess consumption of carbohydrate may lead kids to early diabetes, or a hyperactive behavior (too much energy intake). But, using Stevia as sweetener won't cause both of those because its non-calorie effect. It's also similar for nursing mother, in which too much intake of carbohydrates may be harmful for the infants. As for obesity people, Stevia plant can replace the role of sucrose as regular sweetener, of which Stevia offer lower calorie than sucrose. Last but not least, Stevia plant is very good for diabetic people. it's because steviol glycosides enhance the secretion of insulin and steviosides enhance the utilization of secreted insulin. As the result, more glucose can be converted to glycogen.
Although replacing sucrose with Stevia plant is a very safe alternative, the acceptable daily intake (ADI) of steviol glycosides needs to concern about. The ADI of steviol glycosides for human is 7,9 mg / kg body weight. So, when your body weight is about 50 kg, you may consume steviol glycosides until 395 mg (0,395 g). The amount of steviol glycosides is about 2-10% (+/- 6%) of dry weight leaves. Then, around 6,5 g of Stevia leaves that you can consume daily.
That's all about today's sweetener.
Hope you enjoy it! Thankyou
References :
Gupta, Ena et al. 2013. "Nutritional and Therapeutic Values of Stevia rebaudiana : A Review". Journal of Medicine Plant Research, vol. 7 (46) : 3343 - 3353.
International Food Information Council Foundation. 2012. "Stevia Sweeteners". http://foodinsight.org. Accessed on September, 27th 2017 at 07.00 p.m.
International Stevia Council. ___. "All About Stevia". http://internationalsteviacouncil.org. Accessed on September, 27th 2017 at 07.25 p.m.
