i n dy e a s t e n d . c o m
the Independent
December 13
2017
In Depth News
Sugar Substitute May Stymie Lyme
By Rick Murphy
Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t object to the term “natural flavors” if the related ingredients have no added colors, artificial flavors, or synthetics. Still, ingredients that fall under the “natural flavor” umbrella may be highly processed. Many argue that this means there’s nothing natural about them. You can grow stevia plants at home and use the leaves to sweeten foods and beverages. Reb-A sweeteners are available in liquid, powder, and granulated forms.
Stevia comes from the Stevia rebaudiana plant, which is a member of the chrysanthemum family, a subgroup of the Asteraceae family (ragweed family). There’s a big difference between the stevia you buy at the grocery store and the stevia you may want to try growing at home.
“More than 78 million US adults are obese, and sugar-dense foods and beverages may be a major contributing factor,” according to the Huffington Post. “We’re in search of a sweet but healthy solution. Stevia, an FDA-approved sweetener, attempts to be the answer. It’s becoming increasingly popular, blending in between the pink, blue, and yellow packets at coffee shops, even making its way into brand-name soda products.”
Who knew? If the preliminary research outlined in this section proves accurate, stevia, a natural, non-caloric sweetener made from the leaves of a Paraguayan shrub, will go down in history as a cure for to one of the East End’s biggest health problems: Lyme Disease.
Dr. Eva Sapi, University of New Haven, who uncovered the connection with Lyme Disease, cautioned that only the liquid, whole-leaf stevia, extracted from the leaf, helps decrease the mass of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that causes Lyme Disease.
Stevia products found on grocery store shelves, such as Truvia and Stevia in the Raw, don’t contain whole stevia leaf. They’re made from a highly-refined stevia leaf extract called rebaudioside A (aka Reb-A). In fact, many stevia products have very little stevia in them at all. Reb-A is about 200 times sweeter than table sugar. It can have a polarizing taste, though, experts warn, which is one reason why it hasn’t replaced the likes of Splenda, Equal, and Sweet’N Low in the diet drink market, though Pepsi is testing a product called Pepsi True that will reportedly contain stevia and cane sugar. Some stevia brands also contain natural flavors. The US Food and 16
who played Lydia, Laura Fraser, laughed about the product antiplacement: “Sorry, stevia,” she said. “Oh, I suppose it feels a bit rubbish. Do you think anyone actually bought it anyway?” According to The New York Times, yes indeed. Stevia now sits in second place in the $400 million market for sugar-bowl sachets. (Sucralose, or Splenda, hangs on at No. 1.) When Cargill introduced the leading brand of
stevia, called Truvia, in 2008, the company heralded it as “a new category of sweet.” Sure enough, imitators followed, and then the manufacturer of Sweet’N Low started filling light green packets with what it called Stevia in the Raw.
For those interested in harvesting their own, several local nurseries carry stevia plants for your own gardens.
Even before its potential to neutralize the Lyme Disease bacteria was discovered, stevia was making inroads at the supermarket.
Coca-Cola Life, which launched in the US in 2014, was a lowercalorie pop marketed to those who are turned off by the taste of typical diet soda. It relies on both stevia extract and cane sugar to get its sweetness. Naturally, Pepsi is rolling out its own version. Another plus: stevia is calorie-free. According to the New York Times Magazine, on a Sunday evening in September, 2013 stevia became famous. In the final episode of “Breaking Bad,” an image of the sweetener filled the TV screen. Lydia emptied the packet into her mug of chamomile tea, not knowing that Walter White, her former partner, had poisoned it. “How are you feeling?” he later asked. “Kind of under the weather, like you’ve got the flu? That would be the ricin I gave you. I slipped it into that stevia crap that you’re always putting in your tea,” Walt confessed.
In an interview with The Guardian, published the next day, the actress
The Blacklegged Tick carries Lyme Disease.
Lyme
Continued From Page 15.
up to 150 times the sweetness of sugar, are heat-stable, pH-stable, and not fermentable. Stevia’ s active ingredient works longer than sugar. (See sidebar.) In solid form, the stevia did not perform particularly well in lab tests. But liquid, whole-leaf stevia, extracted from the leaf of the Japanese plant -- not the powdered varieties that people most commonly use -- reduced the biofilm mass by about 40 percent, the researchers found.
“The first experiment, Stevia, stood up very strongly. I couldn’t believe it,” Sapi said. Sapi said their thought is that the bacteria, which causes Lyme Disease, sees the sugar and looks at it as food, not an antibiotic. “It reduces the size of the bacteria in the test tube by quite a bit,” she said. So while Sapi and her team with the Lyme Disease research group continue their work, a small clinical trial based out of New York got underway just a few months ago. They are using stevia along with antibiotics to treat Lyme Disease while others are taking the extract themselves. Sapi told The
Independent / CDC
Independent Thursday that there is a long road ahead but laboratory testing has begun.
“We do a lot of testing antibiotics and alternative agents but so far we only do test tube data,” she said. “We would like to extend our testings to an animal model and we are trying a zebra fish model. When we have animal data we will be able to do testing which can have data which can be closer to the clinical applications.” Though years of testing are routine procedure before a medicine is approved for distribution, stevia is a natural remedy.
“Stevia was checked for its safety by our FDA and it cleared,” Dr. Sapi noted. “Japanese society has used it for centuries with no problem. [We] are conducting a clinical trail as we speak so we will have data very soon.” “I’ve got emails from people saying they’re getting better, but again, we need to have double binding, clinical trials before we say yes,” Sapi said in an earlier interview. “Right now I would wait for the trial that is being conducted. Everybody is holding their breath to see if it helps and let’s hope for it, that would be wonderful.”