Health, Wellness, Pure Essential Oils and Sensible Nutrition

Imagine a natural sweetener, a sugar substitute, that you could add to your healthy lifestyle that actually enhances your health.

Imagine a natural sweetener that you could add to your diet and still experience weight loss.

Imagine a natural sweetener that's high in antioxidants that help prevent the DNA damage that causes cancer; one that's fat free, caloric free, and lowers and balances your blood glucose level.

Impossible right? Wrong!

There is such a sweetener and its called Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana).

Stevia rebaudiana is a South American shrub that grows in semi-arid areas of Brazil and Paraguay. The leaves of the plant have been used for generations as a sweetener by the Guarani people and more recently throughout South America and Asia. In fact, Japan's diet coke is sweetened with Stevia.

Yet despite its uses in Japan, Korea and Brazil, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refused to allow it as a food additive or sweetener here in the United States. The FDA approved it for dietary supplemental use only. That is, until recently, when two companies formed an alliance and were successful in getting Stevia approved as a food additive here in the U.S.

Order Stevia Extract here........

The companies are the Coca-Cola Co. and Cargill Inc. Cargill Inc. has tested Stevia extensively and published the results of studies backing its safety in the scientific journal Food and Chemical Toxicology in May 2008. Their studies paid off because the FDA has officially approved the first Stevia product to be used as a food supplement.

This is a great win for those of us wanting a healthier substitute for sugar and comes at a time when there is so much controversy over substitute sugars such as aspartame being linked to cancer, leukemia and lymphomas and sucralose (Splenda) promoting obesity and weight gain. I am sure we'll be seeing many new products that will be stevia enhanced.

For now though, we don't have to wait for Coca - Cola or Cargill to provide us with these products (although I'm secretly hoping that they'll "stevia enhance" my guilty pleasure - Diet Coke ) You can replace your current sugar, aspartame or sucralose with Young Living's Stevia Extract.

There are plenty of ways to use this sweetener and get the health benefits now. You can add it to your tea or coffee and even replace it with the sugar you use for cooking. Because of its incredible sweetness strength, its 15 times sweeter than sugar, you need very little. 2-3 drops of Stevia liquid can replace 2 teaspoons of sugar. For cooking 1 teaspoon of liquid Stevia Extract is equivalent to 1 cup of sugar.

Here is a recipe for Lemonade from The Stevia Cookbook: Cooking with Nature's Calorie-Free Sweetener copyright 1999

LEMONADE (Yield: 10 8-ounce servings)

2 cups fresh squeezed lemon juice
8 cups water
2 teaspoons stevia liquid concentrate
ice cubes
lemon for garnish
1. Combine all of the ingredients in a pitcher and stir until well
blended
2. Pour into ice-filled 10-ounce glasses, garnish with lemon slices, and
serve.