Many vegans are health conscious. We care about our sugar intake and many vegans don’t feel right about ingesting chemicals. I used to be an artificial sweetener hound. I used Equal many years back, drank diet drinks with aspartame, and most recently used Splenda to sweeten up my drinks, because they claimed it was derived from sugar. More natural, right? Apparently not. More and more studies are coming out against these chemical sweeteners, which makes me uneasy, to say the least. But a good excuse to stay away from chemical sweeteners. So, what if I want a natural sweetener without all the sugar and calories? Is it possible?

TADA!! It seems there may be some zero calorie sweeteners that really are natural and organic. One sweetener sold at Wild Oats is called Stevia, which has actually been around for centuries. The active ingredient is stevioside, found in the sweet leaves of the stevia plant. It’s 300 times sweeter than sugar and it’s natural. Read the safety studies conducted here http://www.stevia.net/safety.htm.

There’s another product I saw advertised in VegNews called Organic Zero made by Wholesome Sweeteners. They claim to be made JUST from sugar. It’s .2 calories per gram and suitable for diabetics. It’s actually less sweet than sugar. 70% as sweet as table sugar. And no chemicals are used in its production. Here’s their website:

http://www.wholesomesweeteners.com/brands/wholesome/Wholesome_Sweeteners_Organic_ZERO.html

Before swearing off zero calorie sweeteners for good, you might want to give these a go. Perhaps you can use sweeteners with ease and not have to weigh the pros and cons of weight gain (consuming too much real sugar) over cancer (consuming too many artificial sweeteners). Sweet!

side note: new updates have been made to my Happy Vegetable Store. Check it out here!!!