new natural sweetener

[astonish]

While shopping Thrusday, I found a new natural, no cal sweetener that is safe for diabetics. It is called Truvia. It is a mixture of stevia and erythritol.

Read about it here
www.truvia.com

:wave:

[Kurst]

I picked some up the other day. I really like it so far. I use 1/2 of what I was using of Splenda for the same sweetness in my coffee/tea. :thup:

[RobLL]

It only available in packets. The site does not say there is/is not a carrier for the two sweetening agents. Splenda's active ingredient has no calories, but the carrier adds 90 per cup of sugar. The packets show no calories, because it is less than 1 per packet. The second active ingredient in Truvia is a sugar alcohol, erithrol which may be the carrier. It is the best of the sugar alcohols I understand. The site carefully avoids giving the information I was looking for.

[astonish]

According to the packets the only ingredients are stevia and erythritol.

Astonish

[Nancy LC]

I wish they'd market it for baking. :)

Stevia and erythritol both have a white sugar like bulk so I doubt they need to add any fillers like they do with Splenda. Also, sucralose is 600x sweeter than sugar, so you have to dilute it way down for packaging. Stevia, not sure what the equivalency is, probably real close to the same potency as sugar and Erythritol is only 70% as sweet as sugar.

However E. *IS* a sugar, a sugar alcohol. That means it acts like sugar in cooking (sort of). Which is a VERY handy thing when you're making certain things. You could make syrups and stuff but E alone has some annoying properties like (I think) recrystalizing and it has a "cooling sensation" if you put it directly on your tongue. So it should generally be mixed with other sweeteners.

[NoWhammies]

I bought some of this on Saturday. I was surprised at the grain size. I like it - it is quite clean tasting. I wonder if this would carmelize with a kitchen blow torch. I can see I'm going to have to get out my pyromaniac tools and burn me some Truvia. :D