Stevia: the healthy and natural sweetener
As long as we get older we use to care more about our health, reason why we select carefully the food we buy, or read carefully their labels. One of the main components we should be more aware of is the sugar, due to the many consequences on our health.
We all know that eating a lot of sugar can be bad for our health; it increases our dental problems, the triglycerides in our blood, the anxiety, weight and the diminution of the vitamin B. Unfortunately it is a usual ingredient that many of the products contain, sometimes even in abusive quantities. That is why we want to introduce you an alternative aliment more sweetener than sugar, and even 80 times more once it is dehydrated: we are talking about the STEVIA.
The stevia is a plant originally from Paraguay that has been consumed in this country and others since centuries ago, especially in Japan and China. Why is this product so special? This sweetener provides a great quantity of proteins, fibre, iron, phosphorus, calcium, potassium, vitamins and what is more, it doesn’t have any counter-indications. It is a free calories 100% natural sweetener, suitable for diabetic people, a product that can even help this people to eradicate their disease.
But it also has many more benefits, it regulates the blood pressure and the heart beats, so it is a perfect ingredient for hypertensive people and those who need to reduce the anxiety and stress. It is also recommendable for those people who want to watch their weight as it absorbs the fats and facilitates an easier digestion. If it doesn’t convince you, the stevia is a perfect fighter against the tiredness, being perfect for the weak days of cold winter and it has a great antioxidant power (7 times more than the green tea).
We need to have into account that to get all these proprieties we need to eat this product fresh: fresh or dry leaves. Unfortunately in Spain we cannot reach this product in its natural way due to legislative restrictions, but instead we can find Biostevera. A two years old business located in La Vera, that cultivates stevia and sells it to Germany where the commercialization is legal.
Juan Creus, lawyer of Biostevera and diabetic, is seeking for the legislation change, saying that in two years time any Spanish person will be able to buy this product. The cultivation will even be positive for the economy in La Vera. Meanwhile, in Biostevera they have a drying place to do their first dry transformations, and the next year they will start building a pilot plant to pull out stevia and get the maximum purity of 95% minimum. All these will be made in an ecologic way, becoming the first enterprise that creates the first European natural ecologic sweetener. Later on, they will start new elaborations to provide this product in a way that simulates sugar in any of its forms.
Juan Creus declares that the content of stevia in some products is too small, and that is because it has such a powerful sweetener that just with a little piece of its leaf it can sweet anything in very high levels. There is no doubt that this is the best alternative to substitute sugar to keep enjoying the sweet taste without the bad consequences that we have nowadays.
