After deciding to be more health conscious but unable to give up my sweet tooth, I picked up a box of Pure Via from Costco to try in my tea.

It's not bad. It's sweet, but it's very obviously not sugar. I find that it allows more of the astringency of my tea to shine through (yes, I am a heathen who puts sugar in her tea. Sue me.) while still maintaining a 0 calorie drink. And it only takes one packet to sweeten my 4 oz of tea, as opposed to the 2 tsp of sugar that I usually use.

The ingredients listen on the Pure Via packet are Dextrose, Reb A (Stevia extract), Cellulose Powder, Natural Flavors.

Truvia, the other stevia sweetener that I know of lists only 3 ingredients: Erythritol, Rebiana, Natural Flavors.

Reb A and Rebiana are the same thing. They take the stevia leaves, boil them, and then concentrate the sweet tincture down.

Cellulose is the stuff that makes plant cell walls rigid, and Dextrose is glucose.

Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that is absorbed by the large intestine, unlike most sugar alcohols used in other sugar substitutes. This means that it's less likely to have a laxative effect that some sugar substitutes have.

As I said, I haven't had a chance to try the Truvia, and I'm not entirely sure that I like the Pure Via. Has anyone tasted either of them and has an opinion? For those that have tasted both, how similar or different do they taste?

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HEATHEN!

and glucose is sugar. It's better for you than HFCS or table sugar but it is still sugar.

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Yes, I know this. But it has no calories to speak of in the amounts we're talking about.

And I want to make this clear. There's no substitute for real sugar for me...but there are days when I'm going to need to limit my caloric intake because I've splurged elsewhere. I can either not have my tea, or have something with no calories in it to sweeten it.

What I really want to know is how Truvia and Pure Via compare. Do they taste the same? 'cause I'm finding I'm not a huge fan of Pure Via, although it doesn't make me want to sand my tongue like Splenda does.

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Hollering in as a part of the straight tea drinking master race.

(Though I'm fond of HK style milk tea too, and I find my brandy + ceylon is more pleasant with a bit of honey)

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What is HK style?
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Basically, extremely strong ceylon tea that is strained and then mixed with evaporated milk for maximum smoothness.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong-style_milk_tea

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Hmmm....
Seems to be pretty much the same thing except for tarik.

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Evaporated milk is extra smooth.

Condensed milk is super runny, but very sweet.

Not sure if you could really say they're similar. HK Style can be pretty bitter/strong, before adding some sugar.

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I have never seen so detailed a discussion of a sugar substitute before. Don't know how much help you'll get in THIS place, though.

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Eh, it was worth a try, right? Heh.

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All the substitute sugars I've ever tasted leave a weird aftertaste in my mouth, I can't stand that. There's also another thing about substitute sugar that bothers me, how can it have 0 calories? I know that the amount of calories is so small it's negligible, but I don't like it when the packaging states it has no calories.

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Maybe it's the case where the calories it provides are equal or less than what is burned to digest it?

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No FDA regulations has it so that anything less than 5 calories can be labeled as zero. For 2 reasons. One is that it may indeed burn as much as it yields, and two it is difficult to get an accurate calorie number for something of that low calorie content using a traditional burn method.

For sugar substitutes I like succralose (splenda). Not in tea, lord no, let that be bitter but for energy drinks and as a sweetener, actually Wegmans has a bitching iced green tea. Unsweetened zero calories mild taste with a bit of mint it is delicious.

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Still no input from anyone who's tried Truvia or both?

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i eat whatever i want whenever i want and never put on a pound

,l,, ( *o*) ,,l,

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I have to admit, if I were on a diet, I'd just abstain rather than try substitutes. Granted, it's easy for me cause I never had a big sweet tooth anyways.

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Humans never consumed sugar in so direct and immediate a way as refined sugar for a long time.

We used to get a lot of glucose, but never glucose-fructose until we came up with it, pretty much. Hence the rise in dental problems and such since.

As for exercise, it's definitely important as a part of a diet. It can increase your metabolism and burn excess calories.

But ultimately, it's just a measure to maintain a weight. Ultimately, if you're looking to lose a decent amount of fat, you need to, along with exercise, practice a diet that results in negative calories so your body will start burning fat for energy.

People become lazy and fat whenever starvation is solved in their area. Obesity is just a result of not starving.

It doesn't really actually have that much to do with people becoming lazier or anything.

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Of the sugar substitutes I've tried, I think that Splenda tastes the most like regular sugar. However, like PureVia, it uses dextrose for bulk, and dextrose has as many Calories as a similar amount of sucrose. As such, if you use the same amount of sweetener, you aren't cutting caloric intake very much. The substitutes are usually sweeter though, so one could use less to achieve a similar amount of sweetening. i would suggest trying a small amount of honey for a similar effect.

Besides the regulation that zepherin pointed out, some substitutes are indigestible to varying degrees, and therefore indeed have zero or negligible Calories.

Thanks for the advice. I already am exercising (with aerobics, calisthenics, and resistance strength training) and maintaining at least a 500 calorie deficit in my diet. I'd just prefer not to have to exercise for an extra hour because I had 6 cups of tea in a day.

2 tsp of sugar in my cup of tea = 32 calories
1 packet of Pure Via = 0 calories listed on the packet/negligible caloric intake

Similar level of sweetness for those two amounts, btw.

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Wait, do the little teaspoons of sugar in your tea every day make that much difference?

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There are 16 calories in every teaspoon of sugar. If I drink only 6 cups of tea a day with only 2 teaspoons of sugar per cup, that's 12 teaspoons of sugar. 12 X 16 = 192 calories.

To put that into perspective, a single from Wendy's is 420 calories.


So, yeah....it adds up. Quickly. Especially when I have at least 6 cups of tea a day. I'm on my 13th cup right now...

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Ah. Well, I guess I wouldn't have understood before, because I usually just drink a mug of milk tea every day.

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IIRC, a packet of dextrose-bulked sweetener like PureVia has about 3 Calories. So it's negligible, just not quite zero.