Someone needs to put the sweetener industry in check. Who knew people selling sugar could be so ...nasty. I was reading about the stevia leaf and it's extract stevioside, which is supposedly 300x sweeter than sugar. Interestingly, some use stevia to sweeten DCFud's aforementioned yerba mate. The health supplement industry claims that equal, sweet 'n' low, etc. are effectively lobbying to keep stevia/stevioside out of the US. The health supplement industry does tend to ignore the tests that show it may cause lowered fertility and cancer, but that's kinda the same deal we get with aspartame, right? Point being, we shouldn't let the sweetener industry decide what we do or don't get to put in our mouths. Americans should be able to choose their carcinogenic agent of choice to sweeten their coffee every morning. Right?

I luv me some carcincogenic sweetness. (I will note, however, that none of the sweeteners on the market have ever been seriously shown to cause cancer. Liver and kidney problems yes, but not cancer)

I'm personally just for using sugar- if i reemmber right, an average teaspoon really has negligent calories.

If its the atkins effect people are worried about, remember, aspertame (at least in the form of diet soda) is off limits for you too. I'm not sure if splenda is or not.

When I lived in Brazil we used Stevia all the time. It's fine unless you use too much, and then it begins to taste like buttocks. It's got quite a bitter end to it. All this being said, my point is that the US Stevia industry is now marketing it as a dietary supplement by adding fiber to it. Clever, no?

Splenda kind of freaks me out because it's so light. Like if you pick up a full box of Splenda, it feels empty. I think they make it by combining helium with sugar.

When billions are at stake, it's hard to resist corruption...
Why did Congress stop FDA from banning Saccharin?
Why do they rename splenda to sucralose, other than to mislead the public?

People should have the right to choose it, but people should have the right to avoid it without spending 10 minutes reading the ingredients of every product they buy. Products containing it should be properly labeled with a warning so people who want to avoid it, can do so easily. Too many people have misread sucralose to be sucrose.