Stevia, Mannitol, Xylitol – Better Than Sugar?

Rather than dragging it out, I’ll just just answer this question right now: Are they better than sugar? Unfortunately, no. Just as there is no way to look at a donut and know if it is sweetened with sugar, stevia, or aspartame, the brain doesn’t know either. Here’s how it plays out.

We are wired to prefer sweetness first. As babies, we consume breastmilk, which is sweet. As we grow and mature, our palates grow and mature as well.

But, the palate will only get a well-rounded education, so to speak, if it is exposed repeatedly and consistently to the other four tastes: saltiness, sourness, bitterness, and umami (savoriness).

In the United States, most adult palates are tuned to prefer high levels of sweetness over other tastes, because it is what we come in contact with the most in our food.

This could be brushed off as a simple preference issue – we like sweet, other cultures prefer sour. But unfortunately, preference for sweet tastes leads to us eating more sugar, which is detrimental to health. My very first lunch hour lesson went into detail about this.

As the dangers of too much sugar have become more well-known, we’ve sought a way to maintain the sweet taste without adding sugar (glucose, calories).

In the early 1980’s, artificial sweeteners like NutraSweet® and Equal®, which contain aspartame, came onto the scene, and were touted as a way to help people lose weight. Hence their use in diet sodas.

But it did not work, at all. In fact, has been a cruel experiment on our population, because those who were already trying to lose weight ended up gaining more and more over time.

By now you’re probably wondering if stevia, mannitol, xylitol, and other “natural” non-calorie sweeteners should be put in the same boat as artificial sweeteners, when compared to just eating sugar.