Stevia Sweetner

Question
AS of today I started the Banta Diet It said no Artificial sweetners for the first week, the answer was it still played a roll in increasing body insulin. The 10 cups of plain with cream coffee and green tea they recommend drinking daily. I just don't know if I can stay with it, it just doesn't taste good. What to suggest? Thanks

Answer
Hello, Leigh-Ann,
First, congratulations on deciding to control your diet.  I hadn't heard of Banta and just read up a bit on it now.  It's interesting to see low carb diets getting tweaked in various ways.  It is a sign that they work and people are trying to work out different specifics so that more people can use them successfully.

I have a general concern about the coffee/tea thing - though for a different reason than their not tasting good.  10 cups is a LOT and I would bet that it will interfere with your drinking very healthy water.  All that bathroom time!  If this is a daily thing throughout the duration of the diet, I would consider cutting back.  I am sure the diet will still work well.  Diets that require you to follow every single "rule" without deviation or they won't work are simply not realistic diets.  If the 10 cups thing is just for the first week or so, then I suspect it is to take advantage of the diuretic effect and give you a boost in losing weight, even if it is just water.  It is curious that the Atkins diet restricts caffeine while this one seems to promote it.  I did Atkins with wonderful results despite still drinking my morning coffee, so you see these things can be "negotiable".  

I looked at the reasoning behind the no artificial sweetener rule.  It seemed to be mixed in with the "just seeing food increases your insulin" observations.  There is a lot that I would question here (I am a scientist and that is my nature, of course).  But the thing is, if your body is going to release insulin even when it just sees food, they even say if you see calorie-free food, then why would the presence or absence of any sweetener really matter as long as it was low carb?  I don't want to get too analytical here.  I do understand that there is an expectation set up whenever you eat anything sweet, whether it is natural or artificial, that your brain will crave more.  That is the bane of sugarfree tonic.  However, they tell you to avoid artificial sweeteners, but not natural ones so I am confused.  They may be just referring to sweeteners like saccharine, sucralose (splenda) or aspartame (nutrasweet), and may not know about natural, low carb sweeteners like erythritol, which has been demonstrated to not budge blood glucose.  And there is stevia, as you mentioned, which is also low glycemic (has a small effect on  blood glucose).  Personally, I love stevia since it has a little bit of a licorice taste and is convenient to use.  But stevia is illegal to sell in prepared foods (the sugar lobby, not for any health reasons) so you would have to make everything yourself.  

Any way, to keep to what you can do to stick to this diet.  First, be very careful about all that coffee and tea drinking.  Personally, I have reservations about that long term; if it's short term then go for it.  Second, if they admonish against artificial sweeteners (for reasons that seem hazy to the biochemist in me), then go with natural, low carb sweeteners like stevia and erythritol.  Erythritol has a kind of cooling aftertaste while stevia, as I mentioned before, tastes a bit like licorice.  Stevia is much less expensive than erythritol.  You can buy stevia in little bottles as a very convenient liquid to use for coffee and tea, even iced.

The really important thing is that you don't get hung up on this small part of the diet.  The unsweetened coffee and tea drinking.  Do your best to get over this hump (either by adding natural, low carb sweeteners or by cutting down the total amount of drinking) and see what lies ahead.  Like I said, any diet worth its salt has to be flexible.  If it  cannot be bent responsibly, then its foundation is pretty weak and I would move on to something else.

Let me know of your decision and progress if you want.  I am curious about this diet.  As always, be careful of promises and anything that costs you  money.

Happy low carbing to you,
Arlene

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