SweetDrops Liquid Stevia – Item of the Day
Every day I bring you an item on Amazon that I personally use or has been purchased by many members of the audience and I have researched enough to recommend.
Today’s TSP Amazon Item of the day is SweetDrops Liquid Stevia and I recommend the 4oz bottle because it lasts a hell of a lot longer, though you can get it in a 2oz bottle or go the other way and get a twin pack of 4oz bottles. This is one of those cases though were the more you buy the better the price.
I took a bit of time to come to love stevia, it is sweet, but no it doesn’t taste exactly like sugar. It does taste a lot better than every single other calorie free sweetener I have ever tried including sucralose. What I learned worked was to use just one drop say in tea, taste it, then add one more, until I found my perfect amount for a given cup. After about a week of using it, you realize it doesn’t taste that different from sugar after all.
The deal is your body is highly tuned to sugar, it knows exactly what it is supposed to taste like, one reason those of us who grew up in the 70s know those of you who are younger have no idea what Coke is supposed to taste like! Corn sugar is not cane sugar!
It is kind of the same with Stevia, it just takes some getting used to. Once you do though you may very well prefer it to sugar. The liquid alone means you can sweeten cold drinks and it will actually dissolve. I use this all the time in my morning tea and in our amazing low carb strawberry limeade.
If you are looking for stevia on Amazon, SweetDrops Liquid Stevia is your best option. It is on prime, a 4oz bottle is only about 15 bucks with free shipping, I paid 8 bucks for a one ounce bottle at a store recently because we needed it. I have tried other vendors on Amazon, with poor shipping times and damaged and returned by the shipper orders due to shitty packaging. While it may seem expensive I drink 8-10 cups of coffee/tea/etc. most days and a bottle lasts me about 3 months.
If you check SweetDrops Liquid Stevia has over 5000 reviews and 4.5 stars and if you actually read the one star reviews it will hurt your faith in humanity! Seriously. My favorite negative review is, “I don’t like this one either”. sigh.
The only valid criticism is that the dropper is a bit short so you end up with some at the bottom that is hard to get out. This is a non issue to me, when I get close to running out, I simply order more. Then, when it gets difficult to get the last bit out, I open the new bottle and use it about two weeks, by then you have some head space and just pour what is left in the old bottle into the new one. Also frankly if you tilt the fricken bottle, you can get most of it out easily. Again some negative reviews on Amazon make my faith in humanity fall further than it already is.
In the end guys being serious, excess sugar consumption is the number one cause of lifestyle disease in the modern world. Yes this site is The Survival Podcast, and man this is a survival topic, getting off sugar could save your life.
Here is a simple low end break down, say you drink 4 cups of coffee or tea a day, with one tsp of sugar per cup, and 4 “soft drinks” or similar at 12 ounces each a day. We will go low and say those have about 2 tsp of sugar per drink. Well that is 12 tsp a day, 84 tsp a week. That is almost 310 carbohydrates a week, in pure sugar form, jacking up your insulin resistance.
From a purely caloric standpoint, that is 1344 calories, if you are on a 1500-2000 calorie a day level, well that is almost an extra day of eating per week, 52 times a year. And this is if sugar is your only vice and you only consume it in drinks! And here we are talking self sweetened ones, look at what happens with say 4 cokes a day.
We toss out the tea, one coke has 39 carbs, x 4 is 156 x 7 = 1092 grams of carbs a week! Cut that in half down to two a day, you are now at 546 carbs a week. Can you even begin to know what that does to insulin resistance. Calorically 2 cokes a day is almost 2000 calories a week! If we go back to 4 a day, 8000 that adds up to four full days of eating to every week. With no nutrition at all.
If you are thinking, but I don’t do that, what about your kids? Kids seem to be able to eat this crap, and they can but if they do by adulthood they are addicts, and that amazing insulin resistance always goes away in the end. Just something to think about.
Why not give SweetDrops Liquid Stevia a shot in your coffee or tea. Try whipping up some of my special morning tea blend or my amazing strawberry limeade. Trust me folks kids love the limeade, so do big kids. Sugar isn’t evil but read a label it is in almost everything any more. All it is doing now is creating lifelong customers for the medical industry and drug companies. Take your health back and this is just one simple way to start doing that!
Remember you can always find all of our reviews at TspAz.com
P.S. – For my latest uses of this stuff involving the world of mixology (IE adult beverages) tune in to today’s episode of TSP.
Be sure to shake before using. One reason folks might be put off by the taste is because of settling in the bottle.
VALID!!!!!
Coke in the 70’s, and 60’s, and previous decades, as well as the other brand names used Corn Syrup as a sweetener. THIS IS NOT HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP (HFCS) !!! Corn Syrup was Glucose. Glucose is the sugar that the body runs on, its the sugar that basically all life on the planet runs on. People use fats and oils differently, and vegetables, but everything else gets turned into glucose to fuel the body.
So drinking coke in the old day would of really been no different of a sugar load than eating a few slices of bread. You have to understand the SCIENCE behind this and NOT to just say ‘this is evil’ and ‘that is evil’. HFCS is fructose and its sucrose. These are 2 different sugars than glucose. These get broken down by the body differently. As the famous guy on youtube will tell you, you are taking in fructose from HFCS but you are NOT getting the fiber from the fruit to aid in its digestion and thus you get the negative effects of Fructose.
That is the basics of it, I’m sure Darby Simpson could do a whole show on the subject. In short… well… we’d be a lot better not having sodas and pops, but it would be a hell of a step in the right direction if we went back to simple corn syrup as a sweetener. Why did they go to HFCS? Its cheaper and its sweeter. Just look at people in movies from the 60’s and 70’s and people in movies from the 80’s and 90’s…. see the difference. ?
I added this comment because of Jacks excellent remark on Corn Sugar in the posting above. I personally have a very low sugar diet. I have a carb diet, but I take in a very low amount of items saturated with sugar. I’ve just gotten it out of what I eat.
Steve until the switch to HFCS Coke and most other manufactures in the US used CANE SUGAR, not corn syrup at all.
The first company to make the change was Ocean Spray, the guy that is responsible for it made a 4 million dollar bonus doing it, everyone followed suit after that.
I remember the interview with him in the 80s on 20/20, he took his money and bought a huge ranch in Montana, they named it “The Sugar Ranch”.
For what it is worth all sugar spikes insulin, do it long enough and you become insulin resistant, and all the modern diseases from High Blood Pressure, Type II diabetes, etc. come right along with it.
Steve you should spend the 6.50 for a copy of Protein Power by Doctors Jan and Michael Eades, it is honestly the most scientific explanation for why low carb eating is the best way to live. Here is a link http://amzn.to/2a9LmCq
People get all in a wad too about it since say phase one is about 21-30 carb grams a day. But just miss the long term. This is done until you are stabilized in blood pressure, blood sugar, etc and with in 10% of hitting your goal for long term weight loss.
It is then raised to 50 grams a day, until you hit your target weight. You can then increase it 10 grams a week, until your protein and carb grams are equal, IF YOU DON’T START gaining weight or having your readings come back up. If you do you back off ten and that is your long term level.
If you are eating real food 60-70 grams is a LOT of food carb wise. By that point you can even have some potatoes, etc. The key with Protein Power and why I went back to it is you must calculate and consume your protein requirement based on lean body mass. When you do this, you can’t over eat carbs, you are shocked at what your required protein needs are and how much food it is.
Sure the rule is you can have fat, not even count it, but if you first build meals to get your needed protein you won’t eat as much as you would think. I have actually go back to this method over Paleo and here is why.
If you do Protein Power you will basically be Paleo anyway and you can’t do it wrong but you damn sure can do Paleo wrong.
The truth is I put way too much of my weight back on after moving back to Texas. It isn’t the fault of paleo nutrition, but my fault for falling off the wagon. This recently this reality hit me hard. I went back to true carb restriction based on what the Eades teach, 16 pounds gone in 18 days. Eating more total food than I have in years.
The science is very solid!
FWIW you can get coke with cane sugar in many Mexican groceries, they use cane sugar in Mexico. But it is still way too much sugar, but yes it is far, far, far better that GMO Corn HFCS.
Back in 2011, Dr Pepper has their 125 anniversary throwback original formula with real sugar. It was simply amazing. Mountain Dew is currently having their throwback, but I haven’t tasted it, as I haven’t had soda since January.
For years and years you could go out to Dublin Texas and get the original Dr. Pepper and a few stores in DFW always had it in the old school smaller bottles, the half sized returnable ones.
Additionally a local chicken fast food chain “Chicken Express” had it on tap and had the exclusive rights to it in Texas only for restaurant use, honestly because they could not make enough to supply anyone else. About 5ish years ago that plant finally sold and now makes like gourmet sodas but no Dr. Pepper.
I only know all this because years ago I was part of a group of about 50 guys that went dove hunting twice a season out there. We’d camp on a dudes land, drink scotch and smoke cigars on Friday night, shoot a limit Saturday morning, go back to camp and eat every single dove. Take a nap, break camp, shoot a second limit and go home.
Some of those guys brought back that old Dr. Pepper by the case. Those were some good times and I was a LOT younger. LOL
Coca-cola with sugar is available in limited quantities during Passover. It must be labelled “Kosher for Passover” or have the Hebrew inscription that says the same thing but if you don’t read Hebrew, just ask your local grocer. He probably doesn’t read Hebrew either, but if he ordered any, he placed it in the Jewish food section of the store.
Here is a link to an image of a bottle cap with the Kosher for Passover mark in Hebrew so that you can recognize it.
http://www.thefloridastandard.com/files/2013/06/20090326-koshercoke.jpg
LOVE SweetLeaf. It’s the only stevia with zero carbs. I use the liquid but also the powdered. They also make flavored versions of the liquid and I will get carbonated water and use both the flavored and the regular (liquid) to make my own carbonated refreshments. Like the root beer the best. The berry is also quite yummy. The cola is okay but far from my favorite.
I’ve been using PURE powdered stevia. I find that the liquid is more bitter. You just have to be careful because it’s at least 200 times sweeter than sugar. The stuff that measures the same as sugar has malto-dextrin in it which has a higher glycemic index than pure sugar.
This is not meant to be a disparaging remark, if one can actually be disparaging about a product. I bought several of these months ago and kind of wish I had bought only one to try before going all out. To each his own; we all have different tastes, and I just read above that the product needs shaking before using, which I did not do. I bought it because the price was right and it is a family owned business, and we try to give them a boost whenever possible. That said, it really is I think sweet to the point of being not enjoyable. I started buying Mommy Knows Best pure stevia powder. It can be found on Amazon, typically the smaller containers. So I went to the makers to order mine and got their largest containers for very little more than what I paid on Amazon for the small container. I do this often. I find there is a cost benefit to going directly to the maker. Again, this is not an attempt to discourage any from buying the drops. It is simply my findings, but I will shake the bottle and give it a try. Mommy Knows Best is extremely good, using very little.
Funny cause the number one complaint I see in the negative reviews is it isn’t sweet enough.
I’ve been using liquid Stevia for several years. Found this brand about 8-9 months back. To my taste buds it is the sweetest by far. I use about 1/2 as much as other liquid Stevia’s. It almost makes me suspicious because to me it tastes so much better…
My wife likes the Pure Via. I carry it on trips so I don’t have to use the other junk and the powder keeps me from being hassled by our valiant protectors of the airways…
Perfect recommendation, I’ll be happy to try this. I was looking today for a whey protein powder and don’t know if there is anything out there I would enjoy. Any suggestions?
So is stevia not bad for you or just better then sugar and the other sweeteners?
It is pretty much inert in the human body. It is the extract of a tropical herb and calorie free. Unlike artificial sweeteners it isn’t some indigestible form or sugar or some lab crafted chemical. It actually doesn’t have any sugar, hence calorie free. It just tastes sweet to humans, extremely so. It is actually 200 times sweeter then sugar ounce for ounce.
The only possible downside is over eating because you think you can since you are cutting sugar. In other words you can’t use it as an excuse to start scarfing down pasta and bread.
In the end if you cut sugar with stevia and eat the same you are cutting calories and carbs. So I say you are far better off. If you cut sugar and replace those calories you are about the same, if you cut sugar but increase beyond what you cut you are worse off. Make sense?