While natural stevia is a wonderful sweetener, if you consume Truvia, it’s chemically processed and is made with genetically modified ingredients. You may wish to consider switching to natural stevia powder (it’s green, not white).
Truvia has three ingredients: erythritol, rebiana, and natural flavors. Rebiana is made from the stevia leaf by soaking it in water. It’s manufacturer Cargill claims that the process as similar to making tea. However, the truth is in Coca-Cola’s patent where it outlines a 40+ step process that includes the use of acetone, methanol, ethanol, acetonitrile, and isopropanol. You don’t really want that in your herbal tea do you?
The second myth about Truvia’s “naturalness” is it’s main ingredient, erythritol. Erythritol is a naturally-occurring sweetener found in many fruits. But in nature it is present in such small amounts (less than .005% by weight) that it is impractical to use natural sources.
So Cargill makes Truvia’s erythritol by chemically converting genetically modified corn into a food grade starch which it ferments to create glucose and then processes further to create erythritol. Now that sounds more like a frankenfood to me than a “natural” sweetener.
“Natural flavors” are also used in the processing of Truvia. On Truvia’s website it says “… Natural flavors are used to bring out the best of our natural sweetness, like pepper or salt would be used to heighten the taste of a meal.” But unlike salt or pepper, the only legal requirement in “natural flavors” is that they are chemically equivalent to a natural flavor, and thus they are anything but what we know as natural.
Stick to real natural stevia, a sweetener that contains numerous health benefits and is not GMO.
