A Funny Flow Chart to Help You Choose Your Sweetener (Or Avoid One Altogether)

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If you like a little sugar in your morning (and late morning, and afternoon) coffee, but don’t like the calories, there’s a good chance you use one of the many artificial sweeteners on the market. But there’s plenty of evidence that these various chemical concoctions carry some scary health risks with them, and that they’re no good for the environment, either. But if you insist on indulging your sweet tooth, there’s now a smart and funny flow chart to help you out…

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Consider Maple Syrup as a Healthier Sweetener

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The Sweet Healthy Maple Treat

You can’t use it in everything, unless your friends absolutely love brown frosting. But when possible, you might consider real maple syrup as a sugar or corn syrup substitute. It actually loads in a lot of good stuff with the calories.

Some benefits of maple syrup were previously known, but University of Rhode Island researcher Navindra Seeram found new anti-oxidant compounds in maple syrup samples taken from Canadian trees. They’re present in the sap alone, but in more beneficial amounts when a dozen or more gallons of sap are boiled down to make a gallon of syrup:

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High-Fructose Corn Syrup “Prompts Considerably More Weight Gain” than Sugar

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Sugar vs. HFCS

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been a whipping boy of late for its heavily processed origins (prompting a campaign about how natural it is), but it’s much worse than that: Princeton researchers find that HFCS has a significant tie to obesity.

You can find HFCS as a sugar substitute in nearly everything sweet and junk foody—partially because it’s cheaper than sugar due to corn subsidies. Unfortunately it’s also much more likely to make you—or at least lab rats—fat:

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same…

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ZEVIA: The World’s First All Natural Zero Calorie Stevia Soda

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Root Beer is our favorite Zevia flavor

For many years I have been occasionally drinking diet soda, but always with a slight hesitation because I was unsure how healthy the drink ACTUALLY was. Now there is no need for that. I can whole heartedly consume a drink and know it is all natural and zero calorie. How is this possible? Stevia.

Stevia is an herb that has been used for centuries in South and Central America to sweeten food and teas. According to Zevia’s site, “ZEVIATM contains none of the chemically processed artificial sugar substitutes found in diet sodas because it is sweetened with natural stevia. Diet sodas also contain artificial flavors and colors. ZEVIATM does not. With great effort, expense, and painstaking care, Zevia LLC found the healthiest, all natural ingredients available. Many “natural” sodas contain sugar which means calories. Diet sodas are usually sweetened with processed artificial sweeteners which means chemicals. ZEVIATM with stevia is the only truly all natural diet soda…”

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