Does Stevia Affect Fertility? What Does the Research Say?

TRANSCRIPT:

- Hi, guys. Welcome back to Addictive Wellness Channel. My name is AnnaBlanca.

- And I'm Sage.

- And today, we would love to talk about stevia. Stevia, we love stevia. It's an amazing sweetener. And somehow, somewhere it got some bad rap and we would love to clear up the misconceptions about stevia. Not all stevias are created equal. This is true. We completely agree with that. Some of them are really, really bad products. Unfortunately, this is a fact because some stevias are not pure and clean, just the Stevia. Some companies, they mix in some maltodextrin and dextrose. And we both know, guys, that it's made of GMO corn.

- This is a lot of those little powdered stevia packets.

- Exactly.

- Those little green packets.

- So if you see it on your table and you're like, "Ooh, stevia, I gotta put this in my coffee." Turn it around, check out the ingredients, and do not make this face 'cause that's what I usually do in restaurants instead of just going, it's okay.

- No, no, no. Usually in restaurants you go, "This is un-friggin-believable."

- This is true. He is my witness, and some of them even add saccharine which even more unforgivable, right?

- Right.

- Exactly. So not many of them are very well-made and the taste is also could be atrocious, I agree. But, but...

- They're not all like this, right? So, as she mentioned, a lot of stevia products are not made and extracted well and so they have a lot of bitter aftertaste in them and it's given stevia a bad name. People say, "Oh, I don't like stevia." "It has that funky aftertaste." Well, that's poorly-made stevia. Our Stevia, for example, that we use in our chocolate and our elixir blends is certified organic so it's made extremely cleanly.

- They don't use those bad chemicals, like some of them use.

- Right, then there's a lot of chemicals used in the processing of a lot of stevias out there. So no harsh chemicals used. And then it tastes really nice because in stevia, there's different compounds that give sweetness. They're called rebaudiosides, and they're known primarily as Reb-A, Reb-B, and Reb-C. And Reb-A is the cleanest tasting of them all and so if you have extractats that are higher in Reb-A, it's gonna taste a lot better. So that's what we use, is one that's very high in Reb-A and doesn't have so much of the other ones. So it gives it a very clean taste.

- It tastes better, right? And sometimes, let's say I'm in the store and I'm demoing our chocolate because it's one of my favorite things to do because I would love to meet people who are trying our chocolate for the first time. And some people say, "Ooh, I do not like stevia." "It leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth." And they taste it and they go, "Wow." "I would've never thought that it actually" "can taste like that." So 2% of the people in the population, that's what you usually tell me.

- This is our estimate from our experience.

- Estimate. About 2% of people--

- Can taste it.

- Have a very strong sensitivity to this flavor of stevia and just can't handle it, right?

- Yeah.

- But most other people, even a lot of people who have written off stevia because they had a bad stevia, can actually do great with a really clean and good-tasting stevia, so don't give up hope.

- Don't give up on us.

- If you think you can't handle stevia, at least try one of our products one time to see if it's just the stevia's you've been having that have been no good, or if you are a stevia super-taster. Maybe you are.

- And then you can determine, right?

- And then you can actually know.

- And there are some other things about stevia. There are some rumors that are coming up lately, right?

- Right, so there's been rumors around for a while about Stevia regarding its effect on fertility. Now this goes way back to the 60's when the study was first done in Paraguay by a guy named Professor Kruc. Not C-r-o-o-k, but K-r-u-c.

- Dr. Joseph Kruc and yes, his name is misleading. His intentions were not bad.

- He is a guy with good intentions. But here's what happened. He gave rats such a crazy high level of stevia that would never be reproducible in a human study because nobody could eat that much stevia. And of course, they ran into these problems and he even later came out and said that it was probably just that they were overdosing on it and it was way too high of a dose. And even a few years later after that, he said he thinks there's no problems with the stevia at all as a result of his future research.

- Yeah, he retracted. And there was another study in 1999. How much stevia they gave them?

- In '99, they did a study where they were feeding stevia to hamsters and they fed them at about 10% of body weight per day. Now, what does this play out as if you're looking at a human? Well, let's say you weigh 120 pounds. If you wanna replicate this study in your body, you're gonna have to be prepared to eat 12 pounds of stevia per day. You're gonna have a lot of other problems before you run into any fertility problems. You're just gonna... I don't even know what would go wrong with you. It wouldn't be fun. You would probably never want to have a sweet thing again in your entire life. Now, even at that crazy high dose, there were no fertility problems. So it just goes to show that you will die from too much stevia just because your stomach explodes, probably, before you would run into any fertility issues.

- And in 2008, the Journal of Endocrinology and Reproduction came out with a report that they didn't find any proof, either, that stevia would have infertility or fertility effect at all on human. Or in mice, on mice. They did it on mice. Nobody ever studied on human.

- Right, so if there's been no longterm studies on humans. No real studies to speak of at all.

- 'Cause there was nothing but a point.

- Right.

- 'Cause they couldn't even find it in Endocrinology.

- The way these systems of studies work is that they first have to show something in an animal model and then they'll go through the trouble of doing a human study--

- Exactly.

- 'cause that's much more expensive and complex to do. So, didn't even get past an animal level, so hopefully this helps to put these silly rumors to bed and you guys can go help armed with this information to straighten out the true story out there in the world. Thanks so much for joining us, guys. We hope you enjoyed this video. Please give us a like or leave a comment.

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