LLVLC On YouTube (Episode 46): Cargill Introduces A New Stevia-Based Sweetener Called Truvia

I was in New York City for the Truvia™ first taste test

Last week, I told you I was gonna be in New York City for a quick trip to find out more about a new stevia-based sweetener product called Truvia™. As you know from my previous blog post about this joint effort between Cargill Foods and The Coca-Cola Company to bring stevia to the market, aggressive efforts are being made to get approval from the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to sell stevia as a sweetener for the first time in the United States.



This is promising news for Americans who are seeking healthy NATURAL choices for sugar alternatives since Truvia is made from the sweetest part of the stevia leaf--rebiana. The very best-tasting stevia is then combined with the sugar alcohol erythritol as a bulking agent to create a very clean-tasting, maltodextrin-free substitute for sugar. And it's not bitter even in the least. I was VERY pleased with that since the major complaint most people have with stevia is the puckered-up face they get when they taste it. Not with Truvia.



In Episode 46 of "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube," Christine and I share about my trip to the Rockefeller Center in New York City on July 9, 2008 as the people passing by the Truvia Greenhouse were given a golden opportunity to be some of the first people in the entire world to try this new product coming to store shelves in the Fall 2008. There was iced tea and lemonade available for people to try and most of them gave a very positive review of the Truvia. There were a few knuckleheads who refused to even try "nature's first zero-calorie sweetener," but it was their loss. This stuff is OUTSTANDING!

Learn more about Truvia and what makes it different in today's video:



If you're excited to try Truvia for yourself, then it is currently available for purchase online at Truvia.com and in a few select New York City stores. The immediate reaction I had to the Truvia when I tasted it was how much it resembled cotton candy. That's a good tasting product, I'd say! There is a bit of the "cooling" sensation from the erythritol, but it's not unpleasant. In fact, that gives it a very nice mouth feel to me and Truvia is just about as close to real sugar I have seen in a sweetener before! Try it for yourself and I'll be telling you more about this product when widespread availability hits later this year.

THANK YOU for watching "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb On YouTube." Please send us your comments at livinlowcarbman@charter.net and watch our previous YouTube videos anytime you'd like! Take a moment now to subscribe to our YouTube videos and catch the low-carb wave that's rolling across YouTube right now. :D We'll be back again soon for another fun and quirky video about the healthy low-carb lifestyle.

I'm Gonna Be In And Out The Next Two Months, Visiting My Brother Kevin Soon

I wanted to give you a quick update about what's happening with my schedule before I leave out of town on Sunday after church. I'm about to go into about eight weeks of nearly non-stop busy, busy, busy with my schedule. Some of that time I will be near my computer and able to blog as usual. But other times I won't.

Here's a rough sketch of what is coming up for me:

Sunday, July 6, 2008
I'll be in Durham, North Carolina again to meet with the Triangle Low-Carb Meetup group as they gather together at 6:30pm at the Golden Corral on NC-55. Christine and I will be there and will have lots of fun and valuable door prizes to share with those in attendance. If you missed us on our last visit to Durham, then I hope you can make it out this time around. Anyone who is interested in the healthy low-carb lifestyle should come out and meet your fellow low-carbers in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area.

Monday-Tuesday, July 7-8, 2008
Christine and I will be visiting with Dr. Eric Westman at the Duke Lifestyle Clinic to see if he can help identify what is happening with my weight this year. We've got a series of tests set up, including a glucose tolerance test to measure blood sugars and insulin after I consume a low-carb meal. I'm anxious to see what this finds. We'll also be running cortisol levels, vitamin D, and a few other blood tests to try to rule things out. We'll be discussing the reactive hypoglycemia theory espoused by Dr. Keith Berkowitz to see what role it might be playing in this. I'm anxious to figure this thing out already!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008
I've been invited to New York City to be one of the first to see, hear about, and taste the new products from food manufacturer Cargill Foods that are made with Truvia--a sweetener derived frm the stevia plant. You'll recall I blogged about Cargill and The Coca-Cola Company trying to get FDA approval for stevia as a sweetener and apparently that ruling is coming soon. The event I will be attending is located at The Rockefeller Center and will be taking place at the Truvia Greenhouse where there will be tons and tons of stevia plants all over the place. They've invited me to bring my video camera, so I plan on shooting some YouTube footage while I'm there. I'll be flying in from Raleigh/Durham that morning and flying back that afternoon, so it'll be a quickie trip! But I'm excited since it's only the second time I've ever been to NYC--we won't talk about the nightmare I had the first time I was there two years ago (this time I will have a car service taking me to and from the event so I don't have to worry about a crooked New York City cab driver again!).

Tuesday-????, July 15-???, 2008
Christine and I will be driving down to Pensacola, Florida to visit with my brother Kevin perhaps for one final time before the good Lord takes him home. I want to tell you how much I sincerely appreciate all the outpouring of love and support for me and my family during this difficult time with not knowing how much longer Kevin will be with us. I hope and pray we can spend a week or so one last time together and have one final happy memory with my only full-blooded brother. He's a good man who deserved so much more from this life than the hand he was dealt. I'm honored to be called Kevin's brother and will cherish this time with him and the rest of my family. I will not have any Internet access while I am in Florida other than on my iPhone, so there will be no blogging while we're there that week or so.

Saturday, August 16th to Monday, September 1, 2008
Coming up in August, I've got something pretty incredible happening in the Nashville, Tennessee area. You'll recall I interviewed former "Biggest Loser" contestant Isabeau Miller about her experience on the weight loss reality show. Well, she's now a personal trainer and wanted to give average, everyday people a chance to feel what it was like being on the show. That's why she started FitCamp which will take place over a two-week period in July and then again in August. Christine and I will be coming to the August session along with several of my readers who were the winners of an essay contest and received scholarships to come. I have already told Isabeau that I want to go through all the daily exercise and activities just like everyone else and I'll be video-blogging the entire experience as well as checking in each day with pictures and how it went. Considering I haven't lost any measurable weight since my sudden 30-pound weight gain earlier this year, this could be a great chance to get the scale moving in the right direction again. I'm so excited about this trip and can't wait to meet Isabeau and everyone else who will be there.

So that's about it going on in my life the next two months as far as trips go. I'm also in the midst of writing at least one and probably several books that will feature many of the most popular blog posts I have written at the "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog. This has been a special request from many of my readers who know I've blogged about an issue they care about, but they can't seem to find it. I'm trying to remedy that problem by putting my best blog posts in a series of books. The working plan right now is to release a trilogy (Volume 1-3) that will contain thematic groupings of my best posts on a variety of subjects, including vegans and vegetarians, the failed low-fat diet, inspirational and motivational posts, the real fad diets, and so much more! I'm excited about this project and will be telling you more about it when we get closer to publication.

I've gotta get some sleep now since our choir is singing at the early service tomorrow morning for the 4th of July weekend. And you're not gonna believe what my church is doing as a churchwide event--they're serving red, white, and blue pancakes!!! UGH! The red comes from strawberries, the white is the whipped cream and the blue is from blueberries, but COME ON! PANCAKES?! I guess I don't have to tell you that Christine and I will be going to Denny's for a Grand Slam to get some good eggs, bacon, and sausage for our healthy low-carb lifestyle. Okay, rant over. SEE YA SOON! :D

NYC Banning Trans Fats Doesn't Fix The Problem

New York City pushing more progressive government with trans fat ban

Have you heard the news about what New York City public health officials have proposed to do in that city? After their recent ban on all smoking in restaurants and bars in the Big Apple, now they want a zero tolerance policy for any restaurant cooking food in the most evil fat to ever be exposed to mankind: trans fats!

This USA Today column gives all the sordid details. The proposal states that a new regulation needs to be implemented to REQUIRE all restaurants to eliminate trans fats from their cooking procedures by April 2007. This ban on trans fats would apply to ANY business that sells food to the public in New York City. The fines that restaurants could face for not complying with this new regulation will range from $200-$2,000 per violation.

There was a second proposal on the table to also REQUIRE the restaurant chains to list the calories of their menu items in a conspicous place for consumers to know what they are eating before they purchase it. This would impact companies like Starbucks, Subway, Burger King and McDonald's, among many others. This requirement will only apply to those restaurants that already have their nutritional information provided on the Internet or in brochures by March 1, 2007.

Not surprisingly, the restaurant industry which boasts sales of a staggering $511 BILLION annually from nearly a BILLION restaurants in the United States alone, is crying foul to these proposals. They say that consumers are intelligent enough to know what the nutritional content of what they are eating before they order it and don't need such draconian measures by the government to tell them how and what to eat.

Well, that's right and it's wrong. Let me explain.

The idea of forcing a business to stop using trans fats in their products assumes that the people who are eating them don't realize what they are shoving in their mouth when they eat fast food. But this poll of Canadians released last year showed that they are more aware of trans fats now and are paying attention to that particular ingredient now more than ever before. The same probably holds true in America as well. So, the awareness of the dangers of trans fats is already there.

What a lot of people may not know about is the little trick the FDA allows companies regarding the nutritional labeling. While a food product may be deemed "trans fat-free," that does not mean there is ZERO trans fats in them! GASP! How can this be? Well with rounding that is permitted those "trans fat-free" Oreo cookies you eat may have as much as 0.49 grams per 2 cookie serving. If you eat 12 of them, then you just consumed 2.94 grams of tran fats, higher than the MAXIMUM 2 grams recommended by the American Heart Assocation. Something to think about.

At the same time, how can we trust companies like McDonald's who got into trouble earlier this year for miscalculating the amount of trans fats in their French fries? If they SAY they drop their trans fats completely, does that really mean their food will be trans fat-free? Don't bet on it. Let's forget about KFC and all the trans fats that are hidden in their food, too. Trans fats are most definitely unhealthy for you and have been scientifically proven to make people one-third fatter as well. Yikes!

So is a total ban on trans fats--A GENUINE ONE--the answer to this problem? With kids eating more fried junk food than ever before, does Big Brother government need to come in and compel behavioral change to slow down skyrocketing obesity rates?

My answer may surprise a lot of people, but I say no.

What?! But I thought you were all for helping to improve the health and weight of people? I am, but not when it is forced on businesses and people with a government mandate. Government and health leaders are proposing throwing more money at the obesity problem, but more money isn't the answer. They also want restaurants to cut their portion sizes and calories, but those things aren't the answer either.

And neither is banning trans fats in New York City restaurants. That DOESN'T fix the underlying problem that people have in this country as it relates to the foods they eat and how that impacts their weight and health. People who are obese need to be gently confronted about their weight by those friends and family members who love them the most to encourage them to start making better food choices. Educating people about making those decisions that are best for them is what is going to bring about the most change.

As much power over people as they think they have, the government cannot lose weight for you and nor should they. Obesity will not go away on its own, so the people who struggle with shedding the pounds need to find a dietary plan they can stick with and then DO IT!

It's amazing, but people are always saying to me now, "That's easy for you to say, you don't have a weight problem." That's right, I don't--ANYMORE! But it was just a little more than couple of years ago I was walking around this world as 400+ pound man looking for answers to my morbid obesity problem, too. I found the low-carb lifestyle and it changed my life forever. If you resolve today that nothing will stand in the way of your weight loss success, then IT CAN and IT WILL happen for you like it did for me. Find a plan that will work for you, implement that plan into your life, and then keep doing it forever. That is what it takes to find weight loss success.

Best of all, you won't need the government forcing it on you either!