What makes this popular sweetener so toxic to fruit flies?

Only Big Food could take something safe, sweet and natural and turn it into a killer.

I’m talking about stevia — the super-sweet plant that so many people are using as a no-calorie, no carb sweetener.

For decades the FDA had a hit squad going after any company that used it in food or beverages. It wasn’t safe enough to use as a sweetener, the Feds said.

That is until Coke partnered with the big food company, Cargill, to make a “stevia” sweetener. Then, miraculously, the FDA changed its mind.

But the big problem here is that the Truvia sweetener you see on every store shelf is no more stevia than a fruit punch is an apple. In fact, researchers have discovered that when you sprinkle Truvia into your coffee you’re actually adding a dose of pesticide!

Researchers from Drexel University have found that erythritol, the main ingredient in Truvia, is actually a “powerful ingested insecticide.”

The research team discovered this by doing a carefully controlled experiment in which fruit flies were fed Truvia and some other sweeteners. The flies raised on food spiked with Truvia “showed a significant reduction in longevity” compared to the controls.

Not only that, but the more Truvia the flies were fed, the faster they died. And the Truvia diet seemed to impair the flies’ climbing ability as well.

The study concluded that some component of Truvia was toxic to fruit flies. And it wasn’t the super-tiny amount of stevia it contains, either.

Exactly what makes it so toxic to fruit flies isn’t clear. Could it be because that erythritol comes from genetically engineered corn, as one observer suggests? Sources: “Truvia sweetener a powerful pesticide; scientists shocked as fruit flies die in less than a week from eating GMO-derived erythritol” Mike Adams, June 5, 2014, Natural News, naturalnews.com