Peppermint Tea

I've never tried stevia. I do stay away from the artificial sweeteners, however, like aspartame and sucralose. Although the studies linking them to cancer are somewhat dubious, I still hold some skepticism in regard to their safety.

Stevia's natural, though. I hear it's a bit expensive.

Stevia's ok, its import was restricted as part of some collusion (allegedly) between the artificial sweetener manufacturers and the FDA. I've had it but even though it's much sweeter than sugar, it has a weird taste.

Nothing beats natural cane sugar.

On Saturday, January 30th, 2016 at 6:56 pm, EyeConduit said:

Nice conspiracy theory. If the FDA was colluding, we'd actually see an almost complete domination of corn syrup in the market. The agricultural lobby (especially corn producers) far outweighs the artificial sweetener industry, EyeConduit. By a long shot.

Um... what?!

On Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 at 7:09 pm, Kyler said:

The FDA's had lots of pressure from all sorts of lobbies, not just the corn or artificial sweetener lobbies. Kyler, I'm not saying the FDA is nothing but corruption but they are persuaded often. Do you know how many people from Monsanto currently serve in the FDA?

There was a "conspiracy theory" that was partially debunked but it turned out, after some extensive fact checking, that there are actually quite a few people from Monsanto in the FDA:

user link on www.metabunk.org

That's from one of your debunker sites, just to be clear. Not some nutty conspiracy site.

What's my point and what's this got to do with lobbying the FDA to outlaw Stevia and promote artificial sweeteners? It's to show that the FDA is not immune to strong influence by different industries. Monsanto deals in GMO seeds - the safety of which I'm not going to argue here - including corn. While we see a lot of corn syrup in foods, it isn't a complete domination and artificial sweeteners are still very much in the market despite Monsanto's apparently strong influence over the FDA.

With all due respect, you've introduced a conspiracy theory which was just debunked.

On Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 at 7:09 pm, Kyler said:

Hence why I said "allegedly". I don't know about all that corruption stuff one way or the other. Who's to say what's a reliable source of information when it comes to that? Totally beside the point I was trying to make, though.

I'll go out on a limb and say it's more likely than not that different competing industries are going to lobby the s*** out of the FDA, because winning with them actually matters when it comes to their bottom line (and survival as an industry). I really don't want to argue with you about different theories that can't be proven, Kyler.

Subjectively, I prefer real can sugar to anything else. Just my opinion.