The bitter sweetener battle

Extract powder

This white powder is an extract of the sweet glycosides (natural sweetening agents) in the stevia leaf. In this form it's approximately 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, so use it by the pinch (or drop if diluted in water).

Liquid concentrates

These come in several forms. There's a, syrupy black liquid (that results from boiling the leaves in water), which can enhance the flavor of many foods. Another type is made by steeping stevia leaves in distilled water or a mix of water and grain alcohol. You also can find white extract powder that has been premixed in water.

RELATED ARTICLE: Carrot & Stick

A carrot to Farm Sanctuary, an animal advocacy group based in Orland, Calif., for its effort to block ranches and dairy farmers from ridding their stockyards of downed cattle (those that cannot stand) by sending them to slaughter. Although the law says that diseased animals cannot be used for human consumption, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not define a downed animal as diseased. Farm Sanctuary vehemently disagrees. The group recently filed a petition with the FDA asking for the practice to be outlawed, stating that downed animals often suffer from bovine leukemia virus, bovine immunodeficiency virus and may suffer from a form of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease). In other words, yesterday's deathly ill cow may be today's burger. Pass those veggie burgers, please.

A carrot to author Robin Cook for his novel Toxin (Putnam, 1998). The best-selling author of Coma and Outbreak, with his affinity for reality-based horror, has taken on two of today's hottest topics; food-borne illness and HMO bureaucracy. Cook's tale take us into the nightmare of Kim Reggis, M.D., whose daughter becomes infected with E. coli O157:H7 after eating contaminated meat. Sending the frightening message that Americans have been placed in serious danger by a greedy and corrupt beef industry, Cook adds to the nightmare by painting a grim picture of bottom-line-driven HMOs that are putting patients' health at risk for the sake of profit. The story is fiction but, unfortunately, the facts are not.

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