What’s a parent to do?

You don’t want to risk diabetes or encourage poor eating/drinking habits with soda and fruit juice “cocktails” that contain added sugar or corn sweeteners. That’s probably a given. Kids don’t warm up to water very well. And the dental staff won’t stop wagging their fingers at you because the fruit juice you gave your child is decaying their teeth. Heck, it happened to my teeth one checkup.

So can we do anything?

Here’s an idea I stumbled upon. I dilute down fruit juice by adding up to 40% spring water. I use the herb “stevia” to give it a reconstituted taste. It works well with all juices I’ve tried, except apple juice which tastes a little off to me. Stevia has been used as a sweetener for thousands of years. It has no calories, no known side effects, and it doesn’t affect blood sugar levels--according to the label. Add it scoop by scoop to the juice missture until it tastes like fruit juice again. Go slowly as it’s very concentrated. Note that stevia has its own aftertaste if you add too much or you put it into drinks like tea or coffee. I only use it in fruit juice, iced tea and lemonade. It seems to clash with coffee. The stuff is expensive but I think it’s worth it. How it works…..Apparently by diluting the juice the sugars and acids are not strong enough to cause tooth decay, at least in my mouth. People use stevia as a sweetener but the FDA won’t allow the distributors to call it a sweetener. So it’s sold only in health food stores as an herbal supplement

Maybe we need double blind tests to see if it’s really sweet. C’mon guys. If it’s sweet---it’s sweet !!!!!!!!!!! We don’t need regulations saying it isn’t til you tell us it is. Just as ridiculous, frozen pizza couldn’t be called frozen pizza if it had cheese made from cow’s milk for the longest time. What do they do all day down there?