Truvia sweetener a powerful pesticide; scientists shocked as fruit flies die in less than a week [View all]

[MindMover]

(NaturalNews) Truvia sweetener is made from about 99.5% erythritol (a sugar alcohol), and 0.5% rebiana, an extract from the stevia plant (but not at all the same thing as stevia). A shocking new study published in the journal PLOS ONE (1) has found that Truvia, an alternative sweetener manufactured by food giant Cargill, is a potent insecticide that kills fruit flies which consume it.

The study is titled, Erythritol, a Non-Nutritive Sugar Alcohol Sweetener and the Main Component of Truvia, Is a Palatable Ingested Insecticide.

The study found that while fruit flies normally live between 39 and 51 days, those that ate the Truvia ingredient erythritol died in less than a week.


Erythritol made from yeast fed genetically modified corn derivatives

Erythritol is often indirectly derived from genetically modified corn, by the way. Cargill was forced to settle a class action lawsuit last year (2) for labeling Truvia "natural" when it's actually made from a fermentation process whereby yeast are fed GM corn maltodextrin.

Cargill plays word games with this process, insisting that "erythritol is not derived from corn or dextrose feedstock; it is derived from the yeast organism."

http://www.naturalnews.com/045450_Truvia_erythritol_natural_pesticide.html

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0098949