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I drank a lot of Coca-Cola life (the one with stevia) and thought that I may have found a drink with a good-enough taste/sugar balance for me. Then, from one day to the other, I got absolutely disgusted by one part of the drink's taste, most probably the sweetener. I could not drink a single glass anymore and today when I even think about Coca-Cola life, it sends me a shiver down the spline. I can drink infinite quantities of drinks made with cheap sugar-free lemonade sirup, so other sweeteners seem to be fine for me, but not stevia.



Stevia when used on it's own as a sweetener leaves a bad after taste of bitterness. It's better be used in combination with another sweetener or sugar (just to decrease the amount of regular sugar in a product). Most products advertised containing stevia usually include an additional sweetener if you pay attention at the ingredients list.


Stevia has a bitter-ish side taste that is truly awful.


Totally agree, I can't drink anything with Stevia. I can taste it immediately. My father in law thinks it's the greatest thing ever, doesn't bother him at all. Go figure.


There are genetic differences in how one tastes bitterness (e.g. the TAS2R38 gene), so that might be one factor.


To me, stevia tastes distinctly like the aroma of burnt hair. It’s intolerable.


Fascinating. It's like your body gradually figured out that you were trying to fool it, and revolted.

I'd bet there are digestion processes that "start up" in response to taste. Maybe your body detected that stevia was regularly "starting up" one of these processes and then withholding the expected glucose spike, and got upset about the pattern


I think that was some of the findings in the linked research. Certain artificial sugars were changing insulin response in subjects. I'm just a sample size of 1, and they're a sample size of 100 but I think it's clear that the beliefe that ALL the artificial sugars are inert and pass right through us is false... sometimes.




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