Is Stevia Safe? Not According to the FDA
Editor’s note: The following post was originally published on Green and Clean Mom. “Green & Clean Mom can inspire you to try a little harder, be a catalyst for change and to offer you some new tips and news on how to be the green, sexy and sassy mom…I know you are!”
I drink organic shade grown coffee but I put sweet and low in it. Gasp. I know, it makes no sense and I’ve tried to stop. I can’t. Over at 5 Minutes for Going Green I wrote a post about my natural weight loss struggle and the zero calorie mentality that basically has me hooked on artificial sweeteners.
This was before my new love affair with Stevia. Have you tried this stuff? Holey Moley! Good by artificial sweeteners, hello Stevia! Very expensive but well worth it. It is so sweet that I can use half the packet in my coffee and make it go the distance. Plus, zero calories and it’s natural.
Stevia, a herb native to Paraguay, has been “treated like a drug by the FDA”, again proving that the FDA is in bed with the chemical companies. The more I read about Stevia and the ongoing saga with the FDA, the more I am convinced that money has everything to do with what is on our shelves, versus health and safety.
Artificial sweeteners are big dollars in the U.S. and the FDA can’t have a natural herb like Stevia knocking all those pink and yellow packets off the grocery store shelves. Oh, my…what would happen?
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Stevia won’t be found labeled as a sweetener. It is labeled as a dietary supplement and thus found in health food stores. Is this why I haven’t seen it at the grocery store next to my sweet and low? Yup. There have been some safety concerns raised about the product but I’m pretty sure that there are concerns over artificial sweeteners too. Hmmm? Aren’t these still allowed to be bought and sold and ingested? Read more about the claimed side effects, here. Funny how it is sold in health food stores but has been labeled as not safe by the FDA for food. Does anyone else find that odd?
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Isn’t the new “Truvia” artificial sweetener stevia? Wouldn’t that mean that the FDA had to approve it as “generally regarded as safe”?
I personally don’t care for the licorice-y aftertaste to stevia. When I’m on a diet, I use Splenda in moderation. Otherwise, I’ll just use a bit of the real stuff.
The FDA has been continuously proving itself to be in the interest of corporations instead of citizens, I am not sure what their exact purpose is anymore since it isn’t the safety of us, the consumers. Stevia is wonderful, I started using it back in college. Other than the fact that you do not need to use as much of it as sugar since it is sweeter than sugar and has no calories and does not disturb blood sugar another beautiful thing is that the stevia plant is a highly resilient plant that can survive many different types of climate, unlike sugar cane. It is a wonderful natural alternative to chemically produce sweeteners.
Stevia gets go-ahead from FDA today!! http://is.gd/ceS8
Jiminy cricket. I love the idea of stevia, but in all honesty? I just use sugar and I use it proudly. Unrefined and fair-trade when I can manage it. But our bodies are designed to run off glucose as fuel — that’s sugar. The “zero-calorie mentality” you mention is a red herring, a false idol. Eating way too much sugar? Yeah, that’s not good. But sugar itself is already in most natural foods, you can’t eat NO sugar, it’s part of organic life, quite literally. Don’t believe the marketing hype about “lite” and “lo-fat” either, bodies need fats. If we don’t get enough fats and sugars, we over-compensate… healthy weight management is about SO much more than just raw caloric intake!
Last year I decided I wanted to cut down my sugar intake in coffee. I started by giving up sugar altogether and just using more milk. I was amazed how quickly I adapted. Now I allow myself sugar in my coffee on Sundays only and it feels like a treat each week.
Commenting on Sarah JL’s FDA link; I find it ironic that the FDA suddenly approves stevia now that there are two HUGE beverage companies that are coming out with new soft-drinks with the natural sweenter (now called PureVia) added to their sodas within the next couple of weeks. I also find it funny that they are changing the name. Why is that? Doing something like that leads me to believe that they have also altered the ‘natural’ in Stevia to make it PureVia. Does that make sense to anyone else out there, or is it just me?
Thanks Sarah for posting that article. I have used Stevia in my tea for several years, as well as Splenda. I will NOT touch the little ‘pink packet’ for a million dollars. I’m curious to see in the coming weeks getting barraged from tv and magazines with new ads for this new so called ‘natural sweetener’. I think that if they are using stevia, they should be labling it stevia. Not PureVia. Hopping off my soapbox now.
I use a half teaspoon of real organic sugar and half packet of stevia in my coffee or tea. This eliminates that little bit of bitterness that stevia can leave as an aftertaste. Working in the medical field, I can tell you the most dangerous artificial sweetener is aspartame (Equal) followed by saccharine
(Sweet & Low) and then sucralose, which isnt terrible
(Splenda) and is the lesser of the 3 evils. Try a pinch of sugar and pinch of stevia. It works, and its good. I teaspoon or 2 a day of natural organic sugar isnt as bad as 1 packet of aspartame. And stay away from the diet sodas and icecream that say sweetened with aspartame! Very bad!!
Stevia is not safe. I just had similar symptoms (more mild though) as I had when I was using splenda for a few days. Muscle aches like I had the flu. It started slow, just around my hips and thighs when I drinking the product SunWarrior a protien shake that uses stevia. Then I started having insulin resistence and bought bars called Extend to get me through the night. I was against using anything with splenda as the only bars on the shelf used splenda, Immediately my weird skin aches I call them got worse every day I ate a bar. I ate one in the morning and one at night. And ouch. Last night I was in pain all over. Most of my pain was due to the spenda, but it started slowly and very mildly with the stevia. So I do not believe stevia is safe. Just because it comes from a plant doesn’t mean a thing. Be your own judge; You may not feel stevia symptoms right away but later on when you start having unexplained issues try stopping Stevia and see.
We can have reactions to absolutely anything we ingest. When introducing anything new into our diets we should always begin with very small doses and take note as to whether we are sensitive to that product. Stevia is not a chemical hence, our bodies are able to recognize it and assimilate it. That does not mean that a person will not react to it. It is no different than having a reaction to peanuts. Peanuts are a natural product but people may still be sensitive to it. There is no data that states that stevia is unsafe. In any event it is far far safer to use than any of the chemical sweetners that have been on the market for years.Stevia is excellent for diabetics as it does not alter blood sugar levels. If people only knew the amount of chemicals that they ingest on a daily basis they wouldn’t give Stevia a second thought.
I started drinking Glacier water 10 which has Stevia in it. I normally just drink water with lemon. I thought after viewing info on Stevia that it might be safe so I tried the drinks. I was drinking 1-2 bottles per day of the Glacier water.
Approaching 1 month out and around the time for my menstrual cycle..I hardly bled at all. This is just not like me for I have always been regular and flow has been consistant. Again, something was different. The research was that Stevia affected the reproductive system. I stopped the drinks immediately so I can see if there is a connection between the two.
If this does not happen again after being off the Stevia, then I will know this stuff is not safe and people should be really watching closely.
So for me…no more Stevia!