Is stevia safe to use?!
Is stevia safe to use?
Answers:
depends on who you ask..............
Absolutely. Not only is stevia safe, it may even be good for you.
Stevia is 250 to 300 times sweeter than sugar. It is isolated and purified from the leaves of the stevia plant. Stevia has been used for centuries as a traditional remedy for diabetes and gum disease among the indigenous people of Paraguay and other South American countries. The therapeutic use of stevia has been recorded for over 1,500 years. Who knows how many years prior to the records?
Independent researchers’ preliminary scientific studies show stevia may indeed improve the function of cells required for insulin production in the pancreas. It may also improve glucose tolerance in people with diabetes. According to the generations of people who have used stevia as a part of their daily diet, stevia has also been proven to regulate blood sugar.
Unlike other sweeteners, stevia has been reported to possess anti-viral properties. Preliminary evidence suggests stevia also possesses blood pressure lowering properties and may be a useful treatment for hypertension.
After years of political scrutiny and stonewalling in Europe, the European Commission finally approved stevia as a sweetener in October 2004. The FDA currently disallows marketing stevia as a “sweetener,” but permits stevia to be sold in the United States as a “food additive” only.
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It does not have FDA clearance for sale as a sugar substitute, but the 1994 Dietary Supplement and Health Education Act permits its sale as a "dietary supplement."
Although no harm to humans has been documented, laboratory studies have raised questions about its safety [1]. Since 1989, the FDA has rejected petitions seeking approval as a food additive for this reason. In 1999, the European Commission Scientific Committee on Food concluded:
The information submitted on the plant products was insufficient with regard to specification and standardisation of the commercial product and contains no safety studies. There are no satisfactory data to support the safe use of these products as ingredients of food or as sucrose substitute for diabetics and obese individuals. The only toxicological data submitted are essentially concerned with the stevioside component of the plant product. No appropriate data were presented to enable the safety of the commercial plant product to be evaluated [2].
Source(s):
http://www.janethull.com/askdrhull/artic...
http://www.quackwatch.org/04consumereduc...