I spend too much time dodging artificial sweeteners. When I was a kid, it seemed as if they were relegated to the pink and blue packets found in coffee shops and the cans of Tab that my aunts drank at holiday dinners. Today I can’t get away from the reign of faux sugar. The top three: aspartame (also known as NutraSweet and Equal), sucralose (a.k.a. Splenda), and saccharin (a.k.a. Sweet n’Low) bring a synthetic sweetness to more products that I can count. From yogurt and ice cream, to gum and candy, to cakes, cookies, and numerous beverages, no-cal/low-cal sugar substitutes are tough to escape. Even cold and flu treatments are often artificially sweetened.

The reasons for skipping these sweeteners are plentiful, but what are the options for those who are both health and waistline conscious (a teaspoon of sugar has 15 calories while aspartame has no calories at all)? Stevia — the health food community’s best kept secret — is almost the answer.

Stevia is an all-natural sweetener that comes from the Stevia rebaudiana plant indigenous to parts of Central and South America. It is 300 times sweeter than traditional cane sugar, has almost no calories, and has been used by native South Americans for hundreds of years. Stevia has everything a sweetener could hope for, except FDA approval. In the early nineties the Herbal Research Foundation funded an in-depth study into stevia, led by Douglas Kinghorn, a professor of pharmacognosy at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and found that the herb was safe for human consumption:

“It may be concluded that the vast majority of the scientific safety evaluation studies which have been performed to date endorse the use of stevia rebaudiana leaf and stevioside as sucrose substitutes. This is substantiated by the extensive use in Japan of these products without a single adverse report to date.” — Douglas Kinghorn, Ph.D.

Citing a need for additional research, the FDA has yet to grant stevia status as a sweetener. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 allows stevia to be sold legally as a “dietary supplement for nutritional benefits,” but the word “sweet” cannot be used in conjunction with the herb in any way.

As the FDA does not control how an individual uses stevia after purchasing it, I can still buy stevia-sweetened cookies at several of my local health food stores. The flavor is tinged with a slight licorice aftertaste, but the sweet factor is supreme.

[via: Stevia.net]

(Image: herblywonderful.com)