Stevia Side Effects

Benefits of Stevia

Stevia's health benefits have been known for centuries in South America and promises to be useful in treating obesity and hypertension. Unlike other artificial sweeteners, Stevia is a healthy natural sweetener without any known side effects. Millions of Japanese have been using Stevia for over thirty years with no reported or known harmful effects.

What is Stevia?

The Stevia plant is commonly known as sweetleaf, sweet leaf, sugarleaf, or simply Stevia. The species Stevia rebaudiana is widely grown for its sweet leaves used as a sweetener and sugar substitute under the following names:

Rebiana is a trade name for a zero-calorie sweetener containing mainly the steviol glycoside rebaudioside A or Reb-A in short. (The other sweet steviol glycoside in the Stevia leaf is called stevioside)
PureVia is the PepsiCo and Merisant brand of Reb A
Truvia is the consumer brand for a sweetener made of erythritol, Rebiana and natural flavors marketed by Cargill and developed jointly with The Coca-Cola Company.

Is Stevia safe?

Millions of Japanese have been using Stevia sweetener for over thirty years with no reported or known harmful effects. Similarly, Stevia leaves have been used for centuries in South America spanning multiple generations in ethnomedical tradition as a treatment of type II diabetes.

In 2006, the World Health Organization (WHO) performed a thorough evaluation of recent experimental studies of stevioside and steviols conducted on animals and humans, and concluded that "stevioside and rebaudioside A are not genotoxic in vitro or in vivo and that the genotoxicity of steviol and some of its oxidative derivatives in vitro is not expressed in vivo."

The same WHO report also found no evidence of carcinogenic activity or other tevia dangers. It noted that "stevioside has shown some evidence of pharmacological effects in patients with hypertension or with type-2 diabetes" but concluded that further study was required to determine proper dosage.

In December 2008, the FDA gave a "no objection" approval for GRAS - Generally Recognized As Safe - status to Truvia (developed by Cargill and The Coca-Cola Company) and PureVia (developed by PepsiCo and the Whole Earth Sweetener Company, a subsidiary of Merisant), both of which are wholly-derived from the Stevia plant.

This FDA's approval concerning Stevia safety changed after 20 years. In 1991, the FDA controversially labeled the natural sugar substitute Stevia as an "unsafe food additive" and restricted its import. Controversial because the FDA's reason that "toxicological information on the sugar substitute Stevia is inadequate to demonstrate its safety" violates the FDA's own guidelines under which natural substances with no reported adverse effects should be generally recognized as safe (GRAS).

The controversial 1991 ruling of the natural sweetener Stevia most likely was inspired to benefit the existing trade and industry of artificial sweeteners and other natural sugar substitutes.

The Stevia plant may be grown legally in most countries, although some countries restrict or ban its use as a sweetener.

Benefits of Stevia

The health benefits of Stevia have been known for centuries by the Guaraní tribes of Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil that used Stevia, which they called ka'a he'ę ("sweet herb"), as a sweetener in yerba mate and medicinal teas for treating heartburn and other ailments.

More recent medical research has shown promise in treating obesity and hypertension.

Stevia is a healthy sweetener and has a negligible effect on blood glucose, even enhancing glucose tolerance. This makes Stevia attractive as a natural sweetener to diabetics and others on carbohydrate-controlled diets.

Medical research has also shown possible benefits of Stevia in treating obesity and high blood pressure. Because Stevia has a negligible effect on blood glucose, it is attractive as a natural sweetener to people on carbohydrate-controlled diets.

Possible treatment of osteoporosis has been suggested by the patent application claim that eggshell breakage can be reduced by 75% by adding a small percentage of Stevia leaf powder to chicken feed. It has also been suggested that pigs fed Stevia extract had twice as much calcium content in their meat, but these claims have been unverified.