by Linda Bonvie, Bill Bonvie and Donna Gates
Look up the word "sweet" in the dictionary and one of the definitions you find is "pleasing or agreeable." That definition, however, is only partially true. While conventional sweeteners may be "pleasing" to the taste, they can hardly be described as "agreeable" in their effects on the body.
Natural sweeteners, including sugar or sucrose (white sugar plus maple, turbinado and raw sugar), honey and corn syrup (including high fructose corn syrup, an industrial-strength variety treated with enzymes to intensify sweetness) have been linked to a host of ailments, such as tooth disease, obesity, diabetes, coronary heart disease, high blood pressure, hypoglycemia, yeast infections and inflammatory bowel disease.
Artificial sweeteners are widely available in soft drinks, snack foods, desserts and in packet form (Equal™, Sweet 'N' Low™). Despite manufacturers' claims, none of these products can be said to possess a clean bill of health.
Artificial sweeteners - aspartame (NutraSweet™, Equal™), saccharin and acesulfame K (Sunett™, Sweet One™) - all pose proven health risks.
Aspartame (which could endanger anyone with phenylketonuria, a rare digestive disorder afflicting one in 15,000 Americans) is used as a sweetener in more than l,000 products.
Aspartame contains phenylalanine, aspartic acid and methanol (wood alcohol) that breaks down into formaldehyde when ingested [See "How Diet Soda Turns to Poison," Fall '97 EIJ]. Aspartame's symptoms (chronicled in thousands of consumer complaints to the US Food and Drug Administration and the Dallas-based Aspartame Consumer Safety Network) include gastrointestinal distress, headaches, rashes, depression, seizures, memory loss, blurred vision, blindness, slurred speech and other neurological disorders.
(Studies cited by Dr. Russell Blaylock suggest that low-calorie aspartame sweetener tends to stimulate the appetite. If true, aspartame use may have contributed to the marked increase in obesity among Americans - an increase that coincides precisely with the period during which aspartame was promoted as a weight-loss remedy).
Saccharin is sold despite a label warning that it causes cancer in laboratory animals. Saccharin was allowed to remain on the market only by virtue of a special act of Congress.
The latest synthetic sweetener, acesulfame K, carries no health warnings, but the Center for Science in the Public Interest maintains that the sweetener "causes cancer and should not have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration."
A Sweet Native Tradition
While the US public has waited in vain for a safe artificial sweetener to be developed, citizens of several other countries have - in some cases, for centuries - enjoyed a safe, natural sweetener that is virtually calorie-free and widely believed to offer a host of other health benefits as well. This miracle sweetener is the South American herb, Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni - commonly known as stevia. Estimated to be some 150 to 400 times sweeter than sugar, stevia (after years of US government suppression) is at last on the verge of becoming available to US consumers.
Paraguay's Guarani Indians have known about the unique advantages of kaa he-e ("sweet herb") since long before the Spanish conquistadors arrived on their shores in the 16th century. This wild shrub indigenous to the Amambay Mountains was known to have a sweetening power unlike anything else. The Guarani use the leaves to enhance the taste of bitter maté tea and medicinal potions.
The first commercial stevia crop was harvested in 1908. In 1921, US Trade Commissioner George S. Brady praised stevia as a "new sugar plant with great commercial possibilities." Brady took note of its non-toxicity and its ability to be used with only drying and grinding. He also praised stevia as "an ideal and safe sugar for diabetics." Brady further predicted that stevia would "be of great commercial importance" - a prophesy that caused considerable alarm among the world's sugar producers.
Rediscovered in Japan
In 1931, two French chemists isolated stevioside, a pure white crystalline extract that is the most prevalent of several compounds that give the stevia leaf its sweet taste. US government researcher Hewitt G. Fletcher described the extract as "the sweetest natural product yet found."
Introduced to Japan in 1970 by a consortium of food product manufacturers, stevioside and other stevia products quickly caught on. By 1988, they reportedly represented approximately 41 percent of the market share of potently sweet substances consumed in Japan.
In addition to widespread use as a table-top sweetener, stevia is also used by the Japanese to sweeten ice cream, bread, candies, pickles, seafood, vegetables and soft drinks. Even products made by US companies such as Sunkist and Nestle are now sweetened with stevia in Japan.
Today stevia is grown and used in approximately 10 countries outside South America, including China, Germany, Malaysia, Israel and South Korea. Stevia might by now be commonly available in the US as well, had it not been for a concerted effort to block its entry.
Stevia's US Debut Cut Short
By the mid-1980s, various US companies were becoming aware of stevia's potential commercial value. With the addition of stevia as a flavor enhancer in a number of popular brands of herbal tea, the ancient sweet herb of the Guaranis was at last poised to make a delayed debut in the US marketplace.
By this time, however, powerful market forces were at work, especially a huge artificial sweetener industry that felt threatened by the appearance of a sweetener that was natural, virtually noncaloric, and safe for use by diabetics.
No sooner had stevia entered the US herbal scene than the FDA launched an aggressive campaign to nip its emergence in the bud. A series of FDA-initiated actions against firms using stevia in their products included embargoes and search-and-seizures of warehouses and manufacturing sites by armed federal marshals. To cap off the effort, a full-fledged "import alert" was issued, barring stevia shipments into the US.
What prompted the FDA's extraordinary intervention in the marketing of stevia, FDA officials cannot - or will not - say. However, rumors persist that the catalyst was a "trade complaint" from a company that did not want stevia to reach the marketplace. While no trade complaints pre-dating the FDA's anti-stevia campaign have yet to surface, an anonymous trade complaint submitted some time later is on record. The compliant resulted in Celestial Seasonings, a Boulder, Colorado-based tea company, being forced to suspend the use of stevia in its popular line of herbal teas.
NutraSweet Company officials deny rumors that their company was behind the clamp-down. One individual who was stopped from selling stevia products, however, insists that an FDA representative specifically identified NutraSweet as the party that objected to his attempts to sell an "untested natural sweetener."
Despite the presentation of substantial historical data in two petitions seeking "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) status for stevia, the FDA has held firm to its position that stevia's historical use was limited to "Indian ceremonies centuries ago," to quote the FDA's Dr. George Pauli. In one of many contradictions, the FDA acknowledged in one of its import alerts that "Stevia leaves... have been used throughout history."
By denying it official GRAS status, the FDA was able to brand stevia a "food additive," a category that requires substantial scientific study prior to marketing (the kind of study already done in Japan, but ignored by the FDA).
The fact that stevia is a sweetener complicates the matter further, since the FDA tends to view any "new" sweetener as an additive with a particularly high potential for mass consumption, thus necessitating special scrutiny. (Strangely, that attitude was relaxed in the FDA's rush to approve aspartame.)
Stevia now is only legally available in the US as a dietary supplement. The FDA strictly prohibits stevia supplements from being labeled as sweeteners or even suggesting that the supplements have sweetening attributes.
What is the FDA Afraid Of?
Why does the FDA consider stevia to be "unsafe?" Does it cause cancer in laboratory animals, like saccharin (which remains on the market, nonetheless)? Has it been linked to the growth of brain tumors in rats or to the development of holes in the brains of baby mice, the way aspartame has? The answer is, quite simply, "no."
Instead, it seems that the FDA's chief concern is the possibility that stevia might act as (are you ready for this?) a contraceptive. A stevia information sheet produced by the FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition cited "two published scientific studies that suggest that the consumption of aqueous extracts of stevia reduces the fertility of female laboratory animals." (One was an unreproducible 30-year old study from Uruguay; the other was a 30-year-old Purdue University animal study whose conclusions, the author later stated, do not necessarily apply to humans.)
In a chronic toxicity study conducted in Japan, nearly 500 rats were fed stevia for up to two years. The highest dosage represented 100 times the estimated daily human intake. Still, researchers found no significant dose-related changes in growth, general appearance, hematological and blood biochemical findings or organ weights.
Further Japanese tests on male and female laboratory rats directly refute the FDA's characterization of stevia as a possible contraceptive; these studies found no evidence of harmful effects on fertility, fetuses or offspring.
After lengthy, comprehensive trials - both in the laboratory and in actual human use -, Japan, one of the world's most scientifically advanced societies has embraced stevia. Meanwhile, the US continues to keep stevia locked up on suspicion of being "unsafe."
Does the FDA Still Protect Consumers?
Now that stevia has been designated as "unsafe" - almost certainly, as a sop to the politically powerful sweetener industry - the FDA insists on stonewalling any evidence to the contrary.
By choosing to promote aspartame consumption while restricting the public's access to stevia, the FDA has abandoned the chief rule of its founder, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who proclaimed the principle that "the right of the consumer is the first thing to be considered." The FDA's actions now harm the very consumers it was established to protect.
No one is claiming that stevia is safe simply by virtue of its being natural. But people have used stevia safely for centuries, and it is this test of time - amply supported by modern scientific research - that suggests that stevia is a beneficial substance that can be used without fear of adverse consequences. Clearly, the barrier to FDA approval was not raised by scientific concerns but, rather, by commercial concerns - augmented by bureaucratic intransigence.
Getting stevia to the marketplace as a dietary supplement has made some of the benefits of this marvelous herb available to the US public, but the battle is far from won. It is difficult to know how much more time and effort will be required for stevia to achieve the kind of alternative sweetener status in the US that it has been accorded in other countries.
Stevia will eventually win FDA approval. The timing depends on the pressure brought to bear upon our political and regulatory bodies. The US political system was not intended to be dominated by unyielding bureaucrats or corporate lobbyists - but it will be if we let it.
Grow Your Own
Stevia is remarkably easy to grow and the plant's bushy, velvety green leaves add an attractive note to any garden. The herb can be cultivated from Florida to southern Canada and can reach a height of 30 inches and a width of 18 to 24 inches. (Organic gardeners will appreciate stevia's insect-repelling abilities. The plant's sweetness seems to provide a kind of natural defense against aphids, grasshoppers and other bugs.)
It is difficult to grow stevia from seeds. Fortunately, potted stevia seedlings are readily available from mail-order nurseries (See sidebar).
Raising stevia, whether in your backyard or on your balcony, is a positive way to personally (and legally) protest the wrongheaded government policies that have deprived US citizens of the plant's many benefits.
Linda and Bill Bonvie and Donna Gates are authors of The Stevia Story [published by Body Ecology, 1266 West Paces Ferry Road, No. 505, Atlanta, GA 30327].
Sources for Mail-Order Stevia
The Herbal Advantage [Rte. 3, Box 93, Rogersville, MO 65742, (800) 753-9929] supplies potted stevia plants ready for planting.
Richter's Herbs [357 Highway 47, Goodwood, Ontario L0C-lA0, (905) 640-6677, fax -6641] offers plants in 2 1/2" pots via courier to customers in the US and Canada.
Well Sweep Herb Farm [205 Mt. Bethel Road, Port Murray, NJ 07865, (908) 852-5390] provides plants in 3" pots via mail order.
Stevia: Cash Crop for Canada's Farmers?
While stevia's historical roots may lie in Paraguay, its future could well be determined in Canada, where two former University of Calgary chemistry professors have devised a simple extraction process for stevioside.
The researchers have teamed with the Alberta Research Council to make the effort commercially feasible. The resulting venture, Royal Sweet International of Vancouver, was formed to promote this new stevia sweetener. Agriculture Canada (a government agency) views stevia crops as a potential high-profit replacement for Canadian tobacco and plans to work with Royal Sweet.
While the use of refined stevia extracts as sugar replacements has not yet been approved by the Canadian government, there has never been a problem in buying imported stevia leaves at Canadian health food stores.
Promises, Promises
Because Brazil offers the potential for a huge soft-drink market, soda manufacturers couldn't have been more pleased when a 17-year ban on artificial sweeteners was lifted in 1988.
While Coke, Pepsi and a number of Brazilian companies were anxiously awaiting the green light to flood the market with their sugar-free beverages, the Brazilian minister of health had other ideas. His proposal: that only stevia-sweetened diet drinks be allowed in Brazil.
This idea encountered strong opposition from big companies with a lot to lose. Monsanto, for instance, had slated millions of dollars to construct a NutraSweet plant in São Paulo.
After much protest, the proposed policy was dropped. In exchange for government approval for the use of aspartame, cyclamates and saccharine in diet drinks, the Association of Soft Drink Manufacturers promised Brazil's Ministry of Health that its members would carry out studies to show how stevia could be included in their formulations.
The results of those studies were to have been disclosed by 1989. According to Dr. Howard Roberts, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs for the National Soft Drink Association, it is not known what became of the promised studies - or if, in fact, they were ever done.
Stevia: The Natural Sweetener that Frightens NutraSweet™