Oh, The Irony, Stevia and Coca Cola

Money continues to talk.

For years, there has been a natural, safe, non-toxic sweetener available for diet sodas and other low-calorie foods. But the FDA wanted to make sure that the toxic sweeteners produced by drug and chemical companies were the only choices available to the American consumer and food companies alike. Profits, not your health, have too often been the deciding factors in FDA decisions in the last 50 plus years.

I am referring to a natural sweetener called Stevia which the FDA refused to allow to be used as a food additive. Instead they allowed unnatural chemical to be tested on us instead.

Stevia is a South American plant (Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) which has a sweetening effect that is 300 times more powerful than sugar. And yet, the Stevia extract has basically no calories and no side effects. An ideal product to substitute for sugar in sodas and teas and other food products for diabetics and anyone who is health conscious.

And now thanks to the consumer's ongoing demand for a safer sweetener (for health reasons) coupled with the financial power of a corporation like Coca Cola, a diet coke using Stevia may soon be on the market. I suspect it is the power of money that Coke brings to the table which is having the greatest effect...

While used by millions of people, in other countries, and for hundreds of years as a natural sweetener, Stevia has not been available as a food additive in the United States. It could be purchased as a dietary supplement by you and me - we could then go home and sweeten our tea as long as we kept it secret...

Not it looks as if the FDA will allow Stevia to be used as a food additive.

The question remains: Has the FDA come to its senses and decided to act for the benefit of the American citizen or has it been bribed to act sanely?

No matter, I guess, as long as Stevia in its natural, organic form will be allowed to be used as a food additive, we will all be winners.