Articles Concerning Stevia

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Articles Concerning Stevia

 

http://www.stevia-plant.com/articles.cfm

 

For hundreds of years, people in Paraguay and Brazil have used a sweet leaf to

sweeten bitter herbal teas including Yerba mate. For nearly 20 years, Japanese

consumers by the millions have used extracts of the same plant as a safe,

natural, non-caloric sweetener. The plant is stevia, is known as Stevia

rebaudiana, and today it is under wholesale attack by the U.S. Food and Drug

Administration.

 

Stevia is a fairly unassuming perennial shrub of the Compositae family, native

to the northern regions of Paraguay. It has now been grown commercially in

Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, Central America, the United States, Israel, Thailand,

England, Russia and China. The leaves contain several chemicals called

glycosides, which taste sweet, but do not provide calories. The major glycoside

is called stevioside, and is one of the major sweeteners in use in Japan and

Korea. Stevia and its extracts have captured over 40% of the Japanese market.

Major multinational food companies like Coca Cola and Beatrice foods, convinced

of its safety, use stevia extracts to sweeten foods for sale in Japan, Brazil,

and other countries where it is approved. Europeans first learned of stevia when

the Spanish Conquistadors of the Sixteenth Century sent word to Spain that the

natives of South America had used the plant to sweeten herbal tea since " ancient

times " .

 

The saga of American interest in stevia began around the turn of the Twentieth

Century when researchers in Brazil started hearing about " a plant with leaves so

sweet that a part of one would sweeten a whole gourd full of mate. " The plant

had been described in 1899 by Dr. M. S. Bertoni. In 1921 the American Trade

Commissioner to Paraguay commented in a letter " Although known to science for

thirty years and used by the Indians for a much longer period nothing has been

done commercially with the plant. This has been due to a lack of interest on the

part of capital and to the difficulty of cultivation. "

 

Dr. Bertoni wrote some of the earliest articles on the plant in 1905 and 1918.

In the latter article he notes:

" The principal importance of Ka he'e (Stevia) is due to the possibility of

substituting it for saccharine. It presents these great advantages over

saccharine:

1. It is not toxic but, on the contrary, it is healthful, as shown by long

experience and according to the studies of Dr. Rebaudi.

2. It is a sweetening agent of great power.

3. It can be employed directly in its natural state, (pulverized leaves).

4. It is much cheaper than saccharine. "

 

Unfortunately, this last point may have been the undoing of Stevia. Noncaloric

sweeteners are a big business in the U.S., as are caloric sweeteners like sugar

and the sugar-alcohols, sorbital, mannitol and xylitol.

 

It is small wonder that the powerful sweetener interests here, do not want the

natural, inexpensive, and non-patentable Stevia approved in the U.S.

 

In the 1970s, the Japanese government approved the plant, and food manufacturers

began using Stevia extracts to sweeten everything from sweet soy sauce and

pickles to diet Coke.

 

Researchers found the extract interesting, resulting in dozens of well-designed

studies of its safety, chemistry and stability for use in different food

products.

 

Various writers have praised the taste of the extracts, which has much less of

the bitter aftertaste prevalent in most noncaloric sweeteners.

 

In addition to Japan, other governments have approved Stevia and Stevioside,

including those of Brazil, China and South Korea, among others.

 

Unfortunately, the US was destined to be a different story. Stevia has been

safely used in this country for over ten years, but a few years ago, the trouble

began.

 

FDA ATTACK ON STEVIA

 

Around 1987, FDA inspectors began visiting herb companies who were selling

Stevia, telling them to stop using it because it is an " unapproved food

additive " . By mid 1990 several companies had been visited. In one case FDA's

inspector reportedly told a company president they were trying to get people to

stop using Stevia " because Nutra Sweet complained to FDA. "

 

The Herb Research Foundation(HRF), which has extensive scientific files on

Stevia, became concerned and filed a Freedom of Information Act request with FDA

for information about contacts between Nutra Sweet and FDA about Stevia. It took

over a year to get any information from the FDA, but the identity of the company

who prompted the FDA action was masked by the agency.

 

In May, 1991 FDA acted by imposing an import alert on Stevia to prevent it from

being imported into the US. They also began formally warning companies to stop

using the " illegal " herb. By the beginning of 1991, the American Herbal Products

Association (AHPA) was working to defend Stevia. At their general meeting at

Natural Products Expo West, members of the industry pledged most of the needed

funds to support work to convince FDA of the safety of Stevia. AHPA contracted

HRF to produce a professional review of the Stevia literature. The review was

conducted by Doug Kinghorn, PhD., one of the world's leading authorities on

Stevia and other natural non-nutritive sweeteners. Dr. Kinghorn's report was

peer-reviewed by several other plant safety experts and concluded that

historical and current common use of Stevia, and the scientific evidence all

support the safety of this plant for use in foods. Based on this report, and

other evidence, AHPA filed a petition with FDA in late October

asking FDA's " acquiescence and concurrence " that Stevia leaf is exempt from

food additive regulations and can be used in foods.

 

FDA, apparently attempting to regulate this herb as they would a new food

additive, contends that there is inadequate evidence to approve Stevia.

 

However, because of its use in Japan, there is much more scientific evidence of

Stevia's safety than for most foods and additives.

 

The extent of evidence FDA is demanding for the approval of Stevia, far exceeds

that which has been required to approve even new synthetic food chemicals like

aspartame (Nutra Sweet).

 

AHPA's petition points out that FDA's food additive laws were meant to protect

consumers from synthetic chemicals added to food. FDA is trying, in the case of

Stevia to claim that Stevia is the same as a chemical food additive.

But as the AHPA petition points out, Congress did not intend food additive

legislation to regulate natural constituents of food itself. In fact,

Congressman Delaney said in 1956, " There is hardly a food sold in the market

today which has not had some chemicals used on or in it at some stage in its

production, processing, packaging, transportation or storage. "

 

He stressed that his proposed bill was to assure the safety of " new chemicals

that are being used in our daily food supply, " and when asked if the regulations

would apply to whole foods, he replied " No, to food chemicals only. "

 

AHPA contends that Stevia is a food, which is already recognized as safe because

of its long history of food use. Foods which have a long history of safe use are

exempted by law from the extensive laboratory tests required of new food

chemicals.

 

The AHPA petition, however, supports the safe use of Stevia with both the

historical record, and references to the numerous toxicology studies conducted

during the approval process in Japan, and studies by interested researchers in

other countries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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