The South American herb stevia, is a natural rather than an artificial sweetener. Some people, accustomed to cooking with herbs, feel that eating stevia must be safe as it’s natural. However, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have concluded that stevia is not safe to eat as a sweetener, but is safe as a nutritional supplement.

The FDA banned stevia as a sweetener in 1991. It cannot be labelled and sold as any type of sweetener in the United States, but stevia can be packaged and sold as a nutritional supplement. It’s not usually carried in American grocery stores and is usually only found in health food stores. The FDA’s reasons for banning stevia as a sweetener are that studies have shown that it may cause liver problems in rats.

Other countries such as China, Japan and Brazil have approved stevia as a sweetener. Japan is especially known for its intensive testing of stevia and it concluded that the herb has no harmful effects on health. The Japanese studies influenced the FDA enough to approve stevia as a food supplement, but not as a sweetener. The American Diabetes Association does not endorse the use of stevia as a sugar alternative.

Stevia is derived from the stevia rebaudiana plant native to Paraguay. Stevia is 300 times sweeter than sugar yet free of calories. In American health food stores, stevia is often packaged and sold in jars with eye droppers, but in some other countries it can be bought as a sweetener to use to replace sugar in recipes. Japan is a health-conscious country and uses 40% of the world’s stevia. Stevia is approved there for use in diet soft drinks and is used in Japan rather than sweeteners such as aspartame.

The United States and other countries that currently use stevia as a nutritional supplement only rather than a sugar alternative continue to conduct more research on the herb. Some advocates of stevia as a sweetener feel that it is safe. There is hope that stevia may one day be able to be used to control blood pressure as well as help prevent obesity.