Are Coke's New Stevia Softdrinks Safe to Drink?
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin 
on 12.18.08
Image: Cargill
Stevia Hits the Big Time
The low-calorie sweetener hailed as "natural" is coming to a grocery store shelf near you. Coke will start delivering stevia-sweetened Odwalla Mojito Mambo and Odwalla Pomegranate Strawberry nationwide this week and plans to introduce Sprite Green in New York and Chicago before the end of the year. Pepsi is expected to follow with SoBe Lifewater in three flavors (black and blue berry, Fuji apple pear and yumberry pomegranate) as well as a 50% reduced calorie orange juice, Trop50. Both use Cargill's Stevia Sweetener, branded Truvia.
The news is heating up the financial markets: will the natural low-cal sweetener sweeten profits as well? But what interests us is the safety of the new ingredient. The FDA is expected to give stevia-derived sweeteners the status of generally recognized as safe (known as GRAS in the industry), but is GRAS the same as SAFE?
Is Generally Recognized as Safe the Same as Safe?
GRAS is a short-cut to get approval for an ingredient without going through the usual array of studies on the safety and health effects intended to prove an ingredient safe. This short-cut saves industry a lot of money and potential test animals a lot of suffering, so in general it is reasonable that the agencies responsible for food safety have a method to approve ingredients based on the weight of evidence for chemicals which have been in use for many years.
GRAS has another benefit too: advocates of stevia-based sweeteners feared that sweetener manufacturer Cargill would get an approval exclusive to their highly purified version of stevia sweetener, called Truvia. But GRAS status should allow competitors to enter the market. Some stevia based sweeteners and even softdrinks are available on the market now, being marketed under the "dietary supplement" loophole, which allows sale of products with less safety testing.
But if stevia is banned in Europe and not approved for use as a food additive in the US, where is FDA getting information as a basis to decide that stevia is safe? The stevia plant has been used by inhabitants of its native growth zones for centuries. Of course, it has been used as a sweetener, but some tribes using stevia believe chewing the leaf is an effective birth control method. Which leads to obvious questions: if the plant can reduce fertility, it is certainly having health effects.
The Good News and the Bad News
Studies have suggested that stevia sweeteners can have cancer-causing effects and mutagenic effects, as well as reducing male fertility. But all the news is not bad. Preliminary study results also suggest that stevia may have positive effects beyond weight control, including vasodilation (an effect that can be therapeutic for high blood pressure) and improved regulation of blood glucose levels (possibly beneficial in relation to diabetes).
More recent human experience suggesting stevia based sweeteners are safe comes out of Japan, where the natural low calorie stevia sweeteners have been preferred over artificial sweeteners for the past four decades. Food standards agencies in Australia and New Zealand have also published stevia safe intake levels that equate to drinking two cans of diet softdrink per day (see the link for the basis for this calculation).
As is the case with trans-fats and high fructose corn syrup, scientists are about to get a lot more data for continuing studies on the safety of this sweetener. The best advice is moderation in all things, and remember that there are risks with artificial sweeteners as well. Stevia sweeteners offer an "all natural" option for people when the health risks from obesity outweigh other concerns.
More about Stevia and Truvia:
Truvia, from Cargill
FDA says Cargill's Truvia is safe
AP Coke to sell drinks with stevia; Pepsi holds off
The Zevia and Stevia Controversy: Is the All-natural Diet Sweetener Safe?
TH Forum: A beverage question
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I'll take stevia over HFCS any day. Although I'd be wary of anything that Cargill, or Coke for that matter, is schlepping.
Banned in Europe because they want more research into it. The liver experiments were mishandled to the point water was mutagenic and would thus cause cancer in those tests.
Is it likely to be any more dangerous than the number of questionable additives we already use? This article raises some interesting points that I'd never heard before - I blindly gave stevia a stamp of approval because it was sold in the co-op. I also think its great we have 'generally recognized as safe.' Its good to have a category for products that probably won't kill you right away and may not kill you at all. Might as well be making money while we figure out the details.
I shelled out for some a while back. Dman stuff tasted worse than nutrasweet... I'll stick with honey thanks.
There's a simple solution -- drink water, fruit juices, and tea (and i don't mean Southern tea so sweet sugar crystallizes on the sides of the glass). Not only will you not have to worry about what sweetener is used, you'll save some cash!
Stevia has been used for centuries in South America, and is used in Japan in diet/sugar free products - where they outlawed Aspartame and the like.
It's most definitely safer than Aspartame and Sucralose, but if you look at the history of these products you'll see that Stevia was demonized to pave the way for Apsartame - which was a Monsanto creation, even more crazy: Donald Rumsfeld played a significant role in it.
It sounds like a crazy conspriracy theory but look it up. Check out a film called "Sweet Misery".
Low calorie AND birth controlling? Sign me up!
A summary of how we got from sugar and honey to here:
The (un)Natural History of Sweet - From Sugar to Stevia
I'm all for a natural low/no-calorie sweetener - my Diet Coke addiction is likely destroying my kidneys. But I wonder if the Stevia plants are being grown and harvested in the US or is it coming from the native sources, meaning lots of shipping and destruction?
I've always wondered why they don't make soft drinks and lots of other things with xylitol.
Isn't xylitol generally safe?
"There's a simple solution -- drink ... fruit juices..."
What's the point? That's not distinguishably healthier than sugar-based soft-drinks.
Stop being a pansy and learn to eat fruit without liquifying it.
Since the available evidence suggests that dietary foods with artificial sweeteners increase hunger and promote weight gain, I would be interested in hearing a little more on how you concluded that promoting weight gain would help to mitigate the health effects of obesity. The generally accepted view is that we try to promote weight loss to mitigate the effects of obesity.
The bigger issue here may not be the promotion of Stevia as safe but the blind promotion that artificial sweeteners are an effective tool for people who want to lose weight.
For those who ask how a natural product could possibly be worse than an artificial one, I offer this experiment. Please don't perform it on humans. You don't want to hurt anyone! Really this is a theoretical experiment and there's no need to hurt anyone of any species with it as the results are certain from knowledge we already possess.
Grind 5 or 6 all-natural peach seeds into a powder and mix it into some other food. In an equal quantity of the same food mix 5 or 6 packets of aspartame. Feed the lumps of food to your 2 experimental victims.
The "all natural" subject will be dead in minutes to hours from cyanide poisoning.
The "artificial" subject has about a 5% chance of having a headache
Part 2 of the experiment. Two identical piles of food and you know which is which. You must choose one and eat it. Can we count on you following your logic of "how could the natural product possibly be worse?"
Natural does not equal safe to ingest nor does artificial equal unsafe to ingest.
I don't know about the health implications of stevia but it has the worst after taste ever!
"Studies have suggested that stevia sweeteners can have cancer-causing effects and mutagenic effects, as well as reducing male fertility."
What's your basis for this statement?
===Auth. note===
More details and links on the health issues around Stevia can be found in an earlier TreeHugger article on the Stevia Controversy. This article also links a publication on the negative health effects of artificial sweeteners, for balance.
The most accessible non-subscription sources of information are the EU opinion on Stevia and the Australian Draft Assessment Report on Stevia.
What "tribes" are saying they use it for birth control, and can that be like a myth?