Stevia ( Where you CAN'T find Sweet-n-Low....

A lot of what has been said about stevia is out of date and/or flat out wrong.

Stevia is a native American herb whose leaves are 10 times sweeter then sugar. The extracts are 300 times sweeter then sugar. The leaves and the extracts have virtually no calories.

Given these things, given that stevia is a natural product -> not a sweetner made in a chemlab, and that stevia requires only a fraction of the processing that sugar does makes many people believe its FDA status as a supplement rather then a sweetener is a result of the sugar growers lobbying the FDA.

Japan and Europe have been using it for about 20 years. The Paraguay
Indians have used the plant for several centuries.

I originally mentioned it in this thread in the spirit of being helpful.

I am not selling anything.

If you are interested in learning more about stevia I recommend this book:

Stevia Rebaudiana : Natures Sweet Secret by David Richard
ISBN: 1890612154

It is packed with citations and it is not published by a company whose business has anything to do with stevia.

The Paraguay Indians chewed the whole leaves (which taste like crap), for several centuries, therefore the highly refined stevia extract (the only stevia that doesn't taste like crap) is safe and "natural?"

By this logic, cocaine is "safe and natural" because Peruvian
Indians chewed coca leaves for hundreds of years.

I wasn't suggesting it for diabetics in particular. 8 year old nutrition might not be accurate IMHO

One more time. I am not selling a product.

Get over yourself. http://www.geocities.com/beforewisdom/

"The great American thought trap: It is not real unless it can be seen on television or bought in a shopping mall"

Horseshit. Unrefined stevia leaves taste like crap, and well-refined stevia extract certainly takes at least much processing as refined sugar does. I do use it sometimes combined with another sweetener, because it mainly has a sweet aftertaste that isn't too satisfying without another sweetener, unless you use dextrose-padded stevia packets which pretty much negates the point of using stevia in the first place.

I've had it for years. As you mentioned "outdated" information, that book was published in 1996, and several of the toxicity studies and documents listed in the bibliography for the European Commission's 1999 rejection of stevia were published in 1996 through 1999, after Richard's book was written.