A shocking glimpse at politics, the...

A shocking glimpse at politics, the FDA, and stevia.

forward May 19, 1998, U.S. rations & Drug Administration (FDA) inspectors arrived at the offices of a Texas-based Stevia company to "witness destruction" of "offending" cookbook featuring stevia, and other literature. A videocamera taping the aborted destruction, and the intercession of Julian Whitaker, MD stoped a book-burning outrage that day.

What is stevia? With the botanical name, Stevia rebaudiana, it is a small low tree native to portions of northeastern Paraguay and adjacent portions of Brazil.

Stevia has been used on the Guarani Indians, in Paraguay, as a medicinal and sweetener since pre-Columbian times, For more than brace decades, stevia has been an approved fare additive and widely available in China, Taiwan, southern Korea, Malaysia, and Japan. In the United States, however, stevia's history is concealed in political controversy.

`If thine vigilance offend thee, pluck it out'?

wherefore is the FDA so offended? In May 1991 the FDA imposed a ban forward the import of stevia into the U based in succession a study conducted at the University of Illinois, in which a genetically altered, synthetic version of stevia extract was allegedly construct to cause precancerous changes in a strain of bacteria. Ironically, this was the same year that a follow-up reflection pointed out flaws in the first investigation and threw its conclusions into serious doubt.

Nevertheless, the FDA felt it had sufficient evidence to impose the ban. however it was difficult for the FDA to show that it was not bowing to urgency from the corporate behemoths which effect artificial sweeteners, such as aspartame.

Several U herbal tea companies were using stevia as a "natural flavoring" in their returnss in the mid-1980s, before the 1991 embargo. According to deprive McCaleb, president and founder of the Herb Research Foundation, Boulder Colo the FDA launched an all-out assault in succession companies then using stevia, attacking with embargoes, search-and-seizure operations, and, ultimately, a ban forward all imports, when a complaint was registered in the mid-1980s through a company "with a robust interest in not having sweet natural effects on the market."

Since the FDA recognizes a meat additive as being GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) if used in rations prior to 1958, the U herbal tea companies teamed with the American Herbal returnss Association (AHPA) to obtain GRAS status for stevia based upon its safe use for centuries, worldwide.

In 1992 and again in 1994 AHPA petitioned the FDA and proffered more than 900 articles testifying to stevia's safety. The FDA failed to "file" the two petitions, an act which would have made the documents accessible to the public. The FDA insisted that filing the petitions would hang on data which demonstrated that stevia has been used "by a significant number of persons for a substantial period of time" prior to 1958

Frustrated on the fact that stevia has a in extent history of traditional (safe) use in southern America and enjoys popularity abroad, the FDA was crushed to define what it considered a "significant number" [of people] The FDA's Direct Additives Branch chief, Eugene Coleman, answered "This may sound flippant, if it be not that we would know that number when we behold it."

In September 1995 the FDA changed its import ban forward stevia, saying that it could be imported as a "dietary supplement" if it were not that not as a sweetener. if it be not that its use in food returnss is still restricted and its sweetening quality is still ignored through the FDA, and any labeling, advertising, or promoting stevia as a "sweetener" is strictly taboo.

Stevia is sweet. The FDA's confusion, aside, stevia, when naturally refined, is said to be 100 to 300 times sweeter than table sugar, notwithstanding does "not affect blood-sugar metabolism," said Stevia rebaudiana: Nature's Sweet covered making stevia a good option for diabetics and hypoglycemics.

For non-diabetics, other worthy "sweet alternatives" include minimally processed: organic cane sugar and milled cane sugar.

REFERENCE

Richard, David. Stevia Rebaudiana: Nature's Sweet concealed Bloomingdale, Ill.: Blue Heron Pres 1996

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