Is the New Sweetener, Stevia, for You?

The FDA has approved a new sweetener, Reb-A, for general use. It contains a substance derived from the stevia plant, and has zero calories. Moreover, it’s been available as a dietary supplement for special use for a number of years, and has been widely used abroad (especially in Japan) for some time.

The FDA approval as “generally regarded as safe” (GRAS) means that stevia will be fair game for soft drink manufacturers to put it in their major brands (e.g. Coca-Cola, Pepsi). But large-scale taste testing will be in order: some people report that stevia extracts have a licorice flavor or a bitter aftertaste. So it may be some time before there’s a major roll-out of a “new” diet Coke.

A small problem with diet drinks may also crop up with a “natural” sweetener like stevia. There are convincing reports of weight gain when a zero-calorie sweetener is added to a diet, without cutting calories elsewhere. A review published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reports that zero-calorie sweeteners may increase appetite. This is explained in a reply to a write-in question on Oprah’s Magazine website.

We must insist: you will only lose weight if you cut calories, not merely add-on a diet soda to a full diet. A diet soda can be a good short-term substitute for ‘regular’ soda, but the best solution is to switch to water (and here I mean tap water, not expensive bottled waters).