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The low calorie sweetener of tomorrow might be stevia, which is obtainable these days in the United States as a food additive and a dietary supplement. This curious case of bureaucratic schizophrenia is attributed by many stevia advocates to nefarious underhanded dealings of the sugar industry, pressuring the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban it on health and safety grounds even though its use goes back hundreds of years and has been consumed in big quantities throughout Japan for a whole generation.
A low calorie sweetener might not get any better than stevia, which can taste up to three hundred times sweeter than sugar but has only a negligible effect on blood glucose levels, making it ideal for those on low-carb diets, especially the diabetic and the obese. And indeed, medical research suggests that stevia might even help with obesity and hypertension. An entirely natural sweetener, stevia comes from the sunflower family and has been traditionally utilized for medicinal purposes by arborigines in Paraguay and Bolivia for heartburn and other maladies.
If it all sounds incredible, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet: United States Patent Number 6,500,471 was filed by a pair from Japan for a technique of raising edible animals such that the resulting meat can be stored without compromising on taste – with the additional benefit of stronger more durable eggshells where chickens are concerned!
Now, can your average low calorie sugar substitute do that? Stevia. Not your daddy’s all natural sweetener!
That’s why stevia is being called the low calorie sweetener of tomorrow. Too bad FDA malfeasance (the agency refuses to divulge, even under Freedom of Information Act requests, the names of those whose complaint lead to the ban on stevia in the United States for decades – names suspected of being associated with the powerful sugar industry) has only just made it available today.