Is It Safe to Use Stevia?
Stevia is a naturally-occurring sweetener, but that doesn’t mean it’s good for you
Last summer, I bought a stevia plant with plans on snipping leaves and enjoying their flavor in my tea and lemonade all season.
After bringing the plant home, I set to work researching the different ways to use it. But I kept coming across articles declaring the dangers of stevia, and its past FDA-ban that had confusing nuances.
In the end, I held off and stuck to using my store-bought stevia packets. Better safe than sorry. But now it's gardening season. I occasionally use stevia packets in my morning coffee, and I was finding myself wondering about the actual stevia plant. Is there really a difference between store-bought stevia and the plant itself? Turns out, the answer to that surprised me.
Stevia and Its Uses
Stevia is a sugar substitute similar to artificial sweeteners because it doesn't raise your blood sugar, according to Claire Rifkin, RDN, a NYC-based private practice dietitian. It's about 200 to 300 times sweeter than table sugar. Unlike other sweeteners, it comes from a plant.
Is there really a difference between store-bought stevia and the plant itself? Turns out, the answer to that surprised me.
Besides eating the stevia leaves themselves, there's also the highly processed version you see in stores known as steviol glycosides. Stevia is used to flavor products you see in stores, but you can also use it to replace sugar in your drinks and baked goods.
Using it for baking isn't a one-to-one match with table sugar, so you'll have to make some adjustments in your recipe if you want to substitute stevia for table sugar. The conversion is 5 teaspoons of stevia for every cup of sugar, explains Kimberly Gomer, MS, RD, LD/N who is in private practice and director of nutrition at Body Beautiful Miami.
It's even less when it's in liquid form, which is about 2 teaspoons of liquid stevia for every three-quarters cup of sugar. But since sugar also gives volume and texture to baking, you'll need to replace that lost bulking agent with something else, such as yogurt or applesauce.
The Effects of Sweeteners on the Body
Using a sweetener that doesn't cause a spike in blood sugar, and comes naturally from a plant has to be better, right? The American diet contains lots of sugar which can lead to health conditions such as high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, and type 2 diabetes.
"It's actually a drug, because of that sweetness and how it hits the brain."
But just because it comes from a plant doesn't make stevia healthier. Gomer explains that because it's 200 to 300 times sweeter than sugar, the body doesn't recognize stevia (and other artificial sweeteners) as food. "It's actually a drug, because of that sweetness and how it hits the brain," says Gomer.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, when you eat sugar, your brain releases dopamine, the feel-good chemical, similar to when someone smokes cigarettes. Eating sugar stimulates certain areas of the brain affected by addiction. Artificial sweeteners do the same thing, except that because they're so much sweeter than sugar, your nervous system becomes overloaded with dopamine. As Melissa Young, MD, states in the article, your body starts craving artificial sweeteners. "And it can be easier to give in to that craving because you think you're making a healthier choice."
Especially when that sweetener comes from a plant.
Can You Eat Stevia Leaves?
So going back to my garden and this beautiful stevia plant I had bought last year. It turns out, while I can pull a few leaves off my basil plant and use it on my wood-fire pizza, it doesn't work that way with the stevia leaf.
"Homegrown stevia is not going to be the same as commercially processed stevia."
"I would not recommend consuming whole stevia leaves even if you grow them in your garden," says Rifkin. You might be just fine, but you also might not be and that's simply because there's not enough research to tell us otherwise. The whole-leaf version of stevia isn't FDA-approved for use as a sweetener.
Because of concerns about it causing cancer, stevia was banned by the FDA in 1991. In 2008, the FDA revised its stance and granted high-purity stevia extracts as "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS). The same isn't true of whole-leaf stevia.
"Homegrown stevia is not going to be the same as commercially processed stevia. The safe part of stevia that we see on shelves is a specific part of the stevia leaf called steviol glycosides," explains Rifkin. She says to get to that specific part of the plant, it has to go through refinement and processing.
With whole leaf stevia, the FDA doesn't yet know the toxicological data, notes Gomer.
"There's this distinction between the forms of stevia that highlights why it's so confusing because it's the opposite of what you think. You think 'natural' so that means the plant is healthy," says Gomer. "Do I think a few leaves in tea is a problem? Probably not. There's a lot more problems in people's diets than a few leaves of stevia but I also don't think it's a health food."
The stevia you buy in the grocery stores, the liquids and powder packets, are a different story, when it comes to safety. Because as Rifkin explains, the FDA deems stevia as safe as long as it's the highly processed and refined version.
"I think a lot of Americans, when they hear the words highly processed or highly refined, they might think it's bad, but in this case it's a good thing, because it's refining out the harmful elements of the stevia plant and making it a safe product for consumer use," says Rifkin.
With the highly processed stevia, there are still precautions. According to Rifkin, stevia can cause some people to have GI symptoms, such as diarrhea, upset stomach and bloating.
"If you add stevia to your diet and you're having these symptoms, that's a good indication to know stevia doesn't sit right for you and this isn't the sugar replacement for you," Rifkin says.
There's also such a thing as consuming too much stevia. The acceptable amount is what the World Health Organization defined as 4 mg per kilogram of body weight. For a 150-pound person, that's eating 10 packets of stevia daily.
There's also such a thing as consuming too much stevia.
A lot of stevia, it's true, but this also calls attention to the safety of stevia for children. Children, of course, have lower body weights and Gomer warns to just avoid giving stevia to children because they can reach the toxic levels faster than in an adult.
But with whole-leaf stevia, it's probably best to just avoid it altogether. So why are these plants being sold in garden centers? It's a question I wondered about since learning the dangers of eating whole stevia leaves.
"It's because they're being sold under the assumption that people aren't going to eat it," says Rifkin. Which she agreed seems misleading. However, Rifkin explains that under the FDA rules about stevia, it's allowed to be sold at gardening centers under the assumption of it only being used for horticultural purposes, not as a sweetener for human consumption. In other words, it's pretty to look at in your garden, but could very well be toxic to you and it's probably best to not eat it at all.
Until we know more about stevia, stick to those found in stores. Better yet, says Gomer, put fresh lemon in your tea to make it taste better. If you're wanting to improve your health, try to avoid sugar and artificial sweeteners or sugar as much as possible.
Read More