2008 Rice Business Plan Competition

Stevia is a natural sweetener that has been used in Japan for decades. It has a slightly strange aftertaste, and can be up to 300 times sweeter than sugar.

What Studies Have Shown About Stevia

There have been countless studies conducted to test the safety of Stevia.

What are the results?

After a dosage equivalent to over 100x an average human diet, the hamsters in a research study performed at the Chulalongkorn University Primate Research Center in Bangkok, “no growth or hormone abnormalities were found in hamsters of either sex”.

And this certainly isn’t the only study that has been done. As I mentioned earlier, Stevia has been used for decades in Japan, and along with this large amount of use has come many studies on the subject.

All un-biased studies have shown that Stevia is safe for you to eat, and even has been shown to reduce breast and skin cancer.

So why has it taken so long to become approved by the FDA in the United States? The answer is related to the artificial sweetener, Aspartame.

What Studies Have Shown About Aspartame

According to a study titled “The Bressler Report”, Aspartame has been proven to trigger brain tumors, mammary tumors, pancreatic tumors, ovarian tumors, pituitary adenomas, uterine tumors, miscarriages and even more.

Fairly obviously, this is not a safe product.

Many of the studies supporting Aspartame were conducted poorly at best, and many simply to check for short term (4 day studies) tooth decay, rather than long term health effects.

There really is no real scientific evidence supporting any studies that put Aspartame in a good light. Any studies that do support Aspartame have been rejected by the scientific community (Well, the scientific community that is outside of the FDA).

An “Unfortunate Coincidence”

So how on earth did Aspartame get approved then?

Well before 1983, the product had been completely rejected. That was until Dr. Arthur Hull Hayes approved the product for use in soft drinks.

And then 2 months later, he resigned from his job at the FDA. Probably for retirement, right?

But wait a second, only a few months after his resignation from the FDA he joined the Public Relations firm that supported Nutrasweet (Aspartame) under the pay of $1,000 a day.

That doesn’t sound suspicious at all…right?

I’m not going to point at any fingers here, I’ll just let you come to your own conclusion on this one. I hope we are on the same page though.

Why Did It Take Until 2008 To Approve The Use Of Stevia In The United States?

As you saw from the case above, the FDA is far from being affected by economic and political reasons.

Now Stevia is not only a healthy sweetener, but it is cheap to produce.

Of course, for other Artificial Sweeteners (Such as Splenda or Nutrasweet), having a healthy, cheap competitor on the market really isn’t good for business.

So in order to protect their own assets ($), the sale of Stevia in the United States had to be prevented.

And it was. And money was thrown in every direction (except towards Stevia). That is, until 2007 when a popular soft drink company decided that they would like to create a product that uses Stevia and Erythritol as a sweetener.

And by such a fluke, only a year later Stevia is approved for use in the United States! I find it very suspicious, now that a big soft drink company wants to support Stevia, that it gets approved.

Another “Coincidence”?

Once again, you can be the judge of that.

Just try to keep all of this in mind the next time you try to gauge the credibility of the FDA. Some of the decisions they have made are good decisions, but after the events that have taken place here, I would find myself very hard pressed to take their word alone without doing my own research to back up their claims.

And I encourage you to as well!

My name is Andrew Muller and I am the owner and editor for http://www.easy-sugar-free-recipes.com
I started that site because after running through countless health problems, I found that I had over 30 food allergies including Milk, Sugar, Corn, and Rice.
Over the years I have learned to cope with this new diet, but I figure that tons of other people are struggling to get their diet in order.
That’s why I started the site. To learn more about eating healthy, and so I could teach others to eat healthy as well.
To learn more about Stevia, visit my website here: http://www.easy-sugar-free-recipes.com/stevia-sweetener.html.

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