Good Morning America Show aired a food and nutrition special, with dietician Andy Douglas. Dr Andy Douglas introduced a new plant which is native to the Southern Americans and Central Americans, Stevia (biological name: Stevia rebaudiana) manufactures sugary leaves which have long being cropped to flavor the foods and the beverages.
In the recent years, a Stevia extract, called rebaudioside A, has increasingly become popular as a common substitute for sugar.
DR Douglas says that this is a wonder substitute with almost up calories, Stevia looks like normal sugar but is said to be exponentially sweeter than it.
Now used in foods like soft drinks, candy, and the pre packaged parched goods, Stevia is also being sold as a table top sweetener. Its suggested uses are common like sweetening tea and coffee, as well as dash onto oat meal, cereal, fruits, and yogurts.
It has been estimated that in the year 2008, a few major food companies (including Coca Cola and Pepsi Co) carried out scientific reviews which reckoned that Stevia extract was safe and was to be generally recognized as “a safe food product,”.
The U.S.A’s Food and the Drug Administration approved the usage of it as an additive of food. Prior to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval, Stevia only could be marketed as a nutritional supplement and was frequently sold as a fluid extract in the innate food stores.
Some health experts censure the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Stevia extract, quoting research stating that the consumption of Stevia could be a reason of DNA injury.
The importance of it is that this particular investigation tested the side effects of the chemical named stevioside (which is yet another compound which is found in Stevia) and is not the chemical rebaudioside A. To date, there is no powerful evidence which proves that rebaudioside A is treacherous for the human consumption.