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You Are Here: IC
Network : Fresh Tastes
: September 2001
Stevia: Plenty of Sweet
Talk But No Answers!
Does the very
thought of food with artificial sweeteners in it make you cringe?
Me too. I've always been wary of these synthetic sugar replacements.
Since my IC diagnosis in 1990 however, I've had more than skepticism
motivating me to stay away from the stuff.... I've had some pretty
severe bladder pain. I spend all night in the bathroom if I so much
as taste a speck of aspartame or saccharin. So when I decided to
try out something new-- something sweet that's not a naturally occurring
sugar-- I had to crank up my courage. This summer I got brave and
tried two popular products: Splenda (a new FDA-approved food sweetener),
and stevia (a dietary supplement with centuries of use as a food
sweetener in South America). In last month's column I talked about
Splenda, and this month I recount my adventures with stevia.
I first heard
of the sweet-tasting herb, stevia, back in 1996. Though it's been
used as a food sweetener in Paraguay for a long time, its first
introduction to the U.S. market was in the 1980's. No sooner had
the herb arrived here than various importers began touting it to
consumers. It was boldly marketed as a food sweetener and alternative
to FDA approved artificial food sweeteners. Stevia cookbooks appeared.
Natural foods markets enthusiastically began to carry stevia products.
The herb began attracting media and consumer attention. It also
attracted the attention of the FDA. In the mid-80's the FDA made
a drastic move, limiting its import and calling it an "unsafe food
additive". Which is why you won't find stevia products in the sugar
and sweetener section of your local market.
Now before
I tell you about my own recent adventures with this sweet-tasting
herb, I have to let you know that today stevia is still not government
approved as a sweetener for food. It can't be sold as a food or
food additive, or used in food products. So don't look for it in
your local supermarket. Don't even look in the sweetener section
of a natural foods grocery store such as Whole Foods. You may however,
find it tucked in between the bottles of vitamins, herbs, and tonics
in a health food store. But more on the research and the international
regulatory situation later.
Stevia rebaudiana
is a perennial herb in the same family as daisies, according to
a Pacific Northwest importer of the plants, Log House Plants. It
can grow in the U.S. in mild climate areas and can reach 4 to 5
feet in height. The company has begun importing stevia plants for
sale in nurseries on the West Coast. (A nurseryman at a store here
in California says sales of the plant have been "very good".) This
bright green tender-leafed plant is native to Paraguay in South
America where it has sweetened food products for centuries. The
Guarana of Paraguay were the people responsible for discovering
its sweet properties. Today they still use stevia leaves to sweeten
a bitter, caffeine-rich local beverage and various folk medicine
concoctions.
To prepare
it for sale or use in the traditional way, the leaves of the stevia
plant are collected and dried, then crushed to a powder. You may
see this light brown powder sold in bags or bottles. Of all of the
stevia plant, only the leaves are sweet. The stems and leaf veins
tend to be bitter and so are not included in high-quality stevia
leaf products. The fresh green leaves can also be brewed to make
a tea.
"How does stevia
affect IC?", you may wonder. Well, I can't tell you how it would
affect yours, but here's my story. For my first experiment I bought
a small stevia plant and harvested the fresh green leaves, carefully
picking out the large veins and stems. I heated a cup of hot water
and immersed the leaves, just like I was brewing a cup of tea. After
a couple of minutes I strained out the leaves and gave it a taste.
It was pleasantly sweet all right... but had a definite aftertaste.
The only way to describe the aftertaste is to say that it tasted
like a freshly cut lawn smells. I managed to finish the cup and
waited to see if it would flare my bladder. It didn't. But that
"grazing-in-the-grass" flavor was a real turn-off as far as I was
concerned. I decided to skip trying the dried stevia leaf powder.
(Who wants to experience a grazing- in-the-dead-grass flavor?)
So my next
experiment was with stevia extract. Stevia extract is a white powder
consisting mainly of the glucoside compounds (stevioside) in stevia
leaves. It's the stuff responsible for the sweet taste. Stevia extract
is not only sweet, but calorie-free because it is not a sugar. Stevia
extract is hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, too. To give you
an idea of its sweetness, I can use a couple teaspoons of sugar
to sweeten a cup of my favorite herb tea. One-twentieth of a teaspoon
of stevia extract did the same job. The same amount of extract also
adequately sweetened a cup of low-acid decaffeinated coffee. With
the coffee however, I noticed a curious effect. A very slight numbness
developed in the tip of my tongue as I continued to sip on the warm
coffee over the course of half an hour. After I stopped drinking
the coffee the peculiar sensation on my tongue disappeared gradually
over a few minutes. In both the herb tea and the coffee, the extract
didn't seem to have that "grassy" aftertaste that the fresh leaves
had. My bladder flared up a bit a couple hours later, but that could
be the residual caffeine in the coffee, which I know my bladder
is sensitive to.
A couple of
days later I tried stevia extract on buttered toast. I made the
toast and sprinkled about one-sixteenth of a teaspoon of stevia
extract on top. It tasted pretty good. Sweet and no grassy aftertaste.
But I did notice a bit of a sour note... something reminiscent of
licorice with an acid twang. That might be a plus if I was trying
to create a low-acid, low calorie, sweet-and-sour sauce. But I didn't
care for it on the toast. Perhaps I used too much... instructions
on the bottle said it wouldn't have a bitter aftertaste "when used
sparingly". It would be hard to use it much more sparingly than
I was though!
After trying
the extract on toast I sat back and waited to see if this more concentrated
form of stevia made my bladder react. For the first two hours nothing
happened. After that, I my bladder was definitely more painful for
a few hours, but it wasn't nearly as bad or as prolonged a flare-up
as I would have experienced had I used aspartame or saccharin.
Now what about
using stevia in cooked food? Well, it has some advantages and some
limitations. First of all, sugar does more than just sweeten food.
It often contributes to a chemical reaction that gives the food
its unique characteristics. Take bread for instance. Sugar helps
nourish the yeast, which in turn makes the bread rise. Stevia extract
can't be utilized by the yeast. No yeast growth, no gas bubbles.
No gas bubbles, no bread rising. Sugar can also add volume and texture.
Think of a cake frosting. You could replace a cup of sugar's sweetness
with 1/3 teaspoon of stevia extract, but that wouldn't make good
frosting.
Numerous companies
import or manufacture stevia extract and quite a few of them have
web sites. A quick search using the word "stevia extract" with any
search engine will bring up a bunch of them. Many of these web sites
have recipes and/or advice for using stevia extract in cooking.
The consensus among them is that stevia extract seems to hold up
well to the heat of cooking.
Finally, the
big question: how safe is stevia? The brand of stevia extract I
experimented with, Sweet Leaf (Manufactured by Wisdom Herbs of Mesa
Arizona), says on its label "safe for diabetics and hypoglycemics".
A couple of other brands carry similar statements and such claims
are regularly seen on web sites. Despite disclaimers to the effect
that it's not meant to treat any illness or disease, manufacturers'
web sites clearly market stevia to people treating themselves for
various conditions. Clever wording and web site structure skirts
FDA regulations but manages to target people with conditions such
as Candida albicans infections, diabetes, hypoglycemia, tooth decay,
and obesity. One piece of promotional literature even claimed that
stevia increases mental alertness, improves digestion, and regulates
blood pressure.
Scant research
has been done with stevia or its extract and one main reason is
purely economic: because stevia exists in nature, it cannot be patented.
With no patent protection, a company would have to expend millions
of dollars on extensive toxicological testing to satisfy the FDA,
only to find itself unable to charge the higher prices needed to
recoup the money. Competition from other companies that had not
expended research dollars, would act to keep prices-- and profits--
down.
Arguments that
stevia has been used for centuries by South American indigenous
peoples doesn't impress the Food and Drug Administration. One could
point out that tobacco was also used for centuries, without apparent
health effects, by indigenous peoples. Only rigorous scientific
inquiry was able to ferret out the connection to cancer, heart disease,
and emphysema. So the FDA's position on food additive petitions
is to reject them unless substantial scientific proof is offered
that the proposed additive (whether natural or synthetic) is safe
for human consumption.
Three petitions
for stevia have been rejected over the last ten years, according
to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), a consumer
watchdog group. "Although there is no evidence of harm to people,
laboratory studies of stevia have found potential cancer and reproductive-health
problems. Stevia depressed sperm production in male rats and reduced
the number and size of the offspring of female hamsters. Until those
concerns are disproven, stevia should not be used by manufacturers
in soft drinks, candy, or other foods," said associate nutritionist
for the CSPI, David Schardt. In a CSPI press release dated March
2000, Schardt also notes that in laboratory test tubes at least,
a derivative of stevia can be converted into a mutagen, a type of
chemical that can also sometimes cause cancer. "Until we know
whether this mutagen is formed in people, stevia cannot be considered
safe, " said Schardt. Additionally, some toxicologists are concerned
by a few studies that have raised questions about the effect of
large amounts of stevia on carbohydrate metabolism. Of particular
concern is the possible effect on children. While the FDA's enforcement
position has included search and seizure of stevia imported as a
sweetener, it is free to be imported as long as it is destined for
scientific research use, or else is clearly labeled as a dietary
supplement.
The European
Community and the Canadian government have expressed concerns similar
to those of the US Food and Drug Administration. Stevia is not approved
for use as a sweetener in Canada, and like its equivalent agency
in the U.S., the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) has seized
and detained shipments of stevia apparently being imported for use
as a food sweetener. European countries have also banned the import
of stevia as food or food ingredient, citing the lack of scientific
evidence proving its safety.
I would hesitate
to comment on stevia's bladder friendliness based solely on my own
experience, and it hasn't been used by IC patients enough to get
a feel for how well it is tolerated generally. I'm not a doctor
or scientific expert either. But I do think the take-home message
here, with regard to both stevia's safety and its IC bladder-friendliness,
is that at this point we simply don't know enough.
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