Extracted from a plant grown in South America, stevia is 300 times sweeter than table sugar and is used for sweetening in Japan and other countries. Lipman says no petition has been filed for its use in the United States. Two nonnutritive sweeteners are being studied, says George Pauli, Ph.D., chief of the novel ingredients and policy development branch. FDA is also considering petitions for additional uses of the sweetener acesulfame K in beverages and baked goods and of aspartame for bulk use and in breakfast cereals, malt beverages, candies, and cooked foods. Eating foods sweetened with nonnutritive sweeteners rather than sugar is an individual choice, says Laura Tarantino, an FDA consumer safety officer.
Nonnutritive sweeteners are safe to use.
But we don't tell people to replace sugar with artificial sweeteners. In the future, consumers wanting to know which sweeteners are present in their foods need only read the label. According to an FDA proposal published late in 1991, it would be mandatory for all complex carbohydrates and simple sugars to be listed on the nutrition label, says Lynn Larsen, Ph.D., director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition's Executive Operations Staff. People may have an inherent preference for sweetness, and that may have helped our ancestors survive, since bitter-tasting plants are generally not fit to eat. But beyond survival, people seem to have discovered that sweet flavors really help make eating pleasurable.