While the Safety of Stevia has been well proven worldwide and the plant and extracts have been widely used in South America for hundreds of years and in Asia for over 40 years, stevia products are still facing many restrictions.

Most countries in Asia and South America have embraced stevia has the ideal sweetener where it is used as a food ingredient or equivalent. However, countries such as the United States and Canada have yet to allow stevia derivatives to be used as a food ingredient. For now, it can only be used as a nutraceutical ingredient or food supplement. In Europe, stevia derivatives are officially not allowed to be used in any food or nutraceutical products.

Ironically, stevia was freely sold in North America in the 1980’s but in a strange twist of fashion US FDA started to seize stevia products in 1991 claiming that they were insufficient scientific evidence to assure that stevia could be used safely as a food substance. This decision was made despite the fact that stevia had been widely consumed by millions of people from its native origins in South America to Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, USA, and other countries for so long with no side effects ever being recorded.

Due to public pressure, the FDA was forced to change its stance and in 1994 allowed the sale of stevia under a ‘food supplement’. Since then, several lobbying groups in the United States have filed petitions with the FDA to make stevia to be considered as GRAS (generally recognized as safe). In all cases, US FDA has rejected the petition emphasizing that JECFA ((FAO/WHO Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives) had yet to establish an ADI (Acceptable Daily Intake) for stevia.

Recent events hopefully will assist US FDA review its position again since in May 2004, JECFA for the first time determined a temporary ADI for stevia glycoside sweetener at 2mg/kg body-weight/day.