Stevia and its Early regulation

Stevia is a natural sweetener and sugar substitute derived from the leaves of the stevia plant native to Paraguay and Brazil.

The active compound is stevioside (mainly stevioside and rebaudioside),[4]: ‰54‰, its sweetness is about 50 to 300 times that of sugar,heat stable, pH stable, non-fermenting.The body does not metabolize the glycosides in stevia,so it contains zero calories as a nonnutritive sweetener.The taste of stevia has a slower onset and longer duration than sugar, and in high concentrations some extracts of stevia may have a licorice-like or bitter aftertaste.Stevia is used in low-sugar and low-calorie food and beverage products as an alternative to sugary variants.The legal status of stevia as a food additive or dietary supplement varies by country.In the United States, certain high-purity steviol glycoside extracts have been generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and can be legally sold and added to food, but stevia leaves and crude extracts do not have GRAS or Food and Drug Administration (FDA ) approved for use in food.The European Union approved stevia additives in 2011while in Japan stevia has been widely used as a sweetener for decades.

The Guarani people of South America have used the stevia plant for over 1,500 years, calling it ka'a he'ê ("sweet grass").The leaves have been traditionally used in Paraguay and Brazil for hundreds of years to sweeten local teas and medicines and as a "dessert".The genus is named after the Spanish botanist and physician Pedro Jaime Esteve (Petrus James Stevus, 1500-1556), who was a professor of botany at the University of Valencia.The plant and its sweet taste were first described in detail by Swiss botanist Moisés Santiago Bertoni in 1899 while conducting research in eastern Paraguay.There was limited research on the subject until 1931, when two French chemists isolated the glycosides that give stevia its sweet taste.

Early Regulation 

In the 1990s, the U.S.Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received two petitions to classify stevia as generally recognized as safe (GRAS), but the FDA "disagreeed with the conclusions.Stevia was banned for all uses until the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, after which the FDA revised its position and allowed stevia to be used as a dietary supplement but not as a food additive.In 1999, prompted by earlier research, the European Commission banned the use of stevia in food in the EU, pending further research.In 2006 and 2016, the research data in the safety assessment published by the World Health Organization did not find any adverse effects.In December 2008, the FDA granted "no objection" approval to GRAS status both of which use rebaudioside A extracted from the stevia plant. [19] However, the FDA stated that these products are not stevia, but highly purified stevia extract products.In 2015, FDA still regarded stevia as an "unapproved food additive" and stated that "due to insufficient toxicological information, it has not been confirmed as GRAS in the United States"  June 2016, US Customs and Border Protection issued a detention order for stevia products made in China based on information that the products were produced using prison labor.Certain high-purity steviol glycoside extracts have been generally recognized as safe (GRAS) and can be legally sold and added to food.