Purpose / Use

Steviol glycosides, generally referred to as stevia, are a group of chemicals used as a sweetener, flavor enhancer, and sugar replacement. Stevia is derived from the plant Stevia rebaudiana, which is a plant native to South America that has been grown for hundreds of years in parts of South America, Central America, and parts of the southern US.^1,2 The stevia plant and its extracts have been used for years as a sweetener in South America and Asia.³ Many people perceive stevia leaf and its sweet derivatives to have an unpleasant aftertaste, which companies are trying to overcome.

Stevia leaves are about 30 times as sweet as sugar and steviol glycosides are 200–300 times sweeter than sugar.^1,2 There are several types of steviol glycosides that differ in taste and sweetness.¹ Among the sweetest are rebaudioside A, also called reb A or rebiana, and stevioside.

Products

Today, thousands of products contain stevia, including baked goods, ketchup, candy, canned fruits, nut butters, and a variety of beverages. It is widely sold in tabletop sweetener products. Various formulations used in food may contain different proportions of the steviol glycosides to achieve the desired taste. For example, Pure Via⁴ is a brand name for packaged or tabletop sweeteners containing mostly rebiana. Like other packaged sugar substitutes, packets of these products contain only a very small amount of the actual high-intensity sweetener, since the tiny bits of powder would get lost in the packets if a carrier were not added. Pure Via are mostly maltodextrin and/or dextrose⁴, Truvia stevia packets are mostly erythritol⁵, and SweetLeaf mostly inulin.⁶ In packaged foods and beverages, some food manufacturers mask the aftertaste of rebiana with various ingredients, including erythritol or modest amounts of sugar.

Safety assessment

The evidence for stevia’s use in food has evolved over decades. In the 1990s, the FDA (and the European Union) rejected whole-leaf stevia and crude stevia extracts for use as a food ingredient due to lack of sufficient safety data and concerns stemming from the results of long-term and cancer toxicological studies.^1-3

But in the early 2000s, the food industry made another attempt to market stevia in the United States, and this time it was successful. The companies Cargill and Merisant developed highly purified extracts of stevia that are 95% pure rebaudioside A and 200 times as sweet as sugar. In late 2008, these companies determined that these highly purified rebaudioside A extracts were "generally recognized as safe" (GRAS) for use in food, and the FDA did not object to those conclusions.⁶ Unlike earlier studies which tested partially purified extracts, whose exact composition were poorly defined, these highly purified extracts did not show the same adverse effects in toxicological studies. After that, many other companies developed their own highly purified stevia extracts and submitted GRAS applications to the FDA. Since 2008, the FDA has raised no objections to over 60 GRAS determinations from food manufacturers for other steviol glycosides such as stevioside.^1,6 Many of these determinations are to allow the production of currently used steviol glycosides using new technologies.¹ Remember, a GRAS determination is not the same as getting formal FDA approval.  

To learn more about the GRAS loophole and how it undercuts food safety and transparency, click here.  

In 2010, a European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) panel reviewed available evidence and concluded that the steviol glycoside products made of stevioside and rebaudioside and that met WHO/JECFA specifications are not genotoxic or carcinogenic, meaning they do not damage DNA or cause cancer.⁷ While the FDA (and other food authorities) considers highly purified steviol glycosides (at least 95% steviol glycosides) to be safe for use in foods (and CSPI agrees), the FDA considers stevia-derived products that are less than 95% steviol glycosides to be inadequately characterized and issued an Import Alert banning extracts less than 95% steviol glycosides from being imported into the US for use as a food ingredient. In the alert, the FDA stated that “…with regard to use in conventional foods, stevia leaf, or its crude extract, is not an approved food additive and is not considered GRAS due to inadequate toxicological information.”⁸ The FDA does allow the import of stevia leaf and extracts for use as dietary ingredients in dietary supplements.^1,8

As with all non-nutritive and low-calorie sweeteners, CSPI recommends that children avoid Stevia and calls for additional research on the long-term health effects in children, in line with similar recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Healthy Eating Research (HER) which advise against children consuming beverages with non-sugar sweeteners. AAP’s and HER’s concerns are based on the lack of safety data for non-nutritive sweeteners among children and the possibility that consumption of these types of sweeteners could lead to a preference for sweet foods and beverages among children.^9-11 The best choice for all consumers is to choose unsweetened foods and beverages whenever possible.

References

1. Perrier JD, Mihalov JJ, Carlson SJ. FDA Regulatory Approach to Steviol Glycosides. US Food and Drug Administration. Food Chem Toxicol. 2018; 122:132-142. Available: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30268795/
2. European Commission: Scientific Committee on Food. Opinion on Stevia Rebaudiana Bertoni plants and leaves (adopted on 17/6/99). June 17, 1999. Available: https://food.ec.europa.eu/document/download/fc234bcf-87b8-442b-8653-3a06a14c1664_en?filename=sci-com_scf_out36_en.pdf
3. European Commission: Scientific Committee on Food. Opinion on Stevioside as a Sweetener, adopted on 17/6/1999. June 17, 1999. Available: https://food.ec.europa.eu/document/download/cf77ad3f-fcd5-40e9-9f3a-3188719ce908_en?filename=sci-com_scf_out34_en.pdf
4. Pure Via. Our Natural Standard. https://purevia.com/about/natural-standard/. Accessed September 3, 2025.
5. Why Truvia: About Truvia Calorie-Free Sweetener. https://www.truvia.com/why-truvia#SteviaLeafExtract. Accessed September 3, 2025.
6. Sweetleaf: All your sweetener questions, answered. https://www.sweetleaf.com/pages/faq. Accessed September 3, 2025.
7. US Food and Drug Administration. GRAS Notices: stevia. https://www.hfpappexternal.fda.gov/scripts/fdcc/index.cfm?set=GRASNotices&sort=GRN_No&order=DESC&showAll=true&type=basic&search=stevia
8. EFSA Panel on Food Additives and Nutrient Sources (ANS). Scientific Opinion on Safety of Steviol Glycosides for the Proposed Uses as a Food Additive. EFSA Journal. 2010; 8(4):1537.
9. US Food and Drug Administration. Import Alert 45-06: Detention without Physical Examination of Stevia Leaves, Crude Extracts of Stevia Leaves and foods Containing Stevia Leaves and/or Stevia Extracts. May 14, 2025. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/cms_ia/importalert_119.html
10.  Baker-Smith CM, et al. The Use of Nonnutritive Sweeteners in Children. Pediatrics. 2019;144(5). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31659005/
11.  Lott M, et al. Healthy Beverage Consumption in Early Childhood: Recommendations from Key National Health and Nutrition Organizations. Consensus Statement. Healthy Eating Research. September 2019. Available: https://healthyeatingresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/HER-HealthyBeverage-ConsensusStatement.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2025.
12.  Lott M, et al. Healthy Beverage Consumption in School-Age Children and Adolescents: Recommendations from Key National Health and Nutrition Organizations. Consensus Statement. Healthy Eating Research. January 2025. Available: https://healthyeatingresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/HER_ConsensusStatement_FINAL.pdf. Accessed July 24, 2025.

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