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Story Published: Feb 18, 2009 at 5:21 PM PDT
Story Updated: Feb 18, 2009 at 9:01 PM PDT
It's called "stevia" and while the name may be new to a lot of people, the product has been around for a long, long time.
It was first used in South America in the 1800s. The Japanese have been sweet on stevia for more than 30 years now, and China is home to commercial stevia farms.
Process the leaves of the stevia plant, which are sometimes called "honey leaves," and you get a substance that is 200 to 300 times sweeter than cane sugar.
And stevia is good news for diabetics as it has a glucose index of zero.
Until recently, stevia wasn't widely available. It's just a table-top sweetener, but you generally had to go to a health food or supplement store to get it.
That's because everyone was waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to give stevia a clean bill of health. Late last year the FDA did that, approving the use of stevia in foods and beverages.
Truvia is the brand name of the table-top sweetener made from Stevia developed by Cargill (the big food processor) and Coca-Cola. It took them six years to get this to market.
A Seattle company, Zevia, is distributing a line of sodas sweetened with Stevia. And Odwalla uses Stevia in it's Mojito Mambo and Pomegranate Strawberry. You can expect to see more products sweetened with Stevia, including Coca-Cola's new "Sprite Green."
More information:
Stevia is the new sweetener in town
Stevia joins list of sugar substitutes