Welcome to Stevia Web

Your source for Stevia information, recipes, products, information on growing Stevia and more.

Stevia is technically a plant, rather a herb or shrub from the sunflower family. The herb is native to South and Central America. The herb is known for its intense sweetness, tasting hundreds of times sweeter than regular sugar using the same amount. The Stevia plan is also known as "sweet leaf" and "sugarleaf" as the leaves hold the sweet intensity for which the plant has become famous. While Stevia is in use and available in many countries, Japan is the world's largest user or Stevia. In Japan, Stevia has been used for over 30 years in many food products. Most interestingly, the Japanese version of Diet Coke is sweetened by Stevia.

For people looking for a natural, non-chemical, non artificial sweetener, Stevia has become increasingly popular, especially for raw food, macrobiotic, whole foods, organic and natural foods enthusiasts. Recently, with the FDA approval of Stevia as GRAS (generally regarded as safe), you'll start to see dozens, and eventually hundreds of products coming on the market that contain the active ingredient in Stevia, rebaudioside A. Large food and drink makers like Cargill, Coke, Pepsi and others have formulated their own versions of the sweetener, isolating the sweetening part of the plant to make it more viable as a sweetening product. The first type of products that contain Stevia as a sweetener are drinks, especially diet, vitamin, teas and energy drinks like Sobe Lifewater and other diet sodas. Stevia is especially effective as a sweetener in drinks since it's sweet taste mixes effectively with other flavors.

Please navigate our site using the links on the left to view more information on Stevia. Alternately, check out our sister site for more about medicinal mushrooms, including Chaga Mushrooms and their uses, benefits, origins, history and pictures.