Let me put it this way: Stevia-bashing is the "global warming" of the nutrition community. Other than weight loss miracle cures, there is no other holy grail as sought after as a safe sugar alternative. When the average person consumes about 150 lbs. of sugar a year, do not think there aren't huge sugar and sweetener interests trying to protect their lucrative markets! It's likely the most addictive and toxic legal substance hyumans put in our bodies. A calorie-free sweetener that most people could grow in their back yard is a death knell for them.
BTW, sucralose - Splenda - gives me terrible gastronomic distress and an odd sensation of lightheadedness. I cannot use it, or any sugar alcohol (mannitol, sorbitol, maltitol, erythritol, etc.) without feeling awful.
I agree. We are of course a few years too early to begin this debate, but why wait? The vested interests behind the embargo seem to have successfully obscured the fact that an estimated minimum of 10 million Japanese, over the course of 20 years of stevia use, have used the product without a single product-related problem being reported, in probably the largest and most thorough test grouping ever accomplished. That actually equates to some 200 million subject-test-years of data! When added to the additional millions in South America, Israel, Asia, Australia and a number of other "study groups" of satisfied stevia-using countries- I know of no other product that comes even close to the GRAS, or "generally regarded as safe", textbook definition of a food product.
The idea is that certain components of the stevioside, when used in massive doses, caused harmful effects in certain bacteria. Oddly, my penicillin prescription for strep throat a few years back, (probably from not washing my hands after eating my minnows :-)!), has an even more lethal effect on bacteria.
But actual scientific method seems to have been left at the station on this train. This is a contest of raw political power. It was of course coincidence that the FDA official who decided to ban stevia, later accepted a very high paying job with the company having the most to lose if stevia became accepted.
What concerns me more... is that other horrendously deadly food additive which is made up of equal parts of chlorine,(a deadly gas), and sodium, an unstable and equally dangerous metal, and found in increasing numbers of foods. Ban NaCl before it melts the polar ice-caps!
But mentioning that would just rub salt into the wounds of the stevia-bashers.
Sugar alcohol affects me the same way if I eat too much at one sitting. But Splenda? Much better taste than Stevia and I've never heard of or experienced a laxative effect.