In 1994 the Republicans, having just taken over the House of Representatives for the first time in forty years, went to work tearing apart much of the socialist/liberal agenda. That folks was when we started to see herbs available in the market. It was also at that time that a businessman was finally allowed to write off the cost of his own health insurance. The democrat answer to that concept was to tax the benefits of those who had them rather than allow someone to write theirs off. Typical!

I am off track here however. I just love pointing out what a bunch of jerks the liberals are, even the ones with an ‘R’ behind their names. I just thought I would remind everyone who it was that made it possible to buy and use these herbs as supplements as well as who had the rational solution to insurance benefits.

In South America there is an herb that has passed quite nicely as a sweetener and it is free of any calories whatsoever. This plant has been in use for at least fifteen hundred years and is currently in use throughout much of the world. It is not, however, in use in the US as a sweetener; or shall I say it can’t be advertised here as a sweetener. This strange plant is called stevia. The powder derived from this plant is two hundred times sweeter than sugar and as I stated, it has no calories.

It is my understanding that one of the current versions of man made sweetener (Aspartame) was discovered when a man at some small company spilled, and then accidentally got a taste of, an ulcer medicine. He discovered that the medicine was extremely sweet. After his incredible discovery it was off to get FDA approval. I suspect whoever this man is, we can be relatively certain he isn’t the anthrax mailer. His lab skills and caution are a bit below standard.

It seems that there is no large corporate interest in stevia so there is nobody to get the FDA off of their butts to ensure our safety or its suitability for human consumption. There was a fair amount of corporate interest in the man made no calorie sweetener. In the link provided you will find a veritable plethora of test data as to which is a safer sweetener, man made or natural (stevia). Read the information and make your own choice. I seriously doubt you’ll be impressed with the test results for the man made sweetener. I have found that to be the case with much that the FDA has been involved with.

The FDA has always amazed and amused me. Well they have sort of amused me. They have also disgusted me on many occasions. A good example is the refusal to allow a trial drug to be used on somebody on their death bed because they haven’t determined if a drug causes warts on rats before they try it on a dying human who has given their permission for the usage.

To many it would seem to be a corporate and political conspiracy. This is the same type of thing that is all too often seized upon by the Socialist/Communist demagogues of our time as proof of the evils of capitalism. Rumsfeld is mentioned as the one that got the FDA off of its collective rear end on the artificial no calorie sweetener. I rather doubt his corporate friend bothered to mention the herbal competitor to him. I also doubt the guy asked him to make sure the testing on stevia was blocked. That is the type of anti capitalist demagoguery one can find out there on the Internet as the reason stevia hasn’t been tested. I would like to add that I’m not saying man made sweetener is evil or deadly. Really I think bureaucrats are far worse.

I would like to point out that being free requires people to act like it. That means making your own decisions and not asking for permission on everything. This is particularly true when one is not affecting anyone else in any way by doing so.

The interesting thing about selling or advertising stevia is that you can buy, sell and use it. You could not however label it as a ‘sweetener’. It kind of reminds me of a bumper sticker I saw in the seventies “Illiterate? Write now for free help!” It gave a Washington D. C. address of course. You can use it as a sweetener but you can’t advertise it as one. I’ve noticed a fair number of companies and people ignoring that rule. I’m not sure I blame them either. Your tax dollars at work! (http://www.newsfollowup.com/aspartame.htm)

R.A. Hawkins is the author of “Through Eyes of Shiva”, available through amazon.com.

© 2003 R.A. Hawkins

Written by R. A. Hawkins for The Federal Observer, and published on DrKelley.info, June 24, 2003. Embedded links (if any) may no longer be active. (Ed. 01.01.11)

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