My parents texted me about this "zevia" soda shit that's sweetened with stevia extract which is supposedly 0 calories, thus healthy. but knowing other "diet" sodas that doesn't mean its good for you, and i can't find any studies on the effects of it and i'm super confused. apparently indigenous people would use the whole leaf as a sweetener, but the extract may be different? is it a fruit juice situation, where removing the rest of the leaf removes all of the healthy shit? does anybody know?
I grew a stevia plant once and used the leaves for a sweetener as a try. It's kind of artificially sweet tasting with a weird aftertaste (at least to me). It an entirely different chemical structure to other sweeteners, which makes me question why there aren't studies about it.
Presumably the extract is made by water extraction and concentration. That is, soaking in water and then drying the water away. However, I don't know this for sure.
I found a study from 2002 that reviews safety tests of stevia compounds, and it appears that it is very safe. https://www.everstevia.com/Safety-Evaluation_of_Stevia.pdf