Coca-Cola and Pepsi are both planning to use highly purified stevia in their soda drinks. Cargill is manufacturing the compound for Coca-Cola products. Cargill is releasing numerous studies on its safety and is expecting FDA approval, with large product roll outs over the next six months.

The FDA has banned stevia as a food additive in this country so that consumers would need to be poisoned by aspartame. The FDA’s revolving door employment with those in the aspartame business is well documented. Restraining the sales of competition such as stevia has been a primary FDA goal for the past decade. Now that Cargill, Coca-Cola, and Pepsi have a product to sell you can expect all that to change.

If the FDA had any guts and actually cared about protecting anyone’s health it would require a skull and crossbones label warning on all soda products. The use of sweeteners, whether no-calorie or some type of sugar (like high fructose corn syrup) are a primary form of addiction, alter the perception of sweet taste so normal food does not taste sweet enough, and confuses leptin (there are leptin receptors on your tongue) so that you must eat more at later meals in order to feel satisfied.

Addictive chemical stimulation of the brain has always been the primary sales technique used by these companies and almost all branded flavors of the fast food and junk food industry. Coca-Cola got its start by putting cocaine in its drinks. The culture of sales driven by addiction hasn’t changed in the past century. I hope you are not one of their guinea pigs.