The FDA has approved Stevia to be used in the US as a sweetener....does this mean that Hell has frozen over?

Not really - it just means that Big Business is looking for an out.

You see, for the better part of the last 20 years, the FDA has classified Stevia as a "food additive" and vehemently prohibited it being labeled as a sweetener of any type. They have threatened legal action towards companies that printed recipes using stevia, commandeered supplies of stevia coming into the country, threatened to put companies selling stevia out of business, etc.

Why, pray tell, has the FDA been so afraid of a little green herb that is 30x sweeter than sugar and is safe for diabetics because it regulates their blood sugar? Quite simply, because the sugar lobbyists were too powerful and the Big Businesses like Coca-Cola, Pepsi, etc., began embracing Asapartame as the sweetner of choice.

Problem with Aspartame, is that it is linked to a whole host of health ailments and the FDA's own doctors provided feedback that it should not be approved when the FDA's head honchos decided to approve it and that fake sweetner is now used in 8,000+ products.

But now, thanks to the amazing grassroots efforts of the health oriented community, the truth about Aspartame has gotten out to mainstream America and people are beginning to realize that their health is vital and that can't keep feeding their body crap and expecting it to run 100%.

So while it is wonderful that the FDA has approved Stevia for use as a sweetener, they still deserve to be bitch-slapped because they didn't approve it for the health of the public but to appease the whims of the likes of Coca-Cola and Pepsi that are reacting to consumer complaints / concerns.

Hopefully, this will be a straw in the wind and more consumers will begin to make the direct correlation between the foods they eat and their health. The human body was not designed to run on fake foods and a host of pharmaceuticals and I personally feel that has become abundantly clear after seeing the rampant increase of "disease" over the past 100 years since the advent of processed foods and the heavier use of meat consumption. The closer to nature one can eat, the better off.