IDK, but FYI the asapartame carcinogen meme from 2023 was yet another example of health news misinfo. It was classified as a Group 2B possible carcinogen, making it as possibly carcinogenic as coffee, and less carcinogenic than being a fry cook...
Oh thank you good to know. I got freaked out about it and started trying to use it much less.
They find the stevia and they extract it 
its a sweetener so any "health benefits" come in the form of it not being sugar, which has a number of ill effects especially in the refined forms and lrge quantities we consume it in. the leaf isnt "good for you" on its own it just doesnt have the same negative effects as HFCS. And it is generally regarded as safe but idk if there have been many specific studies.
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
I don't think stevia has any known health benefits, but it's still a lot better for you than sugar. Some people argue it's a bit better than stuff like aspartame, but it probably doesn't matter unless you're consuming an ungodly amount of artificial sweeteners every day.
Doesn't taste very good
That's the thing from breaking bad which rich people consume on the daily.
Zevia is good, we drink it regularly. They've got a bunch of flavours. And yeah it's just plant based non sugar sweetener. It's pretty anodyne as far as I have read
Never heard about it having any health benefits or whatever, it's just a sweetener. Probably not missing much by taking it out of the leaf.
In my experience it exacerbated my gas problems, so it's bad if that's a problem you have.
No soda is healthy for you. Stevia extract (steviol glycosides) is just a zero calorie sweetener. It looks like sugar to your taste buds but you don't break it down so it doesn't give you any energy. I can't remember any specifics but I think stevia is less bad than other sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, acesulfame k, etc. Those have some nasty side effects.
Stevia is a plant, literally an herb. The fresh leaves, when chewed, has a sweetish taste to it from some other chemical compound other than "sugar". If you're drinking hot stuff, you can drop whole fresh leaves into the hot liquid to steep and that should draw out some of the sweet flavor.
Get a bunch of leaves, dry them and grind them into a powder and you've got a sweetening agent that can be spooned out and mixed into things.
Not terrible for you like aspartame might be or with some dodgy gastro-intestinal effects of xylitol.
Sources: I worked at a grocery store that catered to the hippyish crowd for a long time and my spouse does small scale farm work at home and tried growing stevia for funsies.
interesting, thank you!
Looks a lot like basil iirc
The dose is the poison, stevia or really any other 0 calorie sweetener are fine as long as you don't consume them on excess. But really it all depends on your goals, are you on a diet or trying to lose weight? if so then its fine to use these sweeteners, if not don't.
Everyone has given great answers so far but I wanted to point out that since stevia tastes kinda bad, most stevia extracts I can find are actually mostly erythritol (another low cal sweetener) with a small portion of stevia. I find their marketing to be quite close to a lie, but in any case, both products are as safe as any transformed food you're gonna find, so fine with moderation. It can be argued to be better than sugar except if you wanna count the sugar taking habit, which both encourage.
its zero calorie but also tastes disgusting so.
no idea how a zero calorie sweetener can taste worse then aspartame but somehow it pulls it off
I've tried a lot of the "natural" zero calorie sweeteners and none of them are great. Monk fruit is okay i guess?
actually yes. expensive but tastes like a good simple syrup
It’s my favorite 0 calorie sweetener. But some people don’t like the taste i guess.
That shit sucks.
Banned? DM Wmill to appeal.
No anti-nautilism posts. See: Eco-fascism Primer
Gossip posts go in c/gossip. Don't post low-hanging fruit here after it gets removed from c/gossip