What is stevia and is it healthy?

I get questions about stevia all the time. Sometimes people ask why we use the zero-calorie plant-based sweetener in our Zero-Sugar ElectrolytesOpens in a new tab (it’s in everything except the Raw UnflavoredOpens in a new tab variety) and Sparkling Electrolyte DrinksOpens in a new tab, and whether it’s safe to consume.

The answer boils down to a few simple points. First, the available evidence suggests the amount of stevia used in LMNT falls well within established safety benchmarks. Second, swapping sugar for steviaOpens in a new tab is a net win for your metabolism. Added sugarOpens in a new tab is one of the biggest drivers of obesity, inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction out there. If that wasn’t enough, research suggests stevia delivers a few perks of its own.

That said, it’s a commonly misunderstood ingredient. Some vilify it as “hormone-disrupting” or “toxic,” often based on in vitro studies or research in lab animals consuming extremely high amounts.

Let’s unpack where the misunderstanding came from — and what the science says.

What Is Stevia and Why Is There Confusion About It? 

Stevia comes from the leaves of Stevia rebaudianaOpens in a new tab, a plant native to South America. Its leaves are packed with compounds called steviol glycosides — the most abundant being rebaudioside A and stevioside — which are about 200–300 times sweeter than table sugar.

The stevia you’ll find in foods and drinks today isn’t the same form as the crushed leaves people used for centuries to sweeten tea. The FDAOpens in a new tab only allows the use of high-purity stevia extracts containing 95% or more steviol glycosides, compounds that don’t raise blood sugarOpens in a new tab, provide caloriesOpens in a new tab, or have the same metabolic and hormonal impactsOpens in a new tab as sugar.

So why the scrutiny? For starters, when stevia hit the U.S. market in 2008Opens in a new tab, it followed decades of backlash against artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose and got inaccurately lumped into the same category. 

Plus, when stevia was first being researched, animal studies using extremely high doses of unrefined, whole-leaf extracts (not the purified steviol glycosides we use now) found potential negative effects on fertilityOpens in a new tab, kidney function,Opens in a new tab and hormone levelsOpens in a new tab. Predictably, headlines oversimplifiedOpens in a new tab a complex toxicology issue into click-bait cannon fodder — context be damned. 

And then there’s the “it’s processed” argument. Clean eating advocates may distrust stevia extracts because they undergo several processing stepsOpens in a new tab – drying, extraction, filtration, and drying again – on their journey from plant to powder. The process is similar to making pantry staples like vanilla extract or olive oil. Processing simply means the food has been changed after harvest. That can be good, bad, or neutral depending on what’s done — in other words, there’s nuance here. In stevia’s case, we’re talking about purification. You still end up with the same calorie-free compounds the leaf makes naturally.

How Is Stevia Metabolized in the Body? 

Stevia moves through your body like a widget on a factory line:

• Your small intestine passes it to your colon
• In the colon, workers (your gut bacteria) break it down into parts. 
• Then it rolls down the conveyor belt to your liver, which repackages it into a harmless form — steviol glucuronide— and ships it off to your kidneys. 
• They prep it for delivery and send it out to be excreted in urine, no scraps left behind.

Here’s how that process works in a bit more detail. 

1. Digestion and absorption

The chemical structure of steviol glycosides includes a steviol backbone with sugar molecules your digestive enzymes can’t break apart. 

So while stevia lights up the sweetness receptorsOpens in a new tab in your taste buds, your small intestineOpens in a new tab doesn’t absorb it and almost no calories or glucose enter your bloodstream. This is why stevia doesn’t raise blood sugar or insulin levels. 

2. Metabolism in the colon

Your gut microbiotaOpens in a new tab — especially the Bacteroidaceae species — does the work your small intestine can’t. Using enzymes like beta-glucosidaseOpens in a new tab, they snip the bondsOpens in a new tab holding sugar molecules onto their steviol backbone, releasing steviol, the non-sugar part of the molecule. This hydrolysis process unfolds slowly over 10 to 24 hours. In other words, your small intestine can't digest stevia, so it travels on to your colon where gut bacteria slowly break it down.

Even though gut bacteria handle this step, studies show stevia has little to no effect on microbiome balance at normal consumption levels. This matters because it means stevia doesn't disrupt your gut health — even though bacteria do the digestive work, stevia passes through without throwing off the delicate balance of good bacteria in your colon.

This puts stevia in a different category from certain artificial sweeteners that can shift gut bacteria in ways that may influence glucose tolerance or inflammation. In other words, it’s a safer bet for folks who care about maintaining a healthy microbiome.

In fact, a 150-pound person would have to eat almost 40 packets of tabletop stevia sweetener in a day to exceed the daily limit set by the FDA. I’ll explain why and break it all down in a moment.

3. Liver processing

Once freed from the sugar molecules by your gut bacteria, steviolOpens in a new tab travels through the bloodstream to your liver. There it’s converted into steviol glucuronide, a harmlessOpens in a new tab, water-soluble compound which is then filtered by your kidneys into the urine. This detox-like conversion packages stevia for elimination, ensuring no buildup in tissues or organs.

4. Excretion

You eliminate steviol glucuronide through urine within about 24 Opens in a new tab to 72Opens in a new tab hours of ingestion. It doesn’t linger or accumulateOpens in a new tab, and your body doesn’t store it as energy like it does glucose. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. 

What Does Research Say About How Stevia Affects Our Health?

Like most things in nutrition, context and dose matters, but the bulk of the evidence paints stevia as metabolically neutral or even slightly beneficial. Let’s walk through some of the biggest claims about stevia’s health impacts, from the well-supported to the wildly overblown.

Claim: Stevia improves metabolic health.

What we know: This claim is supported by strong evidence.

Unlike sugar, stevia doesn’t raise blood sugar or insulin. In fact, a recent meta-analysis of 26 studies suggests steviaOpens in a new tab modestly improves fasting glucose in people with obesity, type 2 diabetes, or high blood pressure. Stevia appears to enhance insulin signaling, helping cells pull more glucose out of the bloodstream to use for energy.

StudiesOpens in a new tab also suggest that stevioside and steviol nudge the pancreas to release a little more insulin when blood sugar is high — just enough to help bring it down, not enough to send you crashing. 

You’ll sometimes see stevia labeled “anti-diabetic,” but that’s overselling it. Stevia isn’t medicine but, the research suggests it does make it easier to manage blood sugar and avoid the rollercoaster.

Claim: Stevia supports weight loss.

What we know: This claim is partially supported by research.

Swapping sugar for stevia can help you cut calories, which — as you know — is how weight loss happens. 

• In a small pilot studyOpens in a new tab, overweight people who sweetened their foods with stevia instead of sugar for 90 days lost 3–4 pounds and trimmed up to 1.5 inches from their waists. 
• Another small randomized trialOpens in a new tab found that normal-weight people who added stevia to their diet but changed nothing else ate fewer calories and didn’t gain weight over the next 12 weeks, while people in the control group gained a pound on average.

There’s also an interesting hormonal angle: Stevia may boost glucagon-like peptide 1Opens in a new tab (GLP-1), the same satiety hormone targeted by GLP-1 weight-loss drugs like semaglutide (Ozempic) and tirzepatide (Mounjaro). It stimulates bitter taste receptors, triggering GLP-1 which slows down how quickly food leaves your stomach. In theory, that could help with appetite control — but we’re a long way from calling it Ozempic-lite.

Claim: Stevia wrecks your gut microbiome.

What we know: This claim is unproven in the research.

Some influencers claim stevia throws off your microbiome by killing the good bacteria in your gut. It’s true that one studyOpens in a new tab found stevia, in doses at 75% of the upper limit, shifted the composition of some gut microbes. But the same study also showed that these changes didn’t lead to any measurable negative health impacts. 

Another study reviewOpens in a new tab suggests that stevia might beneficially increase the diversity of gut bacteria.

Other research suggests stevia doesn’t change the gut microbiome at all. In a study published in NutrientsOpens in a new tab, people who added stevia to drinks and food every day for 12 weeks had no changes in bacterial diversity or function compared to controls.

Claim: Stevia extracts affect fertility 

What we know: This claim is unproven.

This fertility concern stems from rat studies dating back to the 1960sOpens in a new tab that used unrefined, high-dose extracts that differ from the purified form of the sweetener you can buy in food and drinks today.

The same goes for sperm studies. Some researchOpens in a new tab in rats suggested stevia might lower sperm count, but again, those studies used unrefined extracts. Two other studiesOpens in a new tab feeding rats a “very high dosage” of purified stevia found no impact on sperm count or production.

As for whether these results apply to humans, we don’t have much to go on. A 2016 in vitro studyOpens in a new tab (read: in a petri dish, not a person) found that when human sperm cells were bathed in high amounts of steviol, a component of stevia, they produced more progesterone and showed some changes in hormone signaling. Theoretically, this could affect a sperm cell’s ability to fertilize an egg, but here’s the thing: The doses of stevia used in the study simulated stevia intake at two to six times the upper limit. Plus, there’s no evidence that steviol ever even reaches sperm cells or the fluid that carries them. Remember: when we consume stevia products, steviol is altered by the liver and then excreted by the kidneys. This is quite different from bathing “swimmers” in a highly concentrated steviol solution in a petri dish!

Claim: Stevia Benefits Oral Health

What we know: This claim is supported by evidence.

Unlike sugar, stevia doesn’t promote tooth decay, and it may even make your mouth less hospitable to cavity-causing bacteria.

One clinical trial published in Dental Research JournalOpens in a new tab found college students who swished with a 1% stevia solution maintained a neutral plaque pH of 7.1. When they switched to sugar water, their plaque pH dropped to 6.2 — a nearly tenfold spike in acidity. That matters, since plaque bacteria produce acids that eat away at enamel and fuel bad bacteria.

Other studies echo the benefit: A 6-month randomized controlled trialOpens in a new tab found stevia mouthwash had both antiplaque and antigingivitis effects. 

And in a pilot study published in the Journal of Clinical and Experimental DentistryOpens in a new tab, kids who chewed gum containing stevia for 15 minutes reduced their salivary levels of Streptococcus mutansOpens in a new tab, acid-producing bacteria that wear down tooth enamel. 

More research is needed to fully understand how stevia supports oral health, but the early evidence is intriguing. 

One theory is that it makes it harder for Streptococcus mutans to set up shop on your teeth. Sugar helps these bacteria build a sticky biofilm (basically a microscopic plaque fortress), while stevia seems to do the opposite. In a cell studyOpens in a new tab S. mutans and its cavity-promoting fungal friend Candida albicans created a weaker biofilm when exposed to stevioside instead of sugar. The researchers even found that stevioside changed the activity of more than 1,000 genes tied to biofilm formation.

Claim: Stevia Encourages Overeating  

What we know: The evidence doesn’t show stevia itself drives overeating.

A recent meta-analysisOpens in a new tab of clinical trials found stevia didn’t change hunger, fullness, or how much people planned to eat. Compared to other sweeteners, it could lead you to eat less: In one studyOpens in a new tab, folks eating yogurt sweetened with stevia actually reported the biggest drop in hunger compared to sugar, xylitol, and monk fruit. 

But there’s something I call the barbecue-chicharrones phenomenon, where flavorings can make foods so tasty you overeat them. Give me a bag of plain chicharrones, and I’ll eat one or two. Barbecue flavor? Suddenly, I’m halfway through the bag.

That’s the story here. Hyper-palatableOpens in a new tab foods containing sweeteners — stevia included — can be engineered to hijack our normal satiety cues, leading us to eat more. The problem isn’t stevia’s chemistry; it’s how it’s used in foods like zero-sugar candies and ice creams. 

Answers to Other Common Questions About Stevia 

Is stevia natural?

Stevia comes from a plant (Stevia rebaudiana), but what ends up in your drink isn’t a crushed leaf — it’s a purified compound like rebaudioside A or stevioside that’s extracted and refined for consistency and taste. 

What’s better: stevia or sugar?

Stevia tastes sweeter than sugar, but it’s zero-calorie and doesn’t raise blood sugar or insulinOpens in a new tab. Meanwhile, a typical sugar-sweetened drinkOpens in a new tab packs 140 calories or more. So if stevia helps you cut back on added sugar, it’s a solid choice. 

What about “whole-leaf” stevia or stevia tea?

Skip it. Whole-leaf stevia products aren’t FDA-approved and can contain other plant compounds Opens in a new tabwith different effects. Stick with purified forms (≥ 95 % steviol glycosides) — listed on labels as “stevia leaf extractOpens in a new tab”— for safety. 

The Bottom Line: Is Stevia Healthy?

Generally, stevia is healthy when used in reasonable amounts. Most people tolerate it just fine (it’s not an allergenOpens in a new tab, by the way) and replacing some of your daily sugar with it can do your metabolism a real favor. Like anything, your mileage may vary, so pay attention to how your body responds.

Although I believe that worrying about stevia is majoring in the minors, I fully support folks coming to their own conclusions.

I encourage you to try stevia if you crave sweetness on a low-carbOpens in a new tab, paleoOpens in a new tab, ketoOpens in a new tab, or otherwise healthy dietOpens in a new tab. It’s an easy way to enjoy something sweet without the metabolic downsidesOpens in a new tab of sugar.