I felt obliged to look into this as we have grown stevia before for diabetic family members. First, it is important to understand that TrueVia and the like sold in most US grocery stores are either synthetic stevia or are mostly erithrytol, which is horrible for gut health and ought to be avoided. They aren't REAL stevia, and all bets are off. It would not surprise me if those sweeteners have the same effects as Nutrasweet.
Does anyone have an account with science.org to look at the 1968 study offered as proof? It would be good to know how they measured decreased fertility because we have much better technology for assessing such things as egg quality now than existed in 1968.
Also, did anyone go through the "corroborating studies" posted? Because when you do, you find this is the very next study:
Safety evaluation of aqueous extracts from Aegle marmelos and Stevia rebaudiana on reproduction of female rats - PubMed (nih.gov) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17547081/)
So the "corroborating" evidence states exactly the opposite, that it posed no risk to fertility. The other links in the corroborating evidence" have nothing at all to do with stevia AND fertility, but stevia and glucose levels, etc...
Interestingly, I found several "health" websites that made the same claim and linked to the same set of studies, as well as this one:
933. Sweetening agent: Stevioside (WHO Food Additives Series 42) (inchem.org) (https://inchem.org/docuмents/jecfa/jecmono/v042je07.htm) And again, when you read the actual study,
Groups of 10 male and 10 female one-month-old golden hamsters
(Mesocricetus auratus,) were force-fed with stevioside (purity, 90%)
at 0, 500, 1000, or 2500 mg/kg bw per day daily. Each female was mated
and allowed to bear three litters during the experiment. Females in
late gestation and while lactating (one month) received stevioside in
the drinking-water. Two weeks after the offspring had been weaned, the
females were mated again. No abnormalities were found in the growth or
fertility of animals of either sex. All of the males mated females
efficiently and successfully; the females showed normal four-day
oestrus cycles and became pregnant after mating. The duration of
gestation, number of fetuses, and number of offspring were not
significantly different from those of controls."
I can only wonder if this is a variation on the telephone game.
As for the initial claim that Indians used it for contraception, I had never heard of stevia as a contraceptive. But, if a tribe was using something that reduced fertility by 57-90 percent for hundreds of years, it seems that they probably would have died out by now. Children are only a liability in modernized, industrialized society. In any other society, they are an asset. 57-90 percent would be a very strong contraceptive. For that matter, all the trad families that have been using it as a sugar substitute ought to have seen some effect by now instead of seven children under nine. I did find the lawsuit of the tribe that introduced stevia to the world from when they tried to sue Coke for making a synthetic version and the tribal chief testified that it has been used at an anti-parasitic and a sweetener in their culture. Nothing about contraception. Hmmm...
And finally, if stevia is sinful, then so is sugar because there are loads of studies showing the effects of refined sugar. One soda per day reduces fertility in males and females by 20 percent, for example. This makes lots of sense because of the biology of how excess sugar is stored in the body (as fat) and fat producing estrogen.
End of analysis, take it or leave it.
I felt obliged to look into this as we have grown stevia before for diabetic family members. First, it is important to understand that TrueVia and the like sold in most US grocery stores are either synthetic stevia or are mostly erithrytol, which is horrible for gut health and ought to be avoided. They aren't REAL stevia, and all bets are off. It would not surprise me if those sweeteners have the same effects as Nutrasweet.
Does anyone have an account with science.org to look at the 1968 study offered as proof? It would be good to know how they measured decreased fertility because we have much better technology for assessing such things as egg quality now than existed in 1968.
Also, did anyone go through the "corroborating studies" posted? Because when you do, you find this is the very next study:
Safety evaluation of aqueous extracts from Aegle marmelos and Stevia rebaudiana on reproduction of female rats - PubMed (nih.gov) (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17547081/)
So the "corroborating" evidence states exactly the opposite, that it posed no risk to fertility. The other links in the corroborating evidence" have nothing at all to do with stevia AND fertility, but stevia and glucose levels, etc...
Interestingly, I found several "health" websites that made the same claim and linked to the same set of studies, as well as this one:
933. Sweetening agent: Stevioside (WHO Food Additives Series 42) (inchem.org) (https://inchem.org/docuмents/jecfa/jecmono/v042je07.htm) And again, when you read the actual study,
Groups of 10 male and 10 female one-month-old golden hamsters
(Mesocricetus auratus,) were force-fed with stevioside (purity, 90%)
at 0, 500, 1000, or 2500 mg/kg bw per day daily. Each female was mated
and allowed to bear three litters during the experiment. Females in
late gestation and while lactating (one month) received stevioside in
the drinking-water. Two weeks after the offspring had been weaned, the
females were mated again. No abnormalities were found in the growth or
fertility of animals of either sex. All of the males mated females
efficiently and successfully; the females showed normal four-day
oestrus cycles and became pregnant after mating. The duration of
gestation, number of fetuses, and number of offspring were not
significantly different from those of controls."
I can only wonder if this is a variation on the telephone game.
As for the initial claim that Indians used it for contraception, I had never heard of stevia as a contraceptive. But, if a tribe was using something that reduced fertility by 57-90 percent for hundreds of years, it seems that they probably would have died out by now. Children are only a liability in modernized, industrialized society. In any other society, they are an asset. 57-90 percent would be a very strong contraceptive. For that matter, all the trad families that have been using it as a sugar substitute ought to have seen some effect by now instead of seven children under nine. I did find the lawsuit of the tribe that introduced stevia to the world from when they tried to sue Coke for making a synthetic version and the tribal chief testified that it has been used at an anti-parasitic and a sweetener in their culture. Nothing about contraception. Hmmm...
And finally, if stevia is sinful, then so is sugar because there are loads of studies showing the effects of refined sugar. One soda per day reduces fertility in males and females by 20 percent, for example. This makes lots of sense because of the biology of how excess sugar is stored in the body (as fat) and fat producing estrogen.
End of analysis, take it or leave it.
Haha it's funny that we were both doing the analysis and I just posted mine. INTJ buddy by any chance? And I think it's rather weird for a premitive tribe to even use contraceptive, since for the tribes population is key in development and they will be most likely trying to get as much fertility as possible. You can click on the hyperlink in my response and find that paper.