Oh, but stevia isn't a sweetener in the US, only a "dietary supplement". The FDA, in reaction to an anonymous tip (cough) artificial sweetener industry(/cough) prohibits its use as a food additive based on spurious claims that "toxicological information on stevia is inadequate to demonstrate its safety" (the EU has likewise banned its use as an additive). Never mind the fact that it's been in constant use as a sweetener around the world for centuries and the FDA's own rules say that nothing in common use before 1958 has to be proven safe to be used, but rather has to be proven unsafe before it can be banned. And never mind that half the sugar-free stuff in Japan is made with stevia and has been since the mid 70's. No, it's prety obvious what the objection is to stevia: it's not a patentable chemical compound, but a natural extract. Those shitheads in the industry that prefer to feed us that nasty aspartame and sucralose crap because there's licensing money there have done what they always do: talk the government into bolstering their lucrative enerprise via regulation. (/rant) http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195665&cid=16033386 There's a couple of other murky things that consumers should know about HFCS. According to a food technology expert, two of the enzymes used, alpha-amylase and glucose-isomerase, are genetically modified to make them more stable. Enzymes are actually very large proteins and through genetic modification specific amino acids in the enzymes are changed or replaced so the enzyme's "backbone" won't break down or unfold. This allows the industry to get the enzymes to higher temperatures before they become unstable. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195665&cid=16043207 The amount of fructose in fruit is miniscule compared to the amount in high fructose corn syrup products. Also, people (atleast in North America), tend to eat a lot more pop/junk food and a lot less fruit. HFCS is around 50% fructose, I don't think an apple is even 1% fructose by weight. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195665&cid=16048667 There's a little bit of fructose in fruit but there's a lot of other stuff too. One of the big problems with fructose is that it doesn't trigger a sated feeling -- you can just keep eating the stuff and never feel full. When it's enclosed in a fruit you get a little bit of fructose (which is probably good for you) but you get all kinds of other stuff that DOES make you feel like you've actually eaten something and so you're not tempted to eat several bushels at one sitting. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195665&cid=16053178 To kind of start wandering around the topic, aspartame is metabolized into some interesting things. It initially turns into phenylalanine (among other things), which is a problem for people with phenylketonuria. L-phenylalanine turns into L-tyrosine, and then that turns into L-DOPA, and then that finally is turned into dopamine and norepinephrine, so if you sit around drinking enough Diet Coke every day, you could conceivably be throwing off the balance of your neurotransmitters. People take supplements with the same goals under doctors' supervision. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=195665&cid=16048081