Tangerine Dream

Tangerine Dream

Want to have some fun?

This might hurt your brain, but you may find it amusing to follow the tortured logic of the FDA as officials try to figure out how they really feel about stevia (the South American herb that’s been used for centuries as a sweetener), while also performing a balancing act between corporate donors (oops – I meant “corporate interests”) and safety – whatever “safety” means. And it can mean pretty much whatever you want it to mean in the wild, whacky world of food regulation.

Catch a wave

How do you surf a Tangerine Orange Wave? You just mix it with water to create, “a sunny combination of the flavor of tangy tangerines and juicy oranges with refreshing, naturally caffeine free herb tea.”

That’s the pitch from Celestial Seasonings, the maker of Tangerine Orange Wave, which is a powdered ice tea mix that the company calls an “herbal supplement.” A supplement? If that seems odd, it’s because Celestial Seasonings is participating in the regulatory dance – and they’re dancing as fast as they can.

This past August, FDA officials notified the Hain Celestial Group that some of the company’s tea products (including Tangerine Orange Wave) were in violation of federal regulations that prohibit stevia to be used as a food additive. The problem, according to the FDA, is this: “Literature reports have raised safety concerns about the use of stevia.”

The FDA letter doesn’t contain any source materials for those safety concerns, but the fact that the letter makes the claims at all raises some interesting questions because (here’s where it starts to get good) the agency has already recognized stevia as a dietary supplement.

Okaaaaay. Stevia is safe enough for sale as a dietary supplement, but as a food additive it’s not Generally Recognized As Safe (GRAS). Don’tcha love it!? And that’s why Tangerine Orange Wave and other similar products made by Celestial Seasonings claim to be herbal supplements.

And just to add a little more levity to the mix, an article by the Organic Consumers Association includes this note: “On the FDA’s own website, a GRAS petition submitted to FDA in 1995 cited over 900 Stevia studies, none of which indicated any safety concerns regarding human health.”

Come to mama

When a colleague of mine here at HSI sent me a report about the FDA letter to Hain, he wrote: “I bet the minute some big beverage company pays the FDA enough, Stevia will suddenly be safe as mother’s milk!”

He read the handwriting on the wall. This past May, Coca-Cola and Cargill announced that they’ve been developing a new stevia-based sweetener. Coke plans to use the sweetener in beverages and Cargill will use it in foods. And don’t you know that sometime in the near future the FDA will decide that stevia is indeed just as safe as mother’s milk?

But what is “safe” exactly? The FDA letter to Hain kindly spells that out: “Safe or safety means that there is a reasonable certainty in the minds of competent scientists that the substance is not harmful under the intended conditions of use.”

Okaaaaay then what about that king of synthetic sweeteners, aspartame? For more than 15 years, GD Searle Corp. was unable to gain FDA approval for their artificial sweetener. In fact, Dr. M. Adrian Gross, a senior FDA toxicologist made this statement at a Congressional hearing: “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, aspartame triggers brain tumors.” But when a new, aspartame-friendly FDA commissioner was installed in 1981, the sweetener quickly received approval. Since then, the agency has received thousands of consumer complaints about aspartame – far more complaints than any other food additive.

So if aspartame is anywhere close to being “safe,” then it’s only a matter of time before a genuinely safe herb like stevia is considered to be harmless enough to be added to food – but only after a giant corporate money truck pushes it into the FDA safety zone.

Sources:
“FDA Warns Hain of Stevia Use; Calls Herb Unsafe” Kim Dixon, Reuters, 9/18/07, reuters.com
“Warning Letter” FDA, 8/17/07, fda.gov
“FDA Continues Pushing Natural Herb Sweetener Stevia Out of U.S.” Organic Consumers Association, 9/19/07, organicconsumers.org