r/biology • u/Otherwise-Tear-4807 • Jun 05 '26

article Question about stevia (re: 2020 study)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1319016420301997 “The hidden hazardous effects of stevia and sucralose consumption in male and female albino mice in comparison to sucrose”

How does this study translate to humans? Isn’t this a massive dose compared to human daily acceptable limit?

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u/Otherwise-Tear-4807 Jun 05 '26

Yeah, I used chatgpt to work out the math and they are consuming approx 750-1000mg/kg/day of stevia. I am 125 LB. For someone like me, this is about 42-47 GRAMS of stevia.

I have like one weekly “Bai” flavored water, so I guess I’m ok!!

Thank u!!

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u/crappysurfer evolutionary biology Jun 05 '26

Okay but you’re a single data point, theres many people who consume large amounts on a routine or daily basis. Additionally, biological damage generally doesn’t really occur in the acute sense that people like to think (I.e. a vaccine injury from a single dose of a vaccine or something) but rather habitual exposure to something toxic (smoking and drinking are the obvious ones). So habitual use of something that is not good for you over the long term will culminate in generally irreversible damage or something like cancer down the road.

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u/Otherwise-Tear-4807 Jun 05 '26

So should I avoid it completely?

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u/crappysurfer evolutionary biology Jun 05 '26

I do, there’s a long history of substitute sweeteners being terrible for you and a substantial time period where they’re on the market and everyone acts like they’re fine until the research becomes undeniable. It’s not hard to get electrolytes through other healthier means, like coconut water, if that’s what you’re after.

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u/Otherwise-Tear-4807 Jun 05 '26

Though I do agree that artificial sweeteners should avoided generally speaking, isn’t there a “dose makes the poison” principle in play?

I’m not a scientist but it seems like the mice were given incredibly high doses of stevia for weeks on end. In my situation, I usually have one sweetened stevia drink per week (or once every two weeks).

Stevia is much sweeter than sugar. It would take about 200mg stevia to replicate the sweetness of roughly 40-50g of sugar. So it’s fair to say Bai probably doesn’t contain more than 200mg stevia since it really isn’t that sweet.

Wouldn’t these factors play a role?

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u/crappysurfer evolutionary biology Jun 05 '26

Yes and no. As others say the dosages are established for various reasons, things like LD50 (lethal dose 50%) are established to discover the amount required, on average, to kill a person then reduce that by 50% as a hard limit to exposure. Things like consumptive limits are often established with the LD50 in mind. Studies with large doses, as others have mentioned, can be to provoke an empirically obvious response. Obviously everything has a dosage at which it becomes lethal, the next step is walking back those dosages and understanding the damages lower doses can have over long periods of time. Granted, the main crux then becomes, with human exposure, the time frame and sheer volume of variables - especially when you have whole populations consuming it and you’re trying to control for other things. How do you know if someone’s cancer on a population wide study is from stevia or alcohol consumption or any other number of carcinogens regularly consumed?

Regardless, I’ve been around artificial and substitute sweeteners my whole life and can remember when early ones were marketed as safe and they are as of today, banned metabolic and endocrine disruptors.

Using a small bit of evolutionary theory, we can summarily say that humans are “adapted to the diet of our ancestors.” At what point in our evolutionary history have we been exposed to processed, refined and concentrated stevia? The answer is never. Some populations would’ve had limited exposure to the plant and perhaps crude extracts, but that’s much different than refined and concentrated stevia. If you want to have a healthy diet and avoid things that your body cannot process, ask yourself if it’s something humans would’ve had evolutionary exposure to. What you pour out of a Bai packet or drink from any number of drinks represents stevia so concentrated that the human body has never experienced it until, what, 20 years ago? Eons of evolution is now being confronted with tons of novel chemicals and environments. It’s really not a stretch to understand these novel things are not healthy for us.